Heroesville: Heroes, Season 3, Episode 13 – “Dual” (Dec 16)
Poor Hiro’s still stranded on that flagpole, and Mohinder is getting worse. And because nothing works out for him, Daphne snatches the formula before he can, you know, save his own life. And this means Flint and Knox, who are pretty awesome as all-purpose thugs, can start trashing the lab. That’s such great lowlife behavior – they were fundamentally opposed to Arthur Petrelli’s goal, but they went along with it because they got to punch people. And now Arthur’s not even cold and they’re dismantling the operation.
Daphne has a good point about everybody’s powers – people do seem to develop powers that mirror their desires. Matt’s worried what people think, Daphne wanted to walk unencumbered. Heck, remember what Hiro was doing when his powers manifested? He was staring at the clock and trying to make it turn back. You know what? I never picked up on that. Anyway, Ando takes that step and shoots up.
In the past, Hiro manages to drag himself to level ground. Good job, Hiro! He comes up with the great idea of stealing the formula in the past, and putting a stop to all this Pinehearst nonsense. Now, I really thought he would alter the formula so that it was wrong the whole time – thus, Mohinder never had a chance of cracking it, since it was always incorrect. That would have been pretty cool, and it proves that I spend more time thinking about time travel than Hiro does.
Back in Sylar’s Chamber of Horror, he makes Claire a proposition. Kill Angela, and everybody else goes free. Man, you do not want to mess with Sylar’s mommy issues. I really liked his line “I could’ve been a nobody”. Back in Season One, that’s what he was most afraid of. He was desperate to be somebody, and now all he wants is to go back to his life as a humble watchmaker. Sylar has learned a hard lesson about getting what he wanted. I’m sure the dozens of people he murdered along the way will appreciate the irony.
Now it’s time for Bennet to once again cement his position as my favorite character on the show. He lets all the psychos loose to fight Sylar, knowing full well that they are going to get slaughtered. Bennet uses the resources at hand, people. He’s really taking a risk with Doyle the Puppeteer, given how that guy nearly wiped out his family only a few weeks ago. Bennet does not know fear. (By the way, the actor who plays Doyle is David H. Lawrence XVII. Seriously. I didn’t know that we’ve had a civilization for long enough to have a seventeenth generation. David H. Lawrence the First must have been a caveman.)
Back in the lab, Flint is working over Mohinder, and now Peter’s helping trash the lab. Also, Knox takes two seconds to kill that marine who seemed like he was going to be important last week. Hee. And over with Matt and company, Ando’s finally revived, and it turns out he is not a time traveler. He does, however, make red lightning. Hey, we’ve seen that before!
In the slaughterhouse, Meredith comes across Danny Pine’s severed arm. Remember, the guy who turned to metal? Yeah, Sylar ripped that guy’s arm clean off! From the bodies we’re seeing, it doesn’t even look like Sylar’s bothering to take their powers. He’s just slitting throats and ripping limbs. And then it’s Sylar vs. Doyle, and frankly, I’m rooting for Sylar here. That Doyle is really skeevy. Naturally, Sylar takes him out, and then shoots Meredith up with adrenaline. I have to say, that seems dangerous. Sure enough, Sylar locks Bennet up with Meredith and her now uncontrollable flame. And Bennet’s got one bullet.
At Pinehearst, Nate and Knox fight it out. See what’s happening here? Nate is not afraid! If he had any fear, that would power up Knox. Instead, they’re evenly matched. That’s pretty cool. And then, Tracy really makes herself useful for possibly the first time in her career as Niki, Jessica, or Tracy, and turns Knox into an ice cube. Farewell, Knox. You were a pretty cool villain, and you did a good job of wrecking stuff.
So Ando’s red lightning amps up other people’s powers. Besides the immediately important fact that he makes Daphne so fast that she can go into the past (which makes sense to me, not because of Einstein, but because that’s how the Flash did it), it also means that, in the future, Ando wasn’t killing Hiro. He was powering him up! Well played!
