Heroeswatch: Skyrockets in Flight

I happened to love the finale. Even my stone cold heart shed a tear when Nathan swooped down. Maybe it's because I amost lost my own brother.

As far as Peter not flying away, I was under the impression that he could only use one power at a time, and as he was going nuclear he couldn't fly away. He told Nathan that he couldn't control it and that he couldn't do anything.

Who says Nathan is dead?

It was a pretty long flight...Nathan goes supersonic with Peter, drops him off around 30,000 feet, Peter drops and Nathan keeps rocketing away.

Peter goes boom and then Nathan backtracks to go pick up Petey's remains to take back to Claire, so he can be restored.

Yeah, I should emphasize I don't know for certain that Nathan is dead--this is Heroes after all--just that the scene was evidently meant to be taken as self-sacrifice.

I would personally say whelmed bordering on underwhelmed, as it ended the way most people thought it would ever since Peter's original vision: with a grim face Nathan sacrificing himself(?) to get Peter to a safe distance.

1) Again, why didn't Peter just fly up to space himself? Is he limited to only one active power at a time? I can't recall any cases where he used more than one simultaneously.

2) Nikki/Jessica. Nice that they resolved her powers - a classical superpower (super-strength), with non-superpowered mental issues, at least makes some sense. But for the ending: she's never met Peter or Sylar. Why would she jump in their fight? Why would she side with Peter? And why would she leave on Peter's command? (This is aside from the general lameness of the Sylar showdown.)

3) Given that Candace strongly hinted that she's always projecting a false self-image (she mentioned her weight last week), why did Nikki see her as her usual image when she knocked Candace out? Speaking of which, why did Candace try to stop Nikki anyway? Linderman's group was already done with Micah, why didn't Candace just say "Sorry about that, Linderman's check is in the mail".

4) Shaft's appearance was underwhelming as well; presumably his backstory will be told next season. I do like the reminder that Peter's dream visions are A) actually his first power manifested (all apologies to your link above), and B) borrowed from someone - probably either Shaft or Simone, given that Peter apparently didn't have the visions until he met them (if the visions belong to his mother or father, wouldn't he have borrowed that power before then?)

5) I wasn't happy with the death count. And I am not referring to the unlikely near-deaths, I mean that, thematically, Sylar, Peter, and even Hiro are all too powerful to deal with, even with comic-book reasoning, as even Heroes itself showed in their five years later episode. I was really hoping for some, if not all, of their deaths.

6) And another non-surprise: Hiro is apparently indeed the guy that forged his own sword, etc. etc. in the past. Since my knowledge of Japanese history is limited, one question for the crowd: it sounded like the horsemen were saying "Kenshin", as in Uesugi Kenshin, and the guy with all the retainers did look like Takeda Shingen. But all their famous battles were over by 1570 - Kenshin was quietly building his forces for his fights with Oda Nobunaga, before his early death, apparently by disease. I don't know if this is the Heroes' writers geeking out on us: Kenshin living to fight Nobunaga is one of those great "What if" questions of history, as Kenshin winning would have thrown out the Oda/Toyotomi/Takugawa rulership, and the country-changing results of their rule (banishment of non-Japanese from Japan on pain of death, abolishment of Christianity), and an international Japan from 1600+ might well have lead to a quite different modern day.

Such a disappointing episode on so many levels... The entire cast should have had a story arc around Syler. They should have all showed up at the same time to help whup him for their own specific reason. Instead, one stab from Hiro takes him out.

After months and months of watching Peter obtain all these amazing powers, he turns out to be useless, he does nothing and then likely dies. He was a pretty pointless character in retrospect. There wasn't even an epic battle between him and Syler as a payoff. What, they used the whole special effects budget already? Also, shouldn't Peter have had all of Syler's powers as well?

Why couldn't Claire just shoot Peter? Since he has Claire's healing ability, it wouldn't have killed him anyway.

Very underwhelming episode in my mind. It was possibly enough to turn me off of watching next season as well. At least 30 Rock is brilliant...

I'm not sure what people were expecting, in terms of the Peter-Sylar showdown. Peter's not an X-Man. He hasn't been trained to use his abilities in combat. He's a hospice nurse. I don't know that he would be able to mentally scroll through his powers and use them effectively in a situation that was new to him. Was he supposed to throw fireballs at Sylar? He's definitely proven his ability to control Ted's powers. I think the outcome was pretty believable. Even the conceit of the show is fantastical, the writers have shown tried to ground the show in reality, as much as possible.

I'm not sure what people were expecting, in terms of the Peter-Sylar showdown. Peter's not an X-Man. He hasn't been trained to use his abilities in combat. He's a hospice nurse. I don't know that he would be able to mentally scroll through his powers and use them effectively in a situation that was new to him. Was he supposed to throw fireballs at Sylar? He's definitely proven his ability to control Ted's powers. I think the outcome was pretty believable. Even though the conceit of the show is fantastical, the writers have shown tried to ground the show in reality, as much as possible.

I was expecting a little more in the fight scene myself - I remember looking at the clock at 9:50 before the fight had even began and saying, 'This is the time left for the climax?!?' - and a little more emotion in the ultimate ending.

It was definitely a giant task for Kring and the writers to make this episode live up to all the hype, but, like you James, I was whelmed by the whole thing.

Oh My God... Peter can fly, flight was the first power Peter absorbed from his brother. He could have simply flown himself into orbit, in fact that could have been his plan the whole time.

This show does not get to be forgiven for such a HUGE plot hole like that. That is literary irresponsibility on a massive scale.

