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Heroes 1x20: Five Years Gone
Now, 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.