Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Hindsight is a wonderful thing

Some time in the mid-2000s, the TV was tuned to channel 1, or possibly 2, and I saw a trailer for a American show that was about to start airing in the UK on the BBC. There was shots of various characters and an eclipse and it was all set to the song Don’t They Know It’s the End of the World by Skeeter Davis, ending with the image of an explosion demolishing a city.

That trailer has stuck with me all these years later as just a masterclass. Haunting, atmospheric. It instantly made me curious as to what this show – Heroes – was all about.

I tried desperately (for like, ten whole minutes) to find a link to this trailer online to share it here and couldn’t bloody find one. I swear I was able to like, five years ago. If anyone else remembers this trailer, please let me know and send me a link!

(A similar atmospheric trailer for the short-lived sequel Heroes Reborn, set to a cover of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters was similarly memorable for me, possibly the most memorable thing I associate with that entire mini-series in all honesty, as well as the actually kind of engaging short web-series that led up to it).

I wouldn’t actually end up watching Heroes in earnest until three-ish years later, when the second half of its third season (Volume 4: Fugitives – because this show is incredibly confusing with its numbering) was airing in the UK and I actually had my own computer with which I could watch as much BBC IPlayer as I wanted, no having to commandeer the TV at a silly time on a weekday evening to watch a show I wasn’t sure the rest of my family would want to be subjected to). I had already binged enough Youtube videos to have a pretty good idea of the main cast and plot directions, and I rented the Season One DVDs from my local library (support your local libraries my friends) to get properly caught up on what was pretty universally spoken of at the time as “that one really good season that happened before everything went downhill due to writers’ strike reasons”. I must also have gotten caught up on seasons 2 and 3 (I don’t remember if I bought the DVDs by then or if those were also at the library) and the first episode I watched at the time of its UK airing was Season 3, episode 21: ‘Into Asylum’ (one of the stronger late-season ones, by the way). And I stuck with it. I enjoyed it, highs and lows. I own the complete original show on DVD, even now.

Why am I giving you a history essay on a mostly forgotten sci-fi show from the mid-2000s, well, I’ll tell you.

This year, I started rewatching it from the beginning. Not just my favourite episodes, or the episodes with the scenes I really like in them. The whole thing. Start to finish. As I am writing this, the last episode I watched was S3 Ep9: It’s Coming (also pretty good in the grand scheme of Volume 3. We’ll get there).

And it got me thinking…

Season One has issues

Season One of Heroes was, at the time and still to this say, lauded as not just the best season of the show but one of the best first seasons of TV of the 21^st Century so far. In these days, post-MCU, where superhero content is everything everywhere all at once that might seem crazy, but back in the day the premise of “what if superheroes but grounded in a very normal world” felt quite fresh. It’s the kind of pitch an agent would jump at.

 It almost felt like it could have been a new take on the X-Men idea. In all the X-Men movies we’ve had, the existence of mutants is kind of taken as read. Its well established in-universe that there are people with genetic mutations that give them superpowers and the plots come from how the rest of the world reacts to them and how one group of mutants fights against other groups of mutants who are causing harm, or against not-mutant humans who would do them harm. The closest I’ve seen (as a filthy mostly-just-the-movies-watcher) is the beginning of First Class (the best X-Men movie thank you) where Xavier writing about the potential of genetic mutation is his thesis (kind of like what Chandra and Mohinder are investigating in Heroes, except that Xavier has the benefit of having and being fully aware of his own abilities, along with Raven’s). Other than that, even when Xavier and Erik (power couple) go seeking out mutants, they are mostly aware of, at least partially capable of controlling and have come to terms with their powers.