I just realized, the flash-forward episode shows that Nathan's predicted ascendancy was actually just a sham. As we know, Nathan was NOT the president in the future: it was Sylar. Yet Linderman and the rest of them assumed, based on the appearance in Isaac's paintings, that Nathan was someone with a destiny. Turned out that his destiny was just to be killed by Sylar and have his brain eaten. So Nathan, regular old Nathan, probably wouldn't have been any good to the country. But I-ate-everyone Sylar would have power in spades, and probably would use it all in order to rise to the top of the heap. Maybe?

Not a very good finale, though.

Jason, good point. If this is the case, it means the show is relying on some recursive, infinite-loop logic. That is, why does Nathan, the unlikely congressman, have to become president? Because Sylar was in the picture appearing to look like him. Why is Sylar in the picture looking like Nathan? Because Nathan, the unlikely congressman, became president. Why...

I mean really, once Sylar gained shape-shifting power, he could have killed and usurped anyone who became president. Why not just have him off, say, Fred Thompson? He already worked for NBC. And I bet his brain is much more marbled and thus tastier.

I liked the finale well enough. And, given the inherent possibilities of time travel, we may not have seen the last of Peter or Nathan... http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2007/05/heroes-volume-one-finale.html

All in all, the finale wasn't the strongest episode, but I felt it was a fitting conclusion for the 'first' volume. It wrapped up enough to satisfy yet left enough cliffhangers to live up to the genre format.

I do wish they had spent a little more time showing Nathan's shift from where he was, to where he ended up when he came back to help Peter. Still, if that hadn't happened at all, I would have been disappointed.

As for people complaining that Peter should have flown himself... Peter was a little bit busy trying not to explode. I don't think we've seen him use more than one power at a time, so if he's out of control with the nuclear power, he's not going to be able to go super sonic and get himself out of the atmosphere.

Death is rarely final in comic books, so I'm hoping that we see more from Peter and Nathan next season.

(To be honest, I'm surprised I haven't seen more people complaining about Hiro's training session with his father in the previous episode. Maybe people actually got the whole idea of him being able to play with time and have a thorough training period in the midst of a couple of hours.)

I don't think anyone is dead... Sylar, Nathan, or Peter. In hindsight, I think they did a good job with the battle, because the battle we saw hints of from the future is after Peter has years to master his powers. This is setting up an even greater battle/rivalry between Peter and Sylar for the future.

The episode as a whole was very underwhelming, but they laid down potential lines for future seasons. Do you think we've seen the Super Boogeyman already? I think so

If Sylar could attain anyone's power, he is still alive. Claire was in proximity to him. I don't know why they did not work that out when they concocted that scheme. She would have to be a sharp-shooter for him to not know she was there.

But I initially thought he had to slice their brains open to get their properties. Or is it just Is it just proximity that determines he gets the power? Is that why he can do what Hiro does?

Who is the cockroach?

Is Sylar healing in the sewers? The New York Sewer System has always been a character itself in film. Nasty! Maybe the bad, bad man is in the sewer with Sylar.

And how does Claire ever die? Does she live forever if she heals herself? Is it only regeneration from injuries and not sickness or old-age? So if Sylar sliced her head off, would she grow another brain or pick the sliced one up off the ground?

Grow another brain?

From a geek perspective, more than likely Syler has to consume the brain to get the powers and that gives him greater control, whereas Peter needs only proximity, but his control of the powers tends to be a little shakier.

As for Claire's regenerative powers, it's been shown that they don't work if something pierces the brain, which would make me believe that if the brain is removed, she'd be SOL.

What a load of ...

I was really anticipating this episode beforehand, even though I did expect to be left in the lurch with a suspenseful cliffhanger. I'd been enjoying the series a lot until this season-ending episode.

This is what we get? Ooohh... it's really not the end of Sylar; he's going to live in the sewers and eat rats until he regenerates his power. And Nathan -- was that really Nathan? What caused his change of heart? Who cares if he dies? Does anybody but his mother love him?

And of course silly Hiro sends himself to 17th century Japan and suddenly can't remember that he can teleport / time travel his way out of trouble -- again. And, uh-huh, there's an eclipse. Which harks back to the Heroes opening credits and means ... nothing to me.

I'm not even left wanting more. I don't feel anything's resolved, except that NYC won't blow up that day. Sylar is Voldemort (http://www.google.com/search?q=Sylar+is+Voldemort), and I don't even care right now what happens to any of the characters.

I love this show, but agreed - whelmed...

And agreed - one little stab and Sylar is dead? What's up with that? There is no way he is dead -- I was waiting for him to get back up again like in a horror movie.

And then the ambulances comes and where was Sylar? They were putting people on stretechers and supposedly Sylar was laying on the ground dead and they never even showed him again?

Yeah, and then they show the random shot of the roach going into the sewer? I assume that is supposed to foreshadow something?

The only brief second I thought was cool was when a few of them used their powers and then Nathan swooped in -- there should have been more of a power showdown since we have never seen all these people with powers in one location before. If you had powers and were there, wouldn't you want to get in on the action?? -- and then of course the brief kicking-butt moment was ruined by the sappy Nathan/Peter moment...huge anti-climax...

Oh well -- will see where on earth they take this next season...I will definitely watch!

Just re-emphasizing from my comment a second ago above -- one little stab and Sylar is dead? Still in disbelief.

All season I have been thinking this is the most psycho, crazy, evil, powerful person I have ever seen (like - how are they ever gonna stop this guy)...wow...

Sylar is not dead.
Didn't you guys all see the blood trail at the end????

That blood trail going through the manhole was wicked lame. What's next? Teenage Mutant Ninja Sylar?