Heroes: Don’t Look Back

Peter's drawing

So, as I said in my latest Tellyman post, I am going to try my hand at standalone posts of Heroes much like Ed does for 24 and Lost. Since there is a lot more thinking going on for all three of these shows, it makes sense to do something like this. My hope is you guys will want to engage in conversation about your thoughts about each show as well. If not, then this will just be my thoughts and we’ll see how right or wrong I am. Fair warning though, I don’t read message boards about shows, so if you do, please cop to it when you post your comments… or not. I’m not your English professor…

I blurbed about the pilot episode in Tellyman: Week Two and that’s about all that was really necessary. We mostly meet the main characters and get a sense for what they might be able to do, but there’s not a lot to uncover there yet. The only thing that really gets you going is whether you believe Claire’s daddy is good or evil. Well, this second episode has me believing he is more on the side of the angels, and he is probably a Fed, but that doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy.

The other little thing I picked up on in the pilot was that Niki referenced wanting someone named Nathan to think that she had money. Nathan Petrelli is the obvious choice here, so did they meet on a trip he took to Vegas? It is already tough to tell if Niki is going to turn out to be a hero or a villain and I think Nathan may be in the same boat (as Ed also suggests). Of course, it is a harder thing with Niki because she seems to be a good person, but her *alter-ego* is obviously a bit more hard-nosed, quasi-evil. I’m still not positive what her power actually is; what do you think?

I believe that the girl that *saves* Mohinder is a plant. She’s quickly gained his trust by scaring off the dude crawling about Suresh’s apartment. Think about it, if the guy, and whatever organization he’s with, are at all good, they have someone watching for Mohinder to come home and warn him to get out. They wanted him to catch this guy in the act. Now they have someone close to him and he’s just found something with which to track down our Heroes.

Segue way from that to the symbol that pops up in four places, that I counted, in this episode. Looks to be some kind of genetic symbol for the Heroes. The code scrolling by on Mohinder’s laptop had it as a pattern. Peter drew it in the upper right corner of his drawing of he and his brother on the roof, which is prophetic of an event that has yet to happen (more on Peter in a minute). Matt is looking at it in the pool outside the murder scene house, probably unknowingly, as it is formed by floating foam doodle thingies. The last place it shows is in Isaac’s loft when Hiro shows up looking for him. Issac has painted it many times and two show in the shot below.

Hiro and Isaac's paintings of the symbol

The third big thing, at least to me, that happened in this episode is we are introduced to who or what Sylar is. It would seem he is in fact Papa Suresh’s Patient Zero and also some kind of super powered serial killer. My take on him is that he can take the powers of those he kills by doing something with their brains. It would appear he froze the little girl’s father and took his brain while also pinning up her mother on a wall with the contents of their silverware drawer. My guess is he did this with telekinesis, so that’s two different powers off the bat. Agree?

Peter Petrelli is still a wildcard to me. He thinks his power is to fly, but I think he’s capable or more than that. It’s possible he can mirror the powers of others he comes into contact with or is simply around. He couldn’t fly until he came in contact with his brother. He also drew that stick figure drawing before that scene played out and he did come into contact with Isaac in the pilot episode. He also told his mother he knew/felt something happened to Nathan at the time of some accident in the past, so was that some other power, like empathy that he picked up from someone else? I think we still don’t quite know what is up with him and he could turn out to be the opposite number to Sylar.

Finally, we find out that Hiro bent space-time and actually went a month into the future to when the explosion that Issac foretold would happen. He now knows the date it happens, so when has he landed now back in Japan and can he do anything about it? This week’s mini-comic has him arriving home to Hiroshima where he visits a memorial for the WWII bombing victims and we find he was named for the city. We also find that he is a comics blasphemer for tearing apart an Action Comics #1 to make a paper crane to leave there as tribute.

I guess he can always go back to the past and pick up a few mint copies fresh off the press to replace it…