Not so much Heroes, which is about the characters’ discovery and learning to control and accept abilities as a part of themselves, with the general public remaining blissfully unaware of the existence of the mutations (and let’s get the terminology out of the way here – the superpowers are pretty much universally called ‘abilities’ throughout Heroes, I may use ‘abilities’ and ‘powers’ interchangeably and I may refer to certain abilities by their accepted canon names; Healing Factor, Intuitive Aptitude, etc., the terminology referring to the people with abilities is fuzzier – Special gets thrown around a lot, and Heroes Reborn settles on Evos – Evolved Humans). I’d argue that throughout Season One, and heck for most of the show, they could have pulled a “this was a stealth X-Men show all along” twist and it would have fit. In fact, I could easily see Disney+ going down this direction with its own X-Men show – having it be about regular people discovering abilities and then revealing late in the game that (to the tune of Agatha All Along) “It was X-Men all along!” if not for:

1. Heroes already doing the premise
2. Legion pulling the ”stealth X-Men show” twist a few years ago, and
3. The MCU universe being the least grounded thing in the world ever and you’d have to acknowledge that relatively early in the show to convince us that this show is MCU adjacent at all… I mean props to Moon Knight for kind of pulling off not mentioning any out-side MCU stuff and making it work but…
4. I suppose all the Marvel branding and they’d have to call it something like “Mutants” or whatever and it would be obvious it was X-Men so it couldn’t be a twist ANYWAY…

Back to Heroes Season One. Revolutionary. Great premise. The best season of the show when everything is taken into account, that’s undeniable. However…

It drags. It drags a lot. It is 23 episodes long and it feels it. Those episodes are split over six discs in the DVD release! I often joke that a rewatch of Heroes for me is more like “Genesis, Don’t Look Back, noncommittal rumbling, Seven Minutes to Midnight”, if I just want to get to the good bits. Even with its multitude of characters, many of them feel like they’re treading water waiting for to become plot relevant again, but they still have screen time so they spend it going around in pointless circles without much relevance or even growth. If they learn a lesson, they spend valuable screen time learning the same lesson again.

And yet, for other characters, they come and go without much fanfare and without any satisfying wrap up. Couldn’t time spent, say, having Hiro and Ando repeatedly learn to appreciate each other’s friendship been spent instead giving Claude an actual ending to his part in the show instead of having him dip out mid-way through an episode and never return outside of flashbacks in Company Man? For a compelling character with history with one of the leads, he’s very underserved. Then you have characters like Nikki, who have entire arcs across the season but when you look at the bigger picture, what the whole show led to, has so little impact or crossover with other characters that she starts feeling like she was in another show entirely.

So I started thinking about it way too much. And wondered, if I were in charge of writing this show, what would I have done differently.

That’s what this is. Think of this not so much as a fanfiction as a “fan pitch”. A thought experiment. A semi-narrative essay that details what I believe (as a vaguely qualified person with a writing degree and way too much time on their hands) are the faults of Heroes and the tweaks I would make to – in my opinion – strengthen the show. I could have kept this all to myself, or simply shared it with friends, but literally no one I know watches or cares about this silly show like I do and I just need to share it with other people who actually know what a Primatech is, had an enormous crush on Kristen Bell before Frozen and the Good Place and have exceptionally strong opinions about why the death of Adam Monroe was the worst writing decision they’ve ever seen until the writers of Endgame decided to make Thor being depressed a really poor taste running gag (its either that or whatever the ending of Danganronpa V3 was trying to do, I may write about both one of these days).

So please, read my delusional ramblings and tell me your feelings. Share your little changes. Let’s show the world we are not a dead fandom! Let’s be creative together.

Now for disclaimers:

1. This is all based on my opinion.

And I am biased. Problems that I have with Heroes are not necessarily issues that anyone else would pick up on. In fact, I might take issue with something that is someone else’s favourite part of the show. The changes I suggest are in no way meant to offend another fan or suggest that you are wrong to enjoy what you enjoy.

