I’m pretty fuzzy on the end of Season 2 (I don’t remember how Parkman got in the desert), but I remember a scene (that was a less-subtle version of the end of X-Men 3) with Sylar in an alley moving an empty tin can with TK. TK was not his original ability.
Parkman ended up in the desert at the beggining of the first episode this season, future Peter sent him there.
Another thing that bothered me about that scene is that Sylar had absolutely no problems handling Noxx powered by a bank full of scared people in the present, yet Noxx powered by one scared little boy beat the crap out of him in the future. Also Noxx, accidentally killing the source of your power is a very dumb move when fighting someone who can easily kill you.
It could be that they don’t WANT to give their characters that level of control or power. When you’ve got a bunch of powerful heroes running around, it’s good to give them some weaknesses as well.
Hmmm… good point. Based on a little more digging around, it seems he gained TK early on in his serial killer career.
Still, that doesn’t explain why Sylar’s other powers have been conveniently absent in this season until they were needed for a specific storyline… there were plenty of places where the old Sylar would’ve used more than just TK to get his way (chasing Claire around the house or dealing with the baddies at the bank, for example).
I can see that, but being conveniently stupid is not a good plot device, and it’s getting old. Having them attempt something and then get trumped for some more logical reason would be easier to swallow than just having them standing around not even attempting to use this or that power.
They did sort of attempt this by having Hiro trumped by speedy girl but it made no sense for him to be able to stop her momentarily and then she just speeds up even more … then later we find out she can’t outrun a nuclear explosion when she previously was able to outrun Hiro when time was stopped for everyone else.
For the record I hate people constantly trashing these shows and I accept a lot from the show and I do like it, I am just disappointed in some things. I feel that in the third season the writers should be trying a little harder and not using the same convenient but illogical devices.
Sylar & Peter having any difficulties at all, with anyone, bugged me a bit too.
But, good guys tend to be more inhibited in the use of their powers, and bad guys have no inhibitions. Evil Sylar was always better with other people’s powers than they were. I’ve seen that in comics too.
Plus, future Sylar-Gabriel evidently expends a great deal of concentration and will power keeping his need to feed in check, so I’ll cut him some slack for coming down with Peter Putz Good Guy disease.
I’m curious how Sylar’s kid got the name Noah. Noah has vowed to kill him, but evidently he must have become a father figure to him at some point.
That question was me, questioning whether we knew anything about what would stop the Haitian’s powers. I know that others have gotten the drop on him, and if he’s out, his powers are too, but I don’t know if we’ve seen whether someone being invisible would block him from using his powers.
Presumably, the little kid whose dad is getting smacked around was more scared than all those people in the bank.
For all we know, Hiro doesn’t stop time, he just slows it down so much that there is no difference between slowed and stopped… for everyone but Hiro and whatshername.
Be more annoyed that she apparently was fast enough to outrun the blast on her front side, but it scorched her back enough to destroy her blouse. And, of course, fast enough to outrun the blast… but not fast enough to outrun the news report getting to Matt. So, she apparently half-outran the blast, stopped to note that her favorite shirt was ruined, waited a bit, then ran the rest of the way to NY to see Matt and collapse/die. One would think that if someone were half-parbroiled and could still run across the entire country, they might first run over to the hospital.
I understand your point, but I think it’s misguided. There is nothing “conveniently stupid” about not generating a telekinetic field in order to protect one’s self. If the character has never demonstrated any ability to generate such a field, then there’s nothing stupid about failing to do so.
And if the writer’s decide not to give Peter that capability, then there’s nothing inherently stupid about that, either. It’s only stupid if the character fails to use his or her known abilities in simple and obvious ways.
The hostages had all been filed out before Noah entered the bank, as he was exchanged for their safety. Sylar came in after that point, so there were no hostages to power Noxx. He was limited to whatever fear was present in the other badasses in that fight (and presumably, there wasn’t too much by that point). It wouldn’t surprise me that his power would be somewhat weakened. Plus, it looked like Future Sylar didn’t want to use his TK in the fight, which was why he was getting his ass handed to him. He was trying not to rely on his powers, while at the bank incident he was all too willing to throw them around like crazy.
Character ability inconsistencies aside, the writers should stay away from time travel plots if they don’t have the sense to write them in any logical manner.
Future Peter comes from a time in which, because of Nathan’s revelation, supers are hunted and experimented on.
So Future Peter goes back in time and shoots Nathan, preventing that revelation.
Somehow, that translates into another threat in which a drug is created that allows everyone to have super powers.
