Mmmmmmmmm. Hummus with brains.
It could work if he has a legume allergy.
What?
Whoah. Champions RPG flashback to when the Oxygen elemental got tossed into the Fire Guy. Trippy.
So, any of the “writing sucks” haters not on board for next season? Personally, I think the writing has been pretty good (sans one-“k” Niki), so I’ve got no read on how annoying this might’ve been (as opposed to, say BSG, where the bad writing seemed to hit me on the head with an anvil).
edit:
Well, he pretty much screwed up the Fire Guy: “You make fire? No, I don’t think so – inert atmosphere FTW!”
Are you calling me a “hater” because I was dissapointed with one episode?
Anyway, no, I’m sticking around, because I’ve mostly enjoyed the show.
You know, that was a perfectly good iajitsu strike Hiro did. Were you expecting swords clashing? That’s not how samurai duel. For one thing, you can chip the hell out of the blade that way.
Actually, his blade did not start out sheathed, and he was wielding the nagamaki, anyway, so it wasn’t any kind of iaijutsu strike at all. Perfectly good battōjutsu strike, though.
This is actually the one and only thing that bothers me about this series. There are really only two interesting women with super-powers: Claire and Nikki.
(Molly too, but she was introduced only recently and hasn’t been built up as a character yet, also Candace is more just an evil sidekick, at least for now.)
The problem with Claire and Nikki is that they go along with the female stereotype of wanting everything to return to normal. They look out for their own families and that’s it. I understand that by this point it’s built into their characters and it would be weird for them to go all “save-the-world” on us, but it’s disappointing to not have at least one girl or woman hero who intrinsically wants to save innocent people and change the fate of the world. Both Hiro and Peter demonstrate true heroic characters (even Ando does, in his own way) and I wish we could see some of that heroic character come out in a woman.
Anyway, I loved the finale and I’m really looking forward to seeing the new bad guy. Sylar used to scare me and I’m hoping the new bad-guy will too :).
I can see all the “the big fight was a let down” comments but I try to look at it this way. Most of these people were all still new to this having powers business and some were completely unaware of Sylar or the impending explosion. So they end up all together looking at one another and thinking “what the hell is going on?”. Peter and Sylar try to square off. The cop tries to shoot Sylar whom he knows is the bad guy and gets wounded in the process. Niki knows the cop is a good guy so deduces that Sylar is the bad guy and decides to lend Peter a hand. Peter says “okay, I can handle it now” and Niki goes back to her family having no idea how powerful or dangerous Sylar could be.
Hiro shows up, Sylar was a little off guard already from having taken a beating and he expects Hiro to be as ineffectual as he has been in the past. He was also trying to guard against Peter and all the other heroes he knew were there. He’s probably also getting a little greedy and when he senses other heroes he may be getting ahead of himself thinking about getting their powers. He also thinks he’s invincible. His focus was off this time and Hiro’s wasn’t. He gets stabbed, realized he slipped up big time but recovers enough to get Hiro out of there before he passes out.
In the meantime Peter is in the presence of at least four new heroes and their powers, we already know that he has problems when absorbing too many powers, so his focus isn’t the best either. He’s trying to deal with these new powers coming at him, Sylar’s multiple powers that he may also be absorbing, and when he stresses he starts to go nuclear - the same problem that Ted had with his powers. He’s focused on trying to stop that and can’t access any of the other powers, so he’s pretty much helpless now.
As for everyone else, they are either injured or not-superpowered or just unsure of what is going on and if they should try to do anything (Niki). Actually, despite all of the unrealistic aspects of the superpowers, this scenario seems much more realistic in that people don’t always know what the hell to do in a crazy situation. It seems like another reminder that these people are still imperfect humans and stuff doesn’t always go as planned or in spectacular blockbuster style.
Remember that some of the most endearing moments we had with the Heroes were when we were reminded that they were just human; Hiro’s wide-eyed wonder at almost everything, Claire’s “He can fly? Cool!”.
Fan-wanking or no, that’s my take and I’m sticking to it.
The scene certainly could’ve used some better editing, though- it looked as though Hiro’s strike was telegraphed two weeks earlier, and that Sylar just stood there waiting for it.
Hiro should’ve stopped time for his attack- that would’ve been much cooler. Hiro concentrates, vanishes… and then reappears, his sword thrust all the way through Sylar.
Gonna call you on that one -
Nathan - already had the power of flight from him.
Claire - already had power from
Parkman - also already had power from
(new) Niki - new, should’ve absorbed the power from, and maybe her “rage” (assuming that was the trigger for her power, she seemed pretty calm beating old sylar down with a parking meter) may have been a bigger trigger, if super strength, ‘should’ve’ been helpful.
(new) DL - pretty sure he wasn’t close enough to actually absorb the powers from.
(new) Molly - same as DL - super locator might confuse you, but shouldnt thow a short circuit
(new) Micah - same as DL - nothing electronic to deal with.
Now, Sylar had ‘alot’ of powers to give, but doesn’t seem to have had any ‘new’ powers since there last encounter, atleast not ones that Peter hadn’t already been exposed to. (Isaac’s and Ted’s that we know of).
It’s Peter’s line to Nathan that is the clue:
But, in the end, the Hero’s all failed… the title of the episode was:
How to stop an exploding man.
They didn’t stop anything - they just moved him away… up up and away, so that all the radioactive fallout can rain down upon a greater area.
(While a bit cliched this episode was, overall I enjoyed it, and can’t wait for season 2)
It’s perfectly fair that things didn’t go that particular way I wanted; that was always a long-shot, I understand. But it was various other things about the series, and the final episode, which have made me feel little was planned out in advance.
I think Claire intrinsically wanted to change the fate of the world, which is why she kept pleading with Nathan to change the fate of the world.
