I was sitting with a friend of mine who’s major is Japanese Studies, and he said Hiro was saying, “Shit.”
Spec based on spoiler
He looks like an elemental. Interesting because I had been thinking that no one we’ve seen so far has displayed elemental powers, able to control earth, water, fire or wind.
Niki was never portrayed as a “save the world” type hero. She isn’t going to be the one to pull a Hiro - she’s just going to do enough to save her family and no more than that. Hiro is the one who will do whatever it takes, Peter to a lesser extent.
When did Sylar get superspeed? I know he can stop gunshots if he knows they are coming, but by the time he hears the shot and processes it, the bullets are imbedded in his sternum. But that’s just me taking my heroes too seriously - I enjoyed the ride.
Claire’s bio-mom controls fire.
Does anyone know if there’s going to be a dead-tree version of the comic books NBC has been putting on its website? I tried reading them online, but the interface was just too kludgey for my taste.
Well, I think he always had it… you ever notice how he just kind of appears next to people when they aren’t looking? Like at the homecoming: when Claire and Peter are running up the bleacher/stair things, Sylar is in the doorway. Peter turns to Claire and tells her to run, and when he glances back Sylar is on top of him. They never showed him actually gaining Super Speed, but it seems like he can use it in quick bursts. By the same token we never actually see him gaining his ice powers, but we know he has them from his attack on Molly Walker’s family.
Interesting point about elemental powers! Although Sylar comes close with his ability to freeze stuff. Originally the speculation was that Uluru was the result of either Peter or Sylar destabilizing from all the powers they’d absorbed, becoming Uluru in the process.
Did anyone else get anticipatory (is that even a word?) chills up their spine when Molly explained about the bad guy who could see her?
Well I’ve yet to lodge any complaints against the series, IIRC, except for the pseudo-science babble from Mohinder about evolution that was like nails on a chalk board, but man, this episode was really dissapointing. All of that build up for a lame, anti-climatic ending.
We had two major mysteries coming into the final episode: Who explodes, how, and why? And given that Sylar had shown the ability to easily defeat all of the heroes at previous encounters, how would they figure out how to take him down? The answer to both of those questions were essentially cop outs.
Okay, so they all end up in the same place, conveniently, at the same time. Not a big deal. Maybe there was a good explanation for this, but I can’t remember why Sylar was there.
So anyway, Sylar starts to control the rest of them - toy with them even - as its been shown he’s been able to do in the past. How a/the hero/s would find a way to defeat Sylar was a big concern and plot point going up to this point.
With the sub-plot about Hiro being unable to kill Sylar (Sylar even somehow stopped his time-travel power and caught his sword), and also about remembering the story about Kensei and his self-sacrifice, I was expecting Hiro to either defeat Sylar in some great act of self-sacrifice, or at least some clever way to defeat Sylar.
Instead, what did we get? “Oh, hey, I’m going to try to stab you again, same as last time, even though it didn’t work” and this time Sylar decided, apparently, to just let it happen. Yeah, that’s the satisfying, epic battle to defeat Sylar we’ve all been hoping for.
So, Sylar is taken care of, so Peter decides “Oh hey guys, I’m glad we have that taken care of, because my hands have decided to conveniently start glowing for no apparent reason except for the necesity of the plot”. He wasn’t wounded, Sylar was taken care of by that point IIRC so he wasn’t particularly distressed. His hands just started glowing at the point where the plot needed it. There seemed to be no logical reason for it.
It feels like the episode was written in an hour, or something, and they clumsily tried to tie up loose ends because they didn’t have time to come up with a real conclusion. For a show I’ve liked very much, I was extremely dissapointed with it.
If Sylar really had superspeed, I think they would have shown it in some way. His appearances are more akin to the horror movie staple where the bad guy always appears behind you, or on the other side of the door, etc. Sure, there’s no way that should happen, but just enjoy the ride.
Anyway, that’s my not-so-humble opinion. YMMV and all that.
I disagree with just about everything in your post, but I’ll address this.
Sylar paints the future. He knew where he needed to be to confront Peter, which he wanted to do. Even if the red stairs weren’t enough, the painting said (Jack ‘King’) “Kirby Plaza”
I completely forgot about Claire’s bio-mom. I was trying to run through them all in my head and knew I had to be missing somebody. I considered Sylar’s freezing ability to be somewhat elemental but not on a par with someone who could control earth, for example. If his freezing power were that strong he could have just frozen everyone in Kirby plaza and feasted on brainsicles at his leisure.
