Heroes Volume Three, Chapter Twelve: Our Father

Arthur calls Sylar to nag him into completing his mission to capture Claire. Sylar, however, is in the middle of dumping lighter fluid on Elle’s corpse, and thus is in no mood for a guilt trip from his fake dad. While Elle goes up in flames, Sylar looks sort of wistful and melancholy about murdering his girlfriend, but it’s hard to be certain what’s in his head these days; it’s equally possible he’s just thinking about how he’d really like a slice of pie. Sylar then targets some poor office drone named Sue, who has the ability to act as a human lie detector, and lops off the top of her head. He seems positively orgasmic about this. Just for laughs, he gleefully murders a bunch of her coworkers, too. Wow, that’s a really evil thing to do. Nothing nice about that. It seems pretty clear he’s evil again. Evil, evil, evil. At least until next episode.

Nathan drops by Arthur’s office and tells him he’s decided to take over Pinehearst. Arthur gets a good chuckle at this, but agrees to hand over his company to his upstart son. Later, Flint and Knox skulk about in the background whilst Tracy and Nathan squabble about lies and duplicity, etcetera. Flint and Knox have zero lines in this episode, but it seems important to report that Flint has fully recovered from the vicious, crippling beating he received at the hands of a fine-boned geneticist last week. Tracy assembles a group of fifty Marines, who will be the first recipients of powers once the formula is perfected. In a throwaway line, Tracy mentions that, instead of the usual Russian roulette approach to distributing powers, the formula has now been refined enough to give specific powers to specific individuals. Wait--so Mohinder finally does something useful and proactive after too many episodes of dithering to count, and it happens offscreen?

Sixteen years in the past, on the balcony of the Deveaux building, Hiro and Claire watch Kaito Nakamura give baby Claire to Noah Bennet. Claire tells Hiro she recognizes him from the stories Peter has told her. Hiro, who is still stuck with the brain of a ten-year-old, doesn’t understand what she’s babbling on about and cheerfully delivers the only phrase he know in English: “Where is the train station? I must use the toilet. More waffles please!” Oh, Hiro. You’re a darling, but perhaps a 10% reduction in overall zaniness would not be remiss.

Inside the Deveaux apartment, Hiro’s beautiful mother (Tamlyn Tomita! Ah, fond memories of The Karate Kid 2) breathes life into a random dead dove. Despite having a healing ability, she’s dying of a glamorous mystery illness. Healing abilities: not as handy as you’d think. Just ask Adam Monroe. Or Linderman. Hiro’s mom tells Kaito they must make arrangements for her to pass along her ability--i.e. the all-important catalyst--to someone else before she dies. She wants to give it to young Hiro, whereas Kaito has already decided baby Claire will be the recipient.

Eavesdropping Claire decides she must prevent herself from receiving the catalyst. She scampers off to her parents’ old apartment, where she ingratiates herself to Sandra by helping her with the new baby. Bennet comes home and immediately becomes paranoid and irate about Sandra letting tiny blonde teenagers into their home. Bennet bosses Sandra around and grills Claire and pretty much behaves like an irrational dickwad. And how exactly did it take Sandra sixteen years to figure out her husband wasn’t really a paper salesman? Claire gives him a pep talk about being a good father and convinces him not to let the Company do anything to baby Claire. While she’s at it, she puts the idea of the vile “Claire-bear” nickname in Bennet’s head. Gosh, thanks, Claire.

Hiro visits his mother, who recognizes him as the grown-up version of her son. He asks her to heal his scrambled brain and restore his missing memories. She kisses him and gives him his marbles back, then, for good measure, passes on her ability to him. Having made Hiro the catalyst, she dies.

Claire rejoins Hiro on the balcony. Arthur teleports in and joins them (Arthur can travel through time, too? Is there anything he can’t do?). Arthur sucks out Hiro’s brand-new healing ability and chucks him off the balcony. Before teleporting Claire back to the present, Arthur gives her a message to deliver to Angela: “I won.” Because there is no bleak situation that Hiro can’t make entirely absurd and farcical, he lands on a flagpole, where he dangles, helpless.

The search for Isaac’s sketchbook takes Daphne, Matt, and Ando to Manhattan, where, after a series of quasi-zany adventures, they finally track it down. The sketchbook shows Hiro lost in the past, dangling from that blasted flagpole. Ando becomes determined to use the formula to give himself superpowers to travel back in time and rescue him. This seems improbable, and indeed vaguely preposterous, but the idea seems to make Ando happy.

But here’s what we’ve really been wondering this whole time: Where’s Mohinder? What’s he up to? It turns out he’s been doing what he does best: posing in a lab coat while frowning prettily at beakers of brightly colored liquids. Arthur arrives at the laboratory and adds the precious catalyst to Mohinder’s formula (he does this by waving his hands over a basin and shooting off lots of glowy lights, which makes as much scientific sense as anything else on this show). Mohinder injects the first Marine test subject with the newly-completed formula. When his powers kick in, the Marine tosses a chair through the glass barrier of his protective cell with enough force to embed it into the far wall.

Angela sends Peter and the Haitian on a mission to kill Arthur. Angela, I admire your moxie, but ordering your powerless son to kill your super-powered husband is kind of tacky. Peter and the Haitian mind-whammy their way through Pinehearst until they reach Arthur’s office. The Haitian neutralizes Arthur’s powers while Peter prepares to shoot his dad in the head.

Sylar strolls in at the last second and stops the bullet. He uses his new lie-detector power to confirm that this whole business about being Arthur’s son was indeed all an elaborate charade, then kills Arthur himself. While Peter stands around and looks flabbergasted by this turn of events, Sylar saunters off.

Huh. I guess we can add Arthur to the growing list of dead immortals.

There’s only one episode left in Volume Three, and I have to say, apart from a certain sloppiness and the occasional glitch (pie-baking Elle springs immediately to mind), I’ve been pretty happy with the season thus far. Provided Mohinder loses the icky crud and becomes dewy and beautiful again next week, I have no problem with chalking this one up in the win column.