Heroes 1x20: Five Years Gone
Jul. 1st, 2007 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrasteNow, where was I last night? Oh, yes, that's right: OH MY GOD!
In Five Years Gone, we visit the Grim Future with Hiro and Ando and find out that blowing up New York is never a good idea. (I have always been with Rorschach on that one.) Unless Linderman and Mama Petrelli were actually hoping for a future where everyone with powers is going to be murdered by the serial killer in the White House, I think we can say that they screwed up.
Ever since he showed up on the subway, I've been itching to see the look on Hiro's face when he encountered Grim Future Hiro. So naturally I was thrilled that the first person he met was his own older, angstier, more badass self. Moments later they're separated by the arrival of Grim Future Matt and his many goons, so Hiro gets to spend most of his time in the future in prison while Ando zaps around with his counterpart.
My favourite part of this whole brilliant episode is the awkward interaction between those two. Ando finds GF!Hiro strange and rather intimidating - it's a lovely touch that he calls him 'Hiro-san' - and GF!Hiro has no idea how to relate to the man he lost five years before. And yet, as Ando observes, his friend is still in there. I'm convinced Hiro was about to say something sappy when he got tazered; given what he just said about the space-time continuum I don't think he was going to tell Ando he died.
It's been obvious to the audience for a long time that something bad must have happened to Ando to cause GF!Hiro to become grim in the first place. (Although the idea of a Grim Future Ando is weirdly appealing to me.) However, it's not at all obvious to Ando. I don't think he has any idea just how important he is until Peter explains that the reason Hiro is so intense about trying to change the past is that he wants to save him. Then, when Hiro is poleaxed by GF!Hiro's death, Ando realizes he has to be a good sidekick and tell Hiro he believes in him so Hiro can save them all. Awwwwwwwww. (Bonus HoYay points to the writers for GF!Hiro making Ando takes off his clothes in an alley *g*.)
Elsewhere, Hiro is not the only one who's become morally compromised in the Grim Future. We have Matt Parkman hitting Hiro in the face (HOW CAN ANYONE HIT HIRO IN THE FACE?), Peter hanging out in Las Vegas being jaded, and Mr. Bennet helping refugees with one hand and turning them over to the government with the other. Where, apparently, they get eaten by the president. I admit it, I was incredibly slow and did not realize that Nathan was not Nathan until the big reveal.
I did headtilt in confusion when 'Nathan' wanted to kill the entire population of superpowered people, because it's just not a good plan. If there are thousands of people with powers appearing all over the world, they're going to be impossible to exterminate completely - killing the specials you can find today won't stop a dozen others being born tomorrow. I think we can safely assume the gene is recessive, since it's not like everyone with powers has powered parents, so to eliminate it you'd have to kill every carrier as well.
However, from Sylar's perspective it makes perfect sense. After five years of chowing down on Ted Sprague, Nathan, D.L., Candice Wilmer, probably Molly Walker and who knows how many others, he's apparently decided that he's special enough. Now he wants to make sure nobody else can be special. Naturally, he wants his favourite geneticist to help him. (I was horrified and fascinated to realize that Sylar has had an indeterminate proportion of the previous five years to make nice with Mohinder all over again. While wearing Nathan Petrelli's face. Meep.)
Grim Future Mohinder reminded me a lot of Giles in the Wishverse, only with more moral ambiguity. (He's even dressed like Giles!) He's trying to do the best he can in a universe that hasn't provided him with the opportunity to make a real improvement; given what happened to New York I can see why he'd want to find a 'cure' for superpowers. And like Giles in the Wishverse, Mohinder is the person who ultimately decides to destroy the reality he inhabits because the alternative just has to be better. I cheered for him when he had the good sense to kill the Haitian instead of Hiro, so our favourite office worker could go back and try to change things.
Unfortunately, Hiro and Ando return to the present missing a vital piece of information: Sylar was not the exploding man. It would have been incredibly useful if, when Peter was telling Ando that he died, he'd added 'oh, and incidentally, I'm the one who blew up the city. My bad.' Not that stabbing Sylar wouldn't be a valuable public service, but it's not going to save New York if Peter goes nuclear. Hiro's "save the cheerleader, save the world" theory was based on a false premise.
On the bright side, though, it really is possible to change the future. The Five Years Gone future has a Sylar who did eat Claire's brain in Homecoming. Even if they haven't managed to stop New York exploding yet, Hiro and Ando have changed things for the better. Having her brain eaten didn't kill Claire, but in that timeline Peter did not save her and so they never met. That may yet prove the key to making sure that New York does not end up rubble, and the future does not suck so much sa a result.
In Five Years Gone, we visit the Grim Future with Hiro and Ando and find out that blowing up New York is never a good idea. (I have always been with Rorschach on that one.) Unless Linderman and Mama Petrelli were actually hoping for a future where everyone with powers is going to be murdered by the serial killer in the White House, I think we can say that they screwed up.
Ever since he showed up on the subway, I've been itching to see the look on Hiro's face when he encountered Grim Future Hiro. So naturally I was thrilled that the first person he met was his own older, angstier, more badass self. Moments later they're separated by the arrival of Grim Future Matt and his many goons, so Hiro gets to spend most of his time in the future in prison while Ando zaps around with his counterpart.
