Heroes Volume Three, Chapter Nine: It's Coming

The buzzword for this episode: eclipse! It opens with a big, portentous Mohinderlogue about how eclipses are way cool. Mohinder is a little too impressed with eclipses.

In Africa, Arthur puts the whammy on Hiro (while Usutu’s decapitated head lies nearby--nice touch!), but gets distracted by one of Usutu’s prophetic paintings of an eclipse (buzzword!) before he can finish him off. Ando tries to get Hiro to teleport them to safety, but Hiro’s brain has been turned to pudding and he now thinks he’s ten years old. Ando guides him through the teleportation process, and they end up in a bowling alley/waffle-and-chicken restaurant in Tokyo. Let the wacky hijinks ensue!

Arthur teleports back to Pinehearst (hey, Arthur can teleport?), where Sylar glowers and broods. Arthur knows Sylar saved Peter from the fall out the window. This evidence of Sylar’s soft, mushy side is disappointing, though I take heart from the knowledge he was the one who defenestrated Peter in the first place. Arthur believes this is proof Sylar has The Power of Empathy and thus doesn’t need to chop open heads and muck around in brains to gain more abilities. To test this, he locks Sylar in a room with a chained-up Elle, whose powers are still malfunctioning and who is seriously peeved at Sylar for murdering her father.

Elle blasts Sylar until he disintegrates and regenerates, again and again. Sylar claims he didn’t want to kill her father, but was powerless to stop himself because his abilities force him to commit murder. Sylar sets Elle free from her chains and fixes her malfunctioning ability through, yes, The Power of Empathy. Elle sobs tears of joy, Sylar waxes philosophical about forgiveness and being human, and they nuzzle and giggle while Elle teaches Sylar optimal uses for her electrical powers. While this is a substantial improvement over last week’s wholly nonsensical pie romance, it’s still a little--what’s the word I’m looking for?--barfy.

And then Arthur watches his son get steamy with Elle on hidden camera. This is barfy in a totally different way.

New York: Knox and Flint knock down the door to Peter’s apartment. Claire urges powerless Peter to flee out the fire escape while she distracts them. Which she does by jumping out the window and landing right next to Peter. So, not much of a distraction, actually. Peter and Claire escape into the sewers, with Knox and Flint hot on their heels. Because it worked so well the last time, Claire again tells Peter to escape while she holds them off. Claire trips over her feet and gets captured; Peter causes a gas explosion and saves her.

At the laboratory at Pinehearst, Mohinder links the development of abilities to the occurrences of eclipses. Oh, why not? He’s also decided the power-giving formula needs a catalyst existing in a human host to work properly, though he has no idea who that very, very special human could possibly be. Oh, Mohinder, sweetie, it’s Claire. Of course it’s Claire. Who else could be special enough? Remember “Save the cheerleader, save the world”? Remember super-powered magical heal-anything blood? It’s fortunate the show keeps finding new ways to make Claire special, because otherwise we might start mistaking her for just any other self-absorbed and unpleasant teenager.

Mohinder’s current test subject evolves into a hideous creature, who begs Mohinder to kill him. Which Mohinder does. Mohinder is more random than ever these days. By the way, the scaly crud has begun to creep up his neck, growing ever closer to his beautiful, beautiful face; if that’s not an impetus to start scrambling to fix the formula, I don’t know what is.

In the bowling alley, Ando and a regressed Hiro sit at a table laden with scrumptious waffles. Thumbs up to the prop department: those waffles look like the most awesome waffles in the long and storied history of waffles. Ando fills Hiro in about his superpowers. Hiro, following Ando’s instructions, manages to stop time, then takes the opportunity to play wacky pranks on everyone. It’s worth pointing out that Hiro as a ten-year-old is not noticeably more immature than Hiro as a twenty-eight-year-old.

Hiro teleports Ando and himself to a comic book store, where he discovers the new issue of the 9th Wonders comic book, which details his current madcap escapades. This does sort of beg the question: who’s been drawing 9th Wonders these days? Because there can’t be all that many precognitive artists still running around, seeing as Isaac Mendez and Usutu have both met messy ends. To find out their fate, Hiro and Ando flip to the last page of the comic. It features, yes, an eclipse.

Daphne and Matt wander around the deserted Primatech facility, where a vision of Usutu leads Matt to Angela’s comatose body. While Matt tries to read Angela’s mind, Daphne zips off to rat him out to Arthur. Matt gets inside Angela’s subconscious brain and tries to free her, but a hostile version of Daphne appears in his psychic projection and stabs him.

In the real world, Daphne returns and tries to rouse an unconscious and hemorrhaging Matt. She gets sucked inside his projection. Arthur Petrelli arrives and joins the mayhem, and now Arthur, Matt, Angela, and two Daphnes are all rattling around in Angela’s mind. The real Daphne proclaims her love for Matt, while Angela (somehow) convinces Arthur to release her from her coma. Arthur disappears, Matt and Angela wake up, Matt’s wound magically heals, and Matt and Daphne realize their love for each other. Giddy hugging ensues. Claire and Peter arrive at Primatech and join them.

At Pinehearst, Nathan confronts his presumed-dead father. Arthur goes in for a power-sucking hug, but because Nathan is a whole lot smarter than Peter, he doesn’t fall for it. Arthur feeds him the standard bucket of lies about wanting to use his formula to save the world and how Nathan is his favorite son and his destiny is to lead the nation. Nathan, however, has become a lot less trusting of his parents since the days when Angela could convince him destroying New York was a good idea, so he’s not altogether sold on this.

Nathan tells Tracy about Arthur’s plan: he wants to use the formula to give half the world super-powers. I’m not exactly sure whether this can be categorized as either good or evil so much as just nonsensical. Nathan decides to go to Primatech and get Angela’s opinion on this. After Nathan flies off, Tracy tells Arthur she thinks she can convince Nathan to go along with the plan. Aha! Tracy is evil. Good to know. The show has also just remembered that she’s supposed to be a senatorial aide, so she’s all newly bossy and purposeful. Sylar, Elle, Tracy, Flint, Knox and Arthur assemble in Arthur’s office to wait for the coming eclipse. Interesting to see that Mohinder, who is also at Pinehearst, was apparently not invited to join their little coterie of evil. Granted, I’m Mohindercentric, but if I were Arthur Petrelli, I’d invite Mohinder to sit at my right hand, or possibly on my lap.

Nathan joins Angela and the gang at Primatech. Angela tells Matt, Daphne, Claire, Peter and Nathan about the need to find a Very Special Human to complete the formula, but she has no idea who it could be. It’s Claire, you nitwits! Claire! Claire realizes she’s the only person in the world special enough to be the catalyst and volunteers her services.

So there’s an eclipse looming, and everyone’s more or less roughly divided into two opposing teams, with Hiro and Ando as slightly imbecilic rogue agents. I suppose the Primatech group, despite being led by evil Angela, represents the forces of Good, while the Pinehearst gang is Evil. Next week everyone loses their powers, thanks to the eclipse. Five bucks says Claire, who has spent three seasons feeling very sorry for herself for having super-powers, finds some way to complain about being powerless.