2. So what makes me qualified to do this?

Nothing. Literally nothing. And I literally have qualifications in writing. I have a Masters degree, I studied television screenwriting, I have written screenplays which have been filmed and broadcast, I write long-form fiction and I work in the creative writing industry for a living. But that does not make me “qualified” to do this particular experiment in that I am not saying that I am a better writer or storyteller than any of the storytellers who made Heroes. For one thing, I’m British. I don’t know how American television works from the inside of the industry. Time is no object for me, nor is budget, nor is actor availability and I am not held to the rules of the writers’ strikes of 2008 or of 2023 (both of which I fully support, alongside the actors’ strike).

I’m having fun and I want to share this because it hurts my insides to keep it to myself. That’s what I love about creativity and art. Sharing it. So please, if you have constructive criticism or want to share your version of this experiment, I want to hear it. Just be kind about it, and in any comments you make on other readers’ opinions.

3. Hindsight truly is amazing.

I don’t just have Season One as my canvas. I have all four seasons, plus the tie-in comics, plus Reborn to work with and draw inspiration of if I want to. If the entire purpose of this thought experiment is to carry on after Season One and tackle the even more contentious Seasons 2-4, then I want them all to be cohesive, to work as one entity, and if that means pulling references from those later seasons and using them as plants in Season One to create payoffs in later Seasons which the writers of the original show would not have been able to do because those ideas didn’t exist yet… I’m going to do it. I am setting myself restrictions, but ignoring later plot points when I could use them to make my ideas stronger if I can is not one of them.

Speaking of restrictions – I am giving myself a few in doing this, otherwise I could twist the show into something that does not resemble Heroes at all. Let’s say, the imaginary premise of this silly bit of writing is that I have miraculously been given the chance to remake the show. I can work from all four seasons, plus side content, worth of information but the show has to still, recognisably be Heroes. Therefore:

1. The seasons must retain the basic plot structure they began with. They must begin with the characters in about the same place character-wise (though not necessarily time and location wise) where they began and end at about the same place they end. Story wise, Season One must still lead into first Homecoming and then to How to Stop and Exploding Man. Season Two must be about the murders of the Company Founders and the conspiracy revolving around the Shanti Virus, etc.
2. I can remove characters (and by extension the arcs they are involved in) from the seasons and existing characters can be altered to an extent, but I cannot create entirely new characters wholesale.
3. On a similar note, if a character is introduced during a particular season I cannot have them appear onscreen in an earlier season, nor delay their introduction to a later season.
4. If a character dies during a season, they must die during that same season in the remake. However, they do not necessarily have to die in the same way they died originally (this is mainly for the sake of a single character).
5. I am not working to episode counts, for as much as the same reason that I am not writing this out as a full narrative piece of fiction. Ultimately, too many scenes would just be repeated wholesale from the original version and I do not have the energy to do that in either script or prose form. You can assume for the most part that this is sticking to a relatively average 18-20 episode format for every season, averaging at 20. This means Season Two and Four have a bit more wiggle room to allow for stronger arcs and breathing room whilst seasons 1 and 3 are evened out to remove some of the drag caused by their longer lengths, but not so much that they feel rushed. This rewrite will take the form of a full-season synopsis for each season, split down into arcs where necessary and with specific episodes mentioned only where relevant – for example for bottle episodes, arc- or season-starters and arc- or season-finales.

Now with all of that out of the way, let us begin.

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A Reiteration, for easy access, of the self-imposed rules I have created for this exercise. Any further rules will be added here if necessary:

1. The seasons must retain the basic plot structure they began with. They must begin with the characters in about the same place character-wise (though not necessarily time and location wise) where they began and end at about the same place they end. Story wise, Season One must still lead into first Homecoming and then to How to Stop and Exploding Man. Season Two must be about the murders of the Company Founders and the conspiracy revolving around the Shanti Virus, etc.
2. I can remove characters (and by extension the arcs they are involved in) from the seasons and existing characters can be altered to an extent, but I cannot create entirely new characters wholesale.
   
