I’m with you. I think people have to accept that sometimes the storylines have to be set up in an awkward way to pay off the way they want to. And juggling twenty characters is really complicated.
They seem to have wiped season two from ever really happening at all, almost none of the characters introduced in it are still around. I really want to let them build on what they have, into the great show the want it to be, and I believe they’re achieving it.
If that’s the case, then really only Hiro has a prayer of stopping Arthur Petrelli, assuming he did take all of Peter’s powers.
Speaking of which, why isn’t Arthur using his teleportation and time travelling abilities? He can keep zapping to the future and back to see if his plans are gonna work out the way he wants, for starters. He can teleport to anywhere on the planet and insta-kill anyone he wants now, too, assuming he knows where they are. He’s essentially God, but it seems like, being a Petrelli, he also the gene that makes him get dumber the more accumulated airtime he gets…
Which is exactly what Angela said.
Does he even know that he has them? He’s fond off zappy-zappy, but that’s because Peter barged in crackling away like a bug zapper. How many abilities did he absorb off Peter in one go? (15, apparently.) And considering how much practice and concentration space-time manipulation requires, it’s not the sort of thing that can be picked up overnight.
Edit: Oh, something to add. The African precog, with his pictures of the 4 great villains trying to screw everything up. One of them was Arthur. Okay, fair enough. But one was Mohinder. What exactly his he gonna do, other than freak people right out?
Speaking of the Trippy Painter guy, wasn’t one of the villians he painted Parkman Sr. ? You’d have thought that what with Parkman Sr. getting a snapped neck and all that he wouldn’t so much be a factor in future events.
And so at some point between now and the potential future Peter went to Sylar finds another nuclear powered hero before becoming a good guy?
See, this is why I’m having trouble keeping track of who’s got what powers.
The only time Sylar ate Ted’s powers was shortly before getting stabbed, power-wiped, and carried all the way to Central America. And, why didn’t Sylar’s TK get wiped? That was the first power he stole…
Since Sylar supposedly doesn’t understand even half of what he can do, per Angela, I guess we have to assume that he just forgot how to do those powers and eventually learned to re-wire his brain again to have those powers that he once did.
I think the writing process went something like this:
“Okay - The final scene of season 2 is Sylar in an alley. He concentrates on a soda can, and it flies into his hand. He’s baaaAAAAaaack.”
<<<Months pass>>>
“Okay - Sylar’s too strong. Let’s say his powers have been wiped by the Chandra Virus, so he gets a reset.”
“Good idea. What about the TK we showed at the end of season 2?”
“Crap.”
You give them way too much credit - more like -
"He needs a power that we can show on TV that proves he has a power - ‘figgering out how things work isnt fun to watch’.
All they had to do was show him in the alley smiling and then on the soundtrack play the ticking watch sound effect…then fade to black.
I would vote for this (re: explaining why potential Future Sylar has apparently regained Ted’s nuke abilities). I think it would be kinda cool (if a bit unbalanced in terms of making Sylar just too powerful) if his ability to figure things out (and rewire himself to adopt the abilities) could also enable him to devise ways to rewire himself for entirely unique abilities that he devises on his own. Kind of like a cross between (not Nissan) Rogue and Forge of the X-Men.
Aside from his immunity, I thought it was pretty clear from the special effects that Alejandro wasn’t just calming Maya down, but absorbing the black poison stuff into himself. As her eyes went from black to normal, his eyes would briefly become black before fading to normal again. Plus, they were twins. No comics writer is going to pass up twins with complementary powers.
Also, I’m still trying to figure out who the people in the precog paintings are. From the four villains around the Pinehearst logo, I can recognize the two on the left as Arthur Petrelli and Knox Strong Fear Guy. But who are the guys on the right? The bottom right looks more like Linderman than anyone else I can think of, but Linderman is dead, or an illusion controlled by someone else. Top right? Looks like no one we’ve seen so far. Complexion is way too pale to be Mohinder. Aside from the heavy brows, looks nothing like Sylar. So who is it?
Plus the two men hugging. Is that supposed to be Peter? Nathan? Is it the Peter-hugging-dad scene, despite the other guy in the painting having brown hair and not grey?
Beginning of this episode, it looks like the four were revised/painted over to three… so maybe the Linderman-looking guy was actually Maury? Then we’ve got an obvious Arthur again, an obvious Knox again, plus an entirely new guy who pops skulls open and wears glasses. eh? Noah gets a power?
They really need a precog painter who has a more realistic style. 
Pretty sure top right is supposed to be Sylar, despite the poor likeness. Bottom right is Flint, the guy with the blue flame powers.
Definitely Peter and Arthur hugging.
Really? I’ll have to check that out again, I didn’t think any of them had been painted over.
Sylar wears glasses, too, from time to time.