Once again, Bennet’s got all the answers. He has Meredith use her out-of-control flame to heat up the glass so he can shatter it. That doesn’t work as well as he’d hoped, but Claire bodyslams the window to take it out. Claire is pretty badass in this episode, I have to say. Now, it’s clear to Meredith and Bennet that she’s not going to survive this. Still, Bennet didn’t shoot her to save himself. Would he have done that in the first season? He’d have put one between her eyes before Sylar finished explaining the scenario. Bennet is starting to care about people.
OK, I got a good laugh from Tracy telling Nathan that this whole mess was “still deniable”. Saving the world or not, she’s always working the spin angle. Nathan is not impressed with her logic at this point, and fires her. Hee. You know, although they got off to a good start with her this season, she sort of fell short of expectations. Poor Ali Larter – her characters are just jinxed.
In the past, Hiro gets his hands on the formula, but his dad goes for the sword. Wow, Kaeto was kind of a hothead in his younger days, wasn’t he? Hiro does manage to tear the formula. So basically, this whole thing was him fulfilling his destiny. The formula was torn at the beginning of the season, so Hiro’s travels through time were already a part of history. Daphne saves him at the last possible second and brings him to the present, then to Pinehearst. It’s probably wrong of me, but Hiro punching Tracy was pretty funny. Especially since it wasn’t that effective. She was more surprised than anything.
In the lab, and I can’t tell whether this was deliberate on Peter’s part, they dump out the existing formula which gives Mohinder a nice bath that starts to fix all the damage. And then Nate shows up, first taking out Flint and then positively whaling on Peter. You guys, Nathan’s totally moved over to villain mode. He’s just pounding on Peter now, rather than trying to make a point. Then Flint starts the place on fire, and Peter injects himself and gets his powers back. (Does he get all the powers he learned back, or does he start all over again? A shame so many of the people he got useful powers from are dead, if that’s the case.)
At Primatech, it’s Sylar and Angela having it out. Angela seems to mean it when she tells Sylar he saved the world, but she’s exposed as a liar when she calls Sylar her son, and again when she backtracks and says her real sons were disappointments. Finally bringing out the truth, she tells Sylar that she always saw him as a monster, and that’s why he was useful. And then, she tells Sylar that she knows who his real parents are. So he’s adopted, just like Claire! Except for the part where he’s crazy and his parents are probably complete sociopaths. And then, in a moment that’s more satisfying than I expected, Claire stabs him in the brain! Now, I hate to step on her triumphant moment, but we’ve learned that he’ll be OK once somebody pulls that glass shard out of his head. Still, it was pretty cool.
Interestingly, Nate’s not too happy about being saved, and he even says to Peter “That’s not what I would have done”. Except for how he did that exact thing at the end of Season One. Yeah, Nate’s no longer one of the good guys. Meanwhile, it looks like Meredith explodes, which is a shame. Poor Claire. She meets her biological parents, one dies and one turns evil. That’s got to be tough on a kid.
In the ending montage we see Tracy pick up Mohinder, who’s not completely healed. And the late Usuto pops up to give Matt a thumbs-up. If they had snuck his spirit turtle into that shot, I would have been so happy.
And we even get a preview of Fugitives? Thanks, NBC! Nate’s going forward with the “Track ‘em down and round ‘em up” plan that we saw in the future. Nate is selling out his people. We’ve got big changes coming in the next chapter, and there’s no turning back. (And apparently Zeljko Ivanek joins the cast. That guy appears on everything I love at some point!) This really looks good!
What about Hiro’s powers? How long until somebody pulls that glass out of Sylar’s brain? Is Nate redeemable or is he the real Big Bad? What about Sylar’s parents?
Is it February yet? I miss Bennet already. Maybe he can host a reality show until then. I would totally watch that show, I’ll tell you that.