My favourite part of this whole brilliant episode is the awkward interaction between those two. Ando finds GF!Hiro strange and rather intimidating - it's a lovely touch that he calls him 'Hiro-san' - and GF!Hiro has no idea how to relate to the man he lost five years before. And yet, as Ando observes, his friend is still in there. I'm convinced Hiro was about to say something sappy when he got tazered; given what he just said about the space-time continuum I don't think he was going to tell Ando he died.
It's been obvious to the audience for a long time that something bad must have happened to Ando to cause GF!Hiro to become grim in the first place. (Although the idea of a Grim Future Ando is weirdly appealing to me.) However, it's not at all obvious to Ando. I don't think he has any idea just how important he is until Peter explains that the reason Hiro is so intense about trying to change the past is that he wants to save him. Then, when Hiro is poleaxed by GF!Hiro's death, Ando realizes he has to be a good sidekick and tell Hiro he believes in him so Hiro can save them all. Awwwwwwwww. (Bonus HoYay points to the writers for GF!Hiro making Ando takes off his clothes in an alley *g*.)
Elsewhere, Hiro is not the only one who's become morally compromised in the Grim Future. We have Matt Parkman hitting Hiro in the face (HOW CAN ANYONE HIT HIRO IN THE FACE?), Peter hanging out in Las Vegas being jaded, and Mr. Bennet helping refugees with one hand and turning them over to the government with the other. Where, apparently, they get eaten by the president. I admit it, I was incredibly slow and did not realize that Nathan was not Nathan until the big reveal.
I did headtilt in confusion when 'Nathan' wanted to kill the entire population of superpowered people, because it's just not a good plan. If there are thousands of people with powers appearing all over the world, they're going to be impossible to exterminate completely - killing the specials you can find today won't stop a dozen others being born tomorrow. I think we can safely assume the gene is recessive, since it's not like everyone with powers has powered parents, so to eliminate it you'd have to kill every carrier as well.
However, from Sylar's perspective it makes perfect sense. After five years of chowing down on Ted Sprague, Nathan, D.L., Candice Wilmer, probably Molly Walker and who knows how many others, he's apparently decided that he's special enough. Now he wants to make sure nobody else can be special. Naturally, he wants his favourite geneticist to help him. (I was horrified and fascinated to realize that Sylar has had an indeterminate proportion of the previous five years to make nice with Mohinder all over again. While wearing Nathan Petrelli's face. Meep.)
Grim Future Mohinder reminded me a lot of Giles in the Wishverse, only with more moral ambiguity. (He's even dressed like Giles!) He's trying to do the best he can in a universe that hasn't provided him with the opportunity to make a real improvement; given what happened to New York I can see why he'd want to find a 'cure' for superpowers. And like Giles in the Wishverse, Mohinder is the person who ultimately decides to destroy the reality he inhabits because the alternative just has to be better. I cheered for him when he had the good sense to kill the Haitian instead of Hiro, so our favourite office worker could go back and try to change things.
Unfortunately, Hiro and Ando return to the present missing a vital piece of information: Sylar was not the exploding man. It would have been incredibly useful if, when Peter was telling Ando that he died, he'd added 'oh, and incidentally, I'm the one who blew up the city. My bad.' Not that stabbing Sylar wouldn't be a valuable public service, but it's not going to save New York if Peter goes nuclear. Hiro's "save the cheerleader, save the world" theory was based on a false premise.
On the bright side, though, it really is possible to change the future. The Five Years Gone future has a Sylar who did eat Claire's brain in Homecoming. Even if they haven't managed to stop New York exploding yet, Hiro and Ando have changed things for the better. Having her brain eaten didn't kill Claire, but in that timeline Peter did not save her and so they never met. That may yet prove the key to making sure that New York does not end up rubble, and the future does not suck so much sa a result.
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Date: 2007-07-01 09:42 am (UTC)I admit it, I was incredibly slow and did not realize that Nathan was not Nathan until the big reveal.
Really? Your comments on ep 19 made me think you'd figured it out without even seeing this ep, which impressed me mightily. Me, I didn't have a chance to figure it out, because I accidentally spoiled myself. (Accidentally in the sense that I would have liked not knowing that, but not in the sense that I didn't fully consciously click on a link I knew to have a couple of spoilers. I'm such a spoilerho I do it automatically even when I'd rather not. *sigh*)
I really enjoyed the way not!Nathan slowly reveals himself by first saying "I can see how things work" and then talking about how special he is. Apparently AP asked ZQ for a few pointers on how to say his lines.
(I was horrified and fascinated to realize that Sylar has had an indeterminate proportion of the previous five years to make nice with Mohinder all over again. While wearing Nathan Petrelli's face. Meep.)
There are fics. Oh yes.
Hiro's "save the cheerleader, save the world" theory was based on a false premise.
Just because something is based on a false premise, doesn't mean it's not true. :-)
The Five Years Gone future has a Sylar who did eat Claire's brain in Homecoming.
