Heroes 1x23: How To Stop An Exploding Man

[andraste]

I was up way too early watching this. Anything spoilery you want to rec me in the comments - fanfic, vids, adorable stories about the cast - is now welcome!



Mostly what I have to say is: awwwwwwwwwww. The world is saved by love!

I guessed after Five Years Gone that what Hiro needed to do was talk to Nathan. Even though Nathan rejects his request for help at the time, in the end it does make a difference. Hiro tells Nathan that he'll become a bad person in the future. Combined with his own daughter's determination to help Peter, that plants a seed of doubt. (And of course if Hiro hadn't told Peter to 'save the cheerleader, save the world' Claire wouldn't have been alive to help shame Nathan into doing the right thing.) When the crunch comes he can't let his brother blow up New York.

There's an easy way for the show to have Nathan as well as Peter survive the explosion. I bet that half way up, Peter managed to fly under his own power, shoved Nathan off, and kept going until he was out of the atmosphere.

Back on the ground, most of the cast come through more or less OK. (If they were going to kill Matt, he'd have died right away instead of being driven off in an ambulance.) Their problems may be far from over, but at least the threat of Linderman is no longer hanging over them. Noah Bennet (hooray for perfect first names!) takes his daughter home, Niki gets her life back, Mohinder adopts the Walker Tracking System and Hiro gives Ando his phallic symbol sword as a token of his devotion.

It would have been handy if somebody - anybody! - had thought to check that the scary serial killer was dead instead of just dragging himself into a sewer to return another day, but they don't quite have this whole 'killing Sylar' thing down yet. My guess is that some day when he does get taken down for good, no doubt after eating more brains and becoming even more powerful, it will be because our heroes have learned to co-ordinate their attacks. For all his power, Sylar is alone. If Peter, Hiro, Nathan, Niki, D.L., Claire and Matt all ganged up on him and used some elementary teamwork? He'd be toast.

Volume Two looks like it's going to be a fun time, with Hiro stuck in the past and a new threat on the horizon. It's amazing how creepy Molly makes that mysterious new villain sound just by telling Matt and Mohinder he can see her when she looks for him. Maybe this person is one of those Linderman, Angela Petrelli and Charles DeVeux used to work with, one of the ones who turned evil?

(Because if Linderman, Angela Petrelli and Charles DeVeux are complaining about someone turning evil, they must be pretty damn evil!)

Comments

[12-12-12.livejournal.com]

"Call me Noah" was one of my favorite moments in this episode. Of this season, even. Just perfect. They'd built up the anticipation so much that I was sure I'd be disappointed whatever name they chose. I was expecting something like "Zebediah". Heh. But Noah is perfect.

[wychwood]

Yay Heroes! *g* I can now point you to the comm bobthehaitian, set up by people who were annoyed by the ways in which Heroes still manages to get things wrong; I believe it came out of someone deciding to call the Haitian "Bob" because, well, he has a name, and shouldn't just be the exoticised Other. Various interesting meta-type things, anyway.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Not exhaustive (or even all read) but here are the heroes fics (http://del.icio.us/k8andrewz/fic:heroes) I've bothered to tag on del.icio.us.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Mostly what I have to say is: awwwwwwwwwww. The world is saved by love!

As a lot of icons put it: "And thus, the BroYay saved the world." *g*

I guessed after Five Years Gone that what Hiro needed to do was talk to Nathan. Even though Nathan rejects his request for help at the time, in the end it does make a difference.

Great post about timeline theories (http://cadesama.livejournal.com/168212.html) by cadesama, explaining the differences Hiro made (among other things, she postulates that it's not just Nathan's final decision but also his earlier telling Niki and DL where to find Linderman, which resulted in a couple of changes for Kirby Plaza). It's a combination of Hiro, Claire spelling it out to Nathan that no matter how assured Peter's survival is, Peter would have to live with having killed millions, the awareness that said millions would die and, well, love.

In all three timelines, certain things are inevitable - like Charlie dying. Or someone blowing up in New York. But you can affect the circumstances; Charlie experiences returned joy and love with Hiro through his travelling back, and Nathan's decision makes all the difference and prevents dystopia. In the end, you can say Nathan's love versus ambition arc throughout the season was the key to it. The mistake both Angela and Charles Deveaux made was to go either/or with Nathan and Peter, to see Nathan as strength without love and Peter as love without strength (in Angela's case; Charles is more complicated, as he saw love as Peter's strength, but he gave no indication as to what exactly he expected Peter to do with it, and in any case, made the same separation mistake). Union saves the day!

Hiro gives Ando his phallic symbol sword as a token of his devotion.

Nah, he gave him the equally symbolic sheath.*g* He still has the sword (and stabs Sylar with same, remember?) when ending up in feudal Japan.

Recs: I'll mail you lists of my favourite stories and vids. Check out C's post about family romances (http://cadesama.livejournal.com/168545.html) as narrative patterns in the season (in the sense Alias is a twisted family romance), with debate in the comments.

My own heroes-tagged entries (http://selenak.livejournal.com/tag/heroes). Of which three are post-finale stories:

Family Ways (http://selenak.livejournal.com/293824.html), which is about Bennets and Petrellis, Claire pov

Illusions (http://selenak.livejournal.com/294339.html), aka The Twisted One, with Candice.

Through a Glass Darkly (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3606800/1/), aka The Ambitious One, in which Nathan ends up in the Five Years Gone verse, centered on him, Peter and Niki.