Eventually, Future Peter takes Present Peter back to the future and we see a world populated by supers.
Now, clearly, this is not the same Future that Future Peter left, right? But Future Peter knows how it came about, somehow? He knows about the formula and so on? How, exactly?
And Future Peter is still a fugitive, still being chased by Claire … why? He’s super in a super world. Why would he ever have become a fugitive in the first place?
And if he is a fugitive, why is Sylar so casual about his visit?
It’s nearly impossible to write time travel plots in a logical manner. Everyone will sit and pick it apart because they would have done it differently. Now, if you said “write them (time travel plots) in any entertaining manner”, that would be a different story.
I must agree about using the powers. Hiro and Micah seem to be the only ones who grew up on comic books; thus I would expect them to have a better handle on how they can twist their powers. The others simply react.
I will agree that Peter conveniently forgetting some powers (Sylar too) can be annoying.
Hiro: I’m pretty sure they showed that he doesn’t “stop” time, just slows it considerably, at the beginning of the season. I don’t recall speed-chick trumping his power totally - she could only move at normal speed. I do remember her cold-cocking him, releasing his hold on time.
I disagree. I don’t consider myself particularly good at spotting plot flaws, but this is the laziest time travel plot I have ever seen.
Present Peter: It looks the same.
Future Peter: Wait, watch!
<businessmen fly away>
Future Peter: Now everyone has powers.
Present Peter: Wait, how did you know? I thought you went back in time to kill Nathan so he wouldn’t tell anyone about his powers, because in the future people with powers were hunted!
Future Peter: Uh … well, I … butterfly effect or something. Anyway, you’ve gotta go get Sylar’s power so you can fix everything.
Present Peter: Why? Why not just ask him to fix it? Or go back in time and ask … wait, why don’t I already have Sylar’s power? I’ve been in physical contact with the guy!
<bad guys arrive and shoot future peter>
Future Peter: Ack!
Present Peter: Wait, why did you just shoot him?
Future Claire: He’s an evil terrorist.
Present Peter: No, he was a terrorist in his **own **future, but everything’s changed now!
Future Claire: Shut up.
Future Sylar: Hey, Pete! If I’d known you were coming, I’d have made extra!
Present Peter: Wait, don’t you think I’m a terrorist?
Future Sylar: Shut up, dude, we have to do the waffles scene for the ‘wacky Sylar’ commercial!
Present Peter: This makes no sense! Oh, and I need your power.
Future Sylar: You don’t want my power, and I won’t give it to you.
Present Peter: Yes I do, and why would you need to give it to me? I just absorb powers passively!
Future Sylar: No, my power is different.
Present Peter: How do you know?
Future Sylar: It’s in the script!
Present Peter: Here, why don’t you paint a future-picture, that oughta sort things out.
<Future Claire & Co. arrive>
Future Claire: Now I’ve got you!
Present Peter: But you already got future-me!
Future Claire: Yeah, and now I’ve got past-you, too!
Present Peter: Wait, how did you get here so fast?
Future Claire: None of your business. I’m going to kill you!
Present Peter: But, if you kill me, I will never have become the man you hate, and you will never have captured future-me. And I wouldn’t even be here for you to kill!
Future Claire: I hate you for what you did to me.
Present Peter: Well, what did I do to make you hate me?
Future Claire: Sylar lives in my house!
Present Peter: How is that my fault? And anyway, if you knew where he lived, why didn’t you come after him?
Future Claire: Shut up.
Future Claire: Now that you are powerless, I’m going to cut you up with a scalpel to show how evil I’ve become.
Present Peter: How did I get captured, anyway?
Future Claire: I healed through the nuclear blast and brought you in.
Present Peter: But … I healed, too. Why did I come in?
Future Claire: Shut up.
I don’t believe we have reason to believe he has stayed in the past constantly through the episodes since he shot Nathan.
Secondly, I think a power has to be in use around Peter for him to absorb it. That would explain why he doesn’t have Sylar’s ice powers and hearing, but he picked up the TK. But that’s just a theory I’m playing with, and I’m not going back through 2 seasons (again) just to break my theory.
Still don’t think logic and time travel go together.
Agreed. I liked your summary, too - that’s about what I got out of the show. There are so many plots they could have that would be interesting and cool without getting crazy and muddled with time travel. We have one show mucking around with time travel (and botching it) already (Sarah Connor Chronicles) - can we just call a moratorium on time travel in sci fi shows for the sake of my sanity?
