“Two heroes will fall!”
Please, let it be the boring ones.
NBC’s “Heroes” promos have been screaming hype all week, and the last couple of episodes – He’s dead! He’s not dead! He’s good! No, he’s bad! – would seem to bolster high expectations.
So we’re cautiously hopeful for tonight’s (semi-)season finale (Dec. 3 at 9 p.m. on NBC), bearing in mind how last May’s first-season finish felt so diappointingly anticlimactic.
In last week’s penultimate episode (watch a two-minute replay here), things moved so fast, we could hardly keep up. We met older-generation hero Victoria Pratt (Joanna Cassidy), supposed spreader of the plot-crucial Shanti virus, soon revealed to be instead a herald of its destructiveness, and she was killed (or so it seemed) mere minutes later. Hiro did more time-traveling, back to the virus’ development in 1977, and forward to not prevent his father’s death but rather vow to avenge it. “And save the world,” added our favorite hero.
Claire showed down against Elle, and threatened to squeal the heroes’ secret to stop her and The Company once and for all. Meanwhile, H.R.G. and Suresh and Bob all faced off against each other in weird geometric permutations that for me have recently become the most compelling part of the tale. Bob maintained to Suresh he was trying to “find a safe way to remove the abilities of dangerous individuals.” And now Sylar has called Suresh to say he has his mitts on youngest-hero Molly. So who’ll get to experiment on whom?
And then there’s Adam Monroe/Takezo Kensei/other identities over the past 400 years. David Anders’ mysteriously immortal character is either responsible for the “future” unleashing of the virus that will kill 93 percent of the world’s population, or he’s a truly intriguing red herring. Too bad we have to go through his comrade-in-arms Peter to find out.
The episode’s tag promised us Peter vs. Hiro tonight. There’s only one way for this to go. Or I’m gone.
[Above: Milo Ventimiglia’s Peter, in tonight’s Chapter 11 episode, “Powerless.” Photo by NBC/Adam Taylor.]