Arthur Petrelli is the leader of the villains. If you didn’t want to be spoiled about that fact before watching tonight’s episode of Heroes, neither did I. But NBC, in an effort to ruin television, ran promos announcing this very fact. I understand that ratings are down and Robert Forster is what passes for a big-name guest star on a show that has never regained the heat it had in the beginning, but revealing a huge spoiler about the entire premise and history of Heroes in a commercial during Knight Rider is truly reprehensible.
Nathan Petrelli has trouble sleeping because he can’t tell the difference between angels and monsters. Maybe that’s because the opposite of angels is actually demons, but Dan Brown must hold the copyright to that title. Nathan still thinks his powers are a gift from God, but Tracy knows that her powers came from Dr. Zimmerman. In the epic battle of science vs. religion, science wins this round.
Nathan gets an even bigger kick in the pants when Angela lets him know his power of flight is was also grown in a test tube. Angela requests their assistance in tracking down the Formula so experiments like the ones done on them will never happen again.
Peter, still frazzled from his future journey where he took Sylar’s power, snaps Sylar’s neck because he can’t accept their fraternal connection. Angela refuses to answer the now insane Peter, he starts slicing open her head to get to the gooey secrets inside. Sylar, now invincible, recovers from a snapped neck and knocks Peter out before he kills their mother. Angela takes care of her newly demented son while her formerly demented son goes out with HRG for some villain-hunting. It’s hard to believe that someone who talks to ghosts is the normal one in the family.
Claire’s two mommies fret over their missing daughter, because she’s out hunting Level 5 villains. Todays’ bad guy can create black holes out of thin air and send objects into a vortex so they’re gone forever. I don’t understand how Black Hole Man isn’t the most powerful person ever, since he can essentially get rid of whatever and whoever he wants. Claire sneaks up on him with a tazer, but he responds by tossing the tazer into a black hole. The villain tells his sob story and Claire learns that maybe not all villains are so bad.
Just then a Mexican standoff ensues when HRG and Sylar bust in to capture Black Hole Man. He thinks Claire set him up with her dad, but Claire is too busy being horrified by Sylar. Black Hole Man causes a distraction with a black hole and flees, leaving Claire to work out her seriously conflicted feelings with the whole situation.
Claire and HRG track the Black Hole Man down, and HRG orders him to create a black hole and suck Sylar in it. Claire, for reasons beyond all logic, is against this. The Black Hole Man, convinced that he’s actually a hero, refuses, and instead he creates a black hole and throws himself into it. There’s a difference between being a martyr and being an idiot, and Black Hole Man falls into the latter category. If I had his power I would rule the world.
Mohinder is still the fly, capturing neighbors and drug dealers and sticking them in his web while he makes false promises to Maya about curing her. This storyline would be boring even if it weren’t a total rip-off of a Jeff Goldblum film. Maya sneaks in and sees the people cocoon’s Mohinder has amassed in his loft, but Mohinder finds her and traps her in his cocoon.
Hiro tries to talk Adam Monroe into helping them track down the Formula, but the man who killed Hiro’s father isn’t very happy about being trapped in a coffin since the end of season 2. When Adam refuses, Hiro stops time and traps him in the coffin again, causing Monroe to call Hiro a “Japanese Nazi.” After accusing Angela of being the villainous mastermind behind the missing Formula, Adam offers to help find the real leader of the villains.
They go to a bar for help, but Adam Monroe tricks Hiro and Ando and escapes, because, as Ando explains, they’re the “worst heroes ever.” Unfortunately for Adam, he’s knocked out and captured by Knox, who has teamed up with Daphne on the order of Linderman.
The burgeoning Evil League of Evil tries to get Hiro to join them, and Hiro thinks he can use this as a chance to find the Formula. Knox has a tough initiation ritual: he wants Hiro to kill Ando. Hiro takes a sword and, regrettably, stabs Ando in the chest. At this point, I urge you to check out BuddyTV’s exclusive preview of next week’s episode if you want to know how this plays out.
With Knox, Adam and Hiro on board, Linderman commands Daphne to get one more member for their group: her future husband Matt Parkman. Daphne agrees, although she figures out Linderman isn’t really there. What she doesn’t know is what Heroes finally reveals in the final minutes: Linderman is a creation of Maury Parkman! That’s right, Matt’s crazy dad is back, making Nathan think he’s talking to God and orchestrating the team of villains.
Meanwhile, Angela has another future dream in which Tracy, Nathan and Peter are all dead at the hands of a mystery man with the apparent ability to paralyze people. The man in Angela’s dream is also the one pulling Maury Parkman’s strings. He’s being kept alive on a respirator, and his name is Arthur Petrelli! If you were shocked, you didn’t watch the previews or read the first paragraph of this recap, because a perfectly awesome twist was totally ruined by the promotion department of NBC.
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