The first of the FYG futures, yes (the one GF!Hiro originally came from), but not the one in the ep. But you know that.
I
Date: 2007-07-01 12:17 pm (UTC)Quite.
Future!Hiro and Ando: ohhhhh yes. When F!Hiro smiles again at last in that talk with Ando, I go to pieces.
We have Matt Parkman hitting Hiro in the face (HOW CAN ANYONE HIT HIRO IN THE FACE?),
Never mind killing Bennet, that's the true proof of Future!Matt's state.
Mr. Bennet helping refugees with one hand and turning them over to the government with the other.
You won't believe how many people managed to miss the second part and thought Bennet was only doing the rescuing, completely ignoring his conversation with Matt. (Also ignoring that when F!Hiro says he brought DL and Candice to Bennet, and we later see Sylar has eaten those two, there is one very obvious conclusion why Bennet refuses to "let them help" Hiro. Anyway, I loved it, in a grim way, because it retains Bennet's moral ambiguity.
I admit it, I was incredibly slow and did not realize that Nathan was not Nathan until the big reveal.
And here I thought from your last review you had figured it out in advance. Cadesama suspected it based on the trailer for the episode where "Nathan" says his "I'm the most special person there is" line, which is just not a Nathan line but very much a Sylar line. I wasn't sure, but the moment "Nathan" was all over Mohinder, doing his patented shoulder grasp and wanting Mo to commit murder with him, I knew it. Because again, obsessing about Mohinder is Sylar's thing, and though I can see Nathan approaching Mohinder for help (as he did in "The Fix"), I can't see him actually become intimate. (Those kind of moves are reserved for family members and Hiro when Nathan does them.)
It's a very good performance on Adrian Pasdar's part, too, because while it's never that obvious that we wonder why the other characters don't see it, there is something slightly off with "Nathan" all the time, and then of course more and more Sylarisms creep in until the big reveal. As Kattaj said below, he had Zachary Quinto read some key lines for him so he could incorporate this in his performance.
I was horrified and fascinated to realize that Sylar has had an indeterminate proportion of the previous five years to make nice with Mohinder all over again. While wearing Nathan Petrelli's face. Meep.
See above. See also: Sylar totally obsessed with Mohinder. Oh, and: "To be fooled by a serial killer once may be regarded as a misfortune. To be fooled twice looks like carelessness." (Darling Oscar is so useful to misquote.)
Oh, and another great thing: it's totally open to debate when exactly Sylar replaced Nathan. Some place it as late as the year the episode takes place, some as early as shortly after Nathan's election to Congressman. My own timeline guess is that Nathan was still Nathan for the next two years as Congressman, then successfully participated in the next presidential race as someone else's Vice President running mate. (My basis for this speculation is that I can't see Sylar having the patience for actual Congress work.) And then Sylar struck. (My basis for "not later" is that it's much, much harder to get a VP, let alone President alone in order to make the switch, because of the constant security.)
Oh, and I have a speculation on how Sylar actually went about killing Nathan, which led me to my first Heroes fanfic:
Brave New World (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3520653/1/)
II
Date: 2007-07-01 12:18 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, yes, it was. And of course the silence about this fact is Future!Peter's own part of guilt, more so than the actual explosion, in a way, over which he had no control. But it's very clear that he didn't tell anyone until the outburst towards Niki. (Again, that he lives with a woman whose son died because of him without telling her this for years says something about how messed up F!Peter is.)
On the bright side, though, it really is possible to change the future. The Five Years Gone future has a Sylar who did eat Claire's brain in Homecoming. Even if they haven't managed to stop New York exploding yet, Hiro and Ando have changed things for the better. Having her brain eaten didn't kill Claire, but in that timeline Peter did not save her and so they never met.
Um, not so much. We have:
Timeline A) Claire dies, Sylar regenerates, Future!Hiro assumes that since he believes SYLAR is the one to explode (due to Nathan covering up for Peter), taking out Sylar would change everything, so he contacts Present!Peter with his message. Resulting in.
Timeline B) Claire doesn't die at Homecoming, she's saved by Peter. But since Sylar was never the one who explodes, this doesn't change anything. Claire simply dies a few years later, otherwise the future is still a mess.
So the question is - will we get a Timeline C) after Hiro and Ando return to the present, and if so, what will cause the change? (I know the answer, of course, but you don't yet.*g*)
Re: II
Date: 2007-07-01 01:59 pm (UTC)I will respond to all your wonderful comments later, but I want it on record before I watch the finale that I think I have guessed this one: Hiro is going to talk to Nathan Petrelli.
Nathan is thinking about going along with exploding New York because his mother and Linderman say it will make the world happy and shiny. Hiro just needs to say 'Nathan, I have been to the the future where New York exploded and it sucks.'
Now what the incredible Flying Man can do to stop New York blowing up, I do not know. But he was the only person not turning away from Peter in his dream, and that has to be significant.
Re: II
Date: 2007-07-01 02:14 pm (UTC)Re: II
Date: 2007-07-01 02:28 pm (UTC)Re: II
Date: 2007-07-01 02:30 pm (UTC)