   
3. On a similar note, if a character is introduced during a particular season I cannot have them appear onscreen in an earlier season, nor delay their introduction to a later season.
   
   
4. If a character dies during a season, they must die during that same season in the remake. However, they do not necessarily have to die in the same way they died originally (this is mainly for the sake of a single character).
   
   
5. I am not working to episode counts, for as much as the same reason that I am not writing this out as a full narrative piece of fiction. Ultimately, too many scenes would just be repeated wholesale from the original version and I do not have the energy to do that in either script or prose form. You can assume for the most part that this is sticking to a relatively average 18-20 episode format for every season, averaging at 20. This means Season Two and Four have a bit more wiggle room to allow for stronger arcs and breathing room whilst seasons 1 and 3 are evened out to remove some of the drag caused by their longer lengths, but not so much that they feel rushed. This rewrite will take the form of a full-season synopsis for each season, split down into arcs where necessary and with specific episodes mentioned only where relevant – for example for bottle episodes, arc- or season-starters and arc- or season-finales.

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Before I start synopsising each season, I want to talk in specificity about some of my bigger issues with it, to give context to the changes made in the synopsis, without having to clog up the synopsis with explanations given during the telling.

As previously mentioned, my biggest problem with Season One is that you feel its length. There are two arcs to season one. The first arc – Save the Cheerleader, Save the World – starts with the pilot episode: Genesis and focuses on introducing the characters, most of them discovering and coming to terms with their abilities, and the ongoing mystery of the serial killer Sylar and his inevitable closing in on a cheerleader with healing abilities. We, the audience, are aware that this cheerleader is Claire Bennett and don’t want to see her murdered in an especially horrific way because we’ve come to care about her, and we know that Sylar is a power thief and a serial killer with Healing Factor would be even harder to catch and bring to justice. Slowly, the other major characters find their way to where Claire is (or are otherwise involved in the investigation and so come into contact with the leads as the show goes on) and after sharing knowledge with each other Peter is empowered to step in and prevent Sylar from killing Claire, and allow for the right circumstances that lead to his capture, stopping his killing spree.

The second arc – How to Stop an Exploding Man – revolves around the plot by the Company, masterminded by the mobster Linderman and Angela Petrelli to cause a nuclear disaster in New York city which will make the world mourn and come together to heal, whilst also acting as a catalyst to put Angela’s son Nathan in a position of power. However, we come to learn that this act will actually lead to a dystopian police-state with discrimination against people with abilities and where Sylar managed to take Nathan’s identity and become president, so it must be stopped. But to stop it, the identity of the exploding man – the source of the nuclear disaster – must be identified. It could be any one out of Ted Sprague – who actually has the ability –, Peter or Sylar.

Everyone has their part to play in both arcs. Mohinder and Matt are both searching for Sylar in relation to his murders. Peter and Hiro are empowered to become heroes and first save Claire and then stop the explosion. Nathan is the pawn in Linderman and Angela’s scheme who also wants to protect Peter from himself. Noah Bennett works for the Company and wants to protect his daughter from both Sylar and the ever-widening conspiracy. Isaac paints the pictures and creates the comics that allow Peter and Hiro to begin their quests in the first place and his art guides the others on their journeys, all the while he struggles with his addiction being the only thing that allows him to create this guiding art in the first place.

Do you see who is missing from this picture?

The Problem with Nikki:

Nikki is connected to the overall plot in two ways; she’s in debt to Linderman and ends up working for him, and as part of that ends up sleeping with Nathan so Linderman can blackmail him, and she’s the mother of Micah whose ability is used to rig the election in Nathan’s favour.

Other than that, she’s off in her own subplot where she contests against her alter personality Jessica. She is nominally working for Linderman, but we don’t meet Linderman in person until very late in the season and even then its Nathan who meets him face-to-face. Other than that she runs into Ando once, Matt once. She is completely separate from the main plot until Micah is kidnapped by Linderman and she goes to rescue him. Micah and DL run into Hiro and Ando at one point, no other crossover with any other character until the final episode. In Homecoming, the Sanders family is totally absent from the main plot, off doing their own thing. And since Homecoming is the culmination of the first story arc, an arc in which everyone else is relevant… Nikki and the Sanders family not being relevant is an issue.