By the way, I think Sylar’s super speed was shown early on, when he tried to get to Molly in the FBI facility.
One of the big things about the series which is brought to the forefront even more so in the past few episodes, was the idea of Destiny; the characters are all destined to be there at that time. It feels like a copout because they don’t really go into it as much.
Agreed. That was definitely a bit of a let down, especially after them teasing us with the Future Sylar vs Future Peter fight; I was expecting a lot more out of the big bad Sylar.
Again, this would have benefited from more exposition earlier in the series. although you can piece it together from clues they’ve dropped here and there. Peter has trouble controlling his powers, especially when it comes to receiving a sudden influx of them at once. Given that he was standing next to Sylar (thus absorbing all the powers Sylar had) and every other character was nearby, it overloaded his control. It would have been better if they’d shown all of his powers going haywire, and had him get all of them under control except for Ted’s.
I think that the finale will benefit a lot from the second season; it almost seemed like less of a finale and more of a lead-in to next season, you know?
Assuming facts not in evidence, here. Sylar did not stop Hiro’s time-stop power; Hiro’s time-stop power stopped working. Which it had done before, again and again and again. Sylar then stopped the sword – but that was no surprise, he’s stopped bullets before with his TK.
From the beginning with Ted’s power, we’ve seen that when Ted got worked up and emotional, his power went out of control. Peter is always getting worked up and emotional – that seems to be part of his “empath” schtick.
They’d done a good job this season of setting up foreshadowing for the events in this episode.
I’m actually liking the theory floating around that Sulu was and is Kensei – that he’s got the power of immortality. Which would be cool, and would explain how the businessman is an expert swordsman, and why he mentioned that he’s been waiting for another Nakamura to ascend.
I agree with just about everything in your post.
The epic battle you’ve been hoping for, maybe, but I didn’t need to see a bloated SFX-filled final battle. If I want that I can go rent X3. The battle was a little awkwardly choreographed, but in a way that fits. These people aren’t trained fighters.
I didn’t need a 10 million dollar effects scene for the battle.
As I said, I was looking for something involving Hiro’s favorite story about Kensei. Or some creative solution to empower them against Sylar. Something other than “I’m gonna just try to stab you, only this time it’ll work”. Could you think of a resolution that would be lamer, and less creative, than what actually happened? “Hiro shows up and stabs him, and Sylar doesn’t try to stop it”, seriously, that’s what they’ve been building up to all this time.
Well, I liked it, even though there are annoyances.
As far as the sloppy writing, Tim Kring said in an interview with TV Guide about six months ago that he had a totally different idea for the series before the fans showed a liking for the current characters. He thought the strength of the series would be in getting rid of older heroes and bringing in new ones at a fairly constant rate. I don’t know where the hell he got the idea that the sort of fan who would go for this show would like that idea. So a lot of the last half of the season has been scrambling.
I thought the scene at the end was meant to show that Sylar’s body had been removed, and we just saw his blood running down the drain. The cockroach falling down the sewer after the blood was meant to be the final nail in the coffin.
I’d say Nathan is dead. Peter is not, but will live with the guilt of having killed his brother. And be that much more annoying.
Nikki’s line to Micah, “It’s just me” or something to that effect, was meant to convey that her love for her son eneabled her to finally merge her two personalities. She is now the loving Nikki but knows she has Jessica’s strength all the time now.
Elementals don’t make sense. The very idea of them is based on a badly flawed model of the structure of the world. A real elemental would have control of an element as we understand them now: “You’ll never get away with this! I’ll use my absolute power over bismuth to stop you!”
And watch out when the Sodium elemental and the Chlorine elemental meet!
Brian
Can someone please explain this to me as the eclipse has always confused me as to it’s meaning/purpose and I must have missed something from last night’s episode. Thanks.
No purpose, really, other than to look cool. Kring said that he just thought it was a neat visual- it doesn’t have anything to do with the story other than as a bookend.
They attack Sylar with hummus.
Well, the elemental is part of an ancient mythos, the elements were basically forces of nature. We’re not talking Periodic Table of the Elementals. I mean how powerful could a Helium elemental be?* I can make you float and talk in a squeaky high voice!* Noooo!.