That’s pretty much what I was trying to say up-thread a piece. It would have been interesting had Peter’s power overload been manifested a bit more strongly visually, but the powers he would’ve ben exposed to at the moment (phasing, technopathy, Molly’s “finding” power, plus any of Sylar’s like super-hearing) aren’t ones that lend themselves to an easy visual.
Most of my annoyances have already been addressed, but man was that disappointing. Blarg!
Sloppy, sloppy writing all around. Some of the fanwanks work to alleviate the problems, but we shouldn’t need them. It should be clear (or at least deducible) from what’s shown. If Peter can only use one power at a time, TELL US. If Peter’s losing control of his powers because Sylar’s there (which never happened the previous times they met) SHOW US! If all Hiro had to do was believe he could stab Sylar, what was the nonsense about cutting his own heart out?
A few more annoyances that I don’t recall seeing above:
why did Niki even get involved in the Peter/Sylar showdown? As far as I remember, she’s never met either of them before. How did she know who to help?
Every main character except Hiro, Peter, Nathan and Ando were standing right there with Sylar on the ground, and as mentioned above, no one made sure he was dead, but worse than that, no one even noticed as he slithered/was dragged into the sewer? (I don’t have a big problem with Sylar coming back, especially since he deserves a better death than being skewered with no justification, but at least do it without everyone who wants him dead watching!)
Noah (yay! the no first name shtick was getting old) is dead set on protecting Claire, even to the point of almost shooting Molly for it. (wish he did, man she’s annoying). But what about his wife and son? Does he even care what happened to them? Last he knew the Organization replaced his wife with Candace and captured him. Where’d they go?
Where exactly is the divergence from the future Hiro and Ando saw? In that future, Sylar killed Candace and Nathan before Peter blew up. He showed no desire or opportunity to kill Candace here, and got skewered before Nathan showed up. Nothing Hiro saw in the future helped him kill Sylar, it was all Papa Sulu’s pep talk apparently. So why didn’t Future Hiro get a similar pep talk?
And if your plan is to have the balls to kill off characters and rotate in new ones, DO IT! There’s no reason for DL and Parkman to be alive after being shot. none. Let them die heroically and be done with, not limp around for an hour bleeding like a stuck pig.
I’m not a writer, but I think I could’ve written it better, and that says a lot.
I still think it was a big mistake to let Peter keep powers without the others around. It would’ve made gathering the heroes around for the final showdown necessary, rather than just convenient. And would’ve made Nathan’s “sacrifice” make more sense if Peter needed him near to fly. (Then why would Peter blow up without Ted or Sylar near? I don’t know, maybe Sylar would’ve found a way to force a chain reaction between them or something…)
I realize this would mess up a few cool scenes if Peter didn’t have invisibility and invulnerability, but it’s the whole Justice League problem. Why do you need the Flash with Superman around? Why do you need a mind reader, an invulnerable cheerleader, a superstrong mom, a flyer, a teleporter, etc when you have a nurse that does it all?
They were going somewhere with the whole Empathy thing, but what feelings did Peter have for Ted? none… so how could he blow up?
Hiro’s lesson wasn’t for Hiro, it was for us and Peter and Nathan. We were just shown it through Hiro. Nathan had to be willing to sacrifice himself and his brother had to be willing to let him.
As noted previously, she saw Sylar TK bullets into Parkman. She knows Parkman’s a good guy and so realizes Sylar’s a bad guy.
They were a bit distracted what with watching two people blowing up in the sky and dealing with two critically wounded friends and all.
Presumably he’ll worry about that in season 2.
When was this established? I don’t recall from the future episode that the timeframe of Candace or Nathan’s deaths were established. The point of divergence was Peter’s saving Claire, since it was having Claire’s power that prevented Future Hiro from killing Sylar.
He presumably did, since he stabbed Future Sylar. Future Sylar had claimed Claire’s powers, though, and regenerated.
Peter doesn’t need to have warm and fuzzy feelings about the person to absorb or use the power. Claude used that as a trigger to teach him to access Claire’s power but that doesn’t mean Peter has to like someone to use (or lose control of) their powers.
Rasserfrazzer. You’re right. What I meant was that the kind of strike it was, with the swift charge and thrust, was exactly how he would have been taught. (I don’t know battojutsu at all. It looked like iaijutsu, so I called it that. My apologies.)
Ooh, I can get this one: Hiro didn’t have to believe he could stab Sylar – Sulu wasn’t here as Jiminy Cricket. Hiro had to not be afraid to face Sylar. When he’d faced Sylar and failed he was afraid – that he would die, that Ando would die.
Basically the dragon story said that Kensei had to be willing to give up everything he cared about – his “heart” – to save what he cared about (Kensei’s wife). Hiro had to learn to do the same.
The divergence was that Hiro and Ando saw that future. The Hiro-in-the-future did not expect them to be there, and so had never had that experience himself. Hence by returning to the present that timeline had been changed – because now Hiro and Ando had experienced something that they had not in the 5YL timeline.
Well, she met Parkman and Noah before, and from the looks of things they were injured while trying to stop one of the 2 in the plaza. Since only one of those 2 was clearly in control of the battle, it should have been easy to deduce who it was.
Noah Bennet (I guess he isn’t ambiguously evil anymore) can just ask Molly where his wife and son are.
Now who’s assuming facts not in evidence? I don’t have it in front of me, but I could have sworn that time stopped as Sylar’s mom was falling toward the ground. I don’t think she continued her fall when Sylar became active and stopped the sword, thus leading me to beleive that it was Sylar overcoming his power, and not Hiro’s failure. The only other person we have ever seen overcome the time-stop power was Peter Petrelli who did it, I assume, by the nature of Absorbing Hiro’s power when he came near.