No! I need my eye-candy and brain bubble-gum!
The rest of you get your American Idols, and celebrity dance off shows; I get Heroes & Sarah Connor. 
Not only do we not have every moment of Future Peter’s time accounted for, making it relatively easy for him to jaunt back and forth to the future, but he also has at least two powers that let him see the future – Isaac’s and Angela’s. Figuring out how the future turns out isn’t really a problem for him.
Additionally, Heroes is apparently operating under a time-travel trope where the timeline has some inertia to changes. Even though events have changed leading up to a future point, some (many) things remain constant. Thus, Future Peter’s scar in season 1 and now season 3 – even though the sequence of events that would have led to him gaining that scar were stopped in season 1, he’s still got the scar. Also, Claire is still bad/angsty/poor dye jobbed both before and after the change of Nathan being prevented from revealing his powers. And, again, “Nathan” was president back in season 1 future, and now Nathan is present in the season 3 futures.
Future Peter alluded to this being the case when he was explaining why Present Peter had to be the one to fix things – it is just that, instead of using butterfly effect technobabble, they really would have been better off describing it as “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff”. Perhaps having something go ding! would not be amiss.
Agreed. If they would just do something that let me know that the writers, at least, understood that there appear to be serious logical gaps, I’d be somewhat mollified.
From a psychological standpoint I don’t think it’s totally out of line that the “hunger” goes along with Sylar’s power. If you had the ability to understand anything, wouldn’t you want to learn everything? Wouldn’t you be curious? I think a lot of people are already like that (sans super-power) – if they understand a little about a topic, they really really want to keep reading/experimenting/whatever to learn more. It sort of feeds on itself.
I don’t think Peter intended to crack Nathan open. I think he started mind-reading, got a little bit of information, his curiosity kicked in, which made his Sylar-intuition kick in, and he just got caught up in wanting to understand. It’s like reading a really compelling book – you keep turning pages because you get so caught up in what’s coming next.
They explained this within the scene.
Daphne: Are you a speedster too?
Hiro: I stop time!
Daphne: Not if we’re having this conversation you don’t.
…more chatter, and then she knocks him out, before speeding away. The papers she blew around behind her are all falling to the ground right before she leaves.
So presumably, Hiro doesn’t completely stop time, just slows it down a hell of a lot. Both in Japan and in Paris he has to unfreeze time before she can speed away.
I don’t remember if they showed this or not, but I don’t recall the Haitian being able to stop passive powers like healing, just ones that required a conscious choice to use. The whole future Peter being killed really bugged me. We see chest wounds, but we’ve already seen healers whose bodies push the bullets out as they heal, so that shouldn’t have killed him, or even done much more than knock him down. A shot to the brain would, per Angela Petrelli and what we’ve seen when Claire and Peter died before, but we don’t see a head wound.
I have a feeling they won’t explain this later, either, because it belongs to a future timeline that current Peter is now going to wipe out.
If I were seriously wounded, I might slow down considerably too. I figure she was able to get almost to the edge of the blast area before it caught up to her, at which point her back got fried. Which presumably hurt a lot, and throw in nausea/exhaustion from blood loss and radiation sickness. So she’s not really up to running anymore, and limps along to cover 2500+ miles in 20 minutes instead of 5.
Okay, I’ve always had a problem with the idea of that “move fast enough so that you seem to stop time” as a desireable super power.
As in, suppose it took thirty steps to cross that room back in Japan. Let’s say a normal running speed is three steps/second. Therefore when a normal person runs across the room, they experience ten seconds of exertion, left-right-left-right.
Now, SpeedyGirl might cross the room so fast we cannot even see her, but from her POV it requires exactly the same thirty steps/10 seconds of exertion, yes? Because clearly enough SpeedyGirl experiences time passing normally – otherwise she couldn’t have held a conversation with Hiro while speeded up.
Which means she supposedly experienced, what, months(?) of time passing while she left-right-lefted it across the entire fraxxing continent! While conveniently only dying when she reaches her doo. Even if her gift includes infinite stamina and no need to eat/drink, can you imagine the crushing boredom of running that long???
If I got stuck with that as my power, I’d only use it for little bursts. You know, speed up long enough to grab the McGuffin and run out of sight of whoever I took it from, then hail a taxi or whatever.
And I damn sure would hop airplanes rather than run thousands of miles. 
The thing that bothered me most about this episode was that Molly (is that the little girl’s name) seemed to be her present age 4 years into the future - shouldn’t they have at least got a different actress for the part of future Molly? Stupid.