Hey, show creator Tim Kring got his hands dirty and wrote this episode himself! I guess that means significant stuff is going to be happening. And we lead in with flashbacks to the eclipse that kicked off the series. Now, back in the first season, there was a pretty clear distinction between people whose powers kicked in approximately fifteen years ago (Baby Claire, Meredith, seemingly Sylar) and those who got their powers right after the eclipse (Peter, Niki, Hiro, Matt, etc.). The one big exception was Nathan, who first flew approximately one year before the eclipse. And now we know his powers were synthetic, so it seems to work. Arthur, who’s probably been through this a time or two before, seems visibly upset by Usutu’s eclipse painting. It actually distracts him from blanking out Hiro. Interestingly, he uses his mental powers from last week to wipe out his memory rather than taking his powers. As noted last week, he already has Hiro’s powers, but I’m kind of surprised he didn’t just take them away to be safe. Unless he can’t take powers that he already has. I don’t know. I don’t get how that Petrelli guy works.
I’m not hugely excited about devolving Hiro to the mental age of 10, actually. For story purposes, it’s interesting. Unfortunately, it feels like they’re just trying to crank up the cute factor on him so we get back to his Season One sense of wonder. This might be a short-lived change, however. I’ll reserve judgment until we have more evidence, since at the very least, it did provide a great joke near the end of the episode.