Then we get to the final stretch of the season. Micah has been kidnapped and happens to be in the same building as Molly, where Matt, Mohinder and Noah also converge. But even though DL is the one to kill Linderman (when narratively it would have been more satisfying for Nikki to do so), the Sanders don’t help with the Molly subplot other than Micah calling the elevator. In the final fight against Sylar, Nikki disarms Sylar of a parking meter and whacks him with it (in other words she steps into a fight between two men she has never seen before in her life, which she has no idea of the significance of) and Peter then tells her to go back to her family (who he has also never met), and she does.

What I am saying is that you could cut down a lot of the bloat of season one by removing this completely superfluous character and her entire subplot, and it would not hurt proceedings one bit. The two things she and her family contribute to the overall plot can be easily reassigned:

The blackmailing of Nathan – you can’t tell me that Linderman, close friend of the Petrelli’s and Company founder – doesn’t have proof of Nathan having an illegitimate child with a criminal, outside of his current marriage.

The election rigging – there are other young characters who are part of families with more plot relevance than Micah’s, who could take his role in the election rigging. I have a plan for this. You’ll see.

The removal of Nikki is my most major change for Season One, but now I want to touch on some other arcs I think add unnecessary tedium to the show, but could be trimmed down and made more streamlined with far more minimal changes.

The Problem with Matt:

Matt is an interesting case. He’s introduced as part of the Sylar murder mystery, who also becomes embroiled in the mystery of the Company after he is kidnapped and tagged by them, and starts to believe in a connection between the two. Any time he is involved in these subplots, he’s interesting. Unfortunately, the writers instead decided to make the focus of his story his marital problems and I am sorry, this is my incredible bias talking, but I would rather watch a murder-mystery/conspiracy show than a semi-adaptation of What Women Want with the discovery of an affair via mind-control.

But that’s an easy cut. So, in the remake, Matt’s marriage will be the background for his character and he will be far more invested into the mystery side of things.

The Problem with Hiro and Ando:

Hiro is a fantastic character who the show often had no idea what to do with. His power is kind of game-breaking and so the writers’ solution was to either remove him from the action as much as possible or – later on – do anything they could do depower him.

In Season One, the way they do this is have him hanging around in Vegas for way too long and learn twice over to appreciate Ando as a friend whilst Ando learns twice over to not be a greedy sleezeball and respect both Hiro’s abilities and Hiro as a friend. Cutting this repetition and allowing Hiro to be a bit more plot-involved will help shore-up his place as one of the key leads of the show.

I’m also going say that it makes little sense that Hiro is a salary-man when we later learn that his father owns the company he works for. It reads pretty clearly as a plot point that the writers came up with later, that makes Hiro’s place in the Pilot feels a bit off in hindsight. I’m going to work up an explanation that relates to the subtext around Hiro’s wants/needs reflecting on his abilities.

The Problem with Claire:

Speaking of repetition, I have basically no issues with Claire in the first half of the season, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening with the Bennetts in the second half – Sandra’s memory-wipe related illness leading to Noah having to come clean, Company Man, and Claire’s investigation into her biological parents leading her to the Petrellis and placing her in the right location for the season endgame. But because there are so many episodes to fill, Claire also spends time after Homecoming treading water and repeating elements of her first-half arc due to everyone around her having their memories wiped.

Issues with Claire subplots are far more egregious in later seasons but Season One planted some seeds. Its my intent to un-plant them, and hope that it makes for a more likable Claire in general as the show goes on.

So that’s what we want to achieve out of this reimagining of Season One, aka. Volume One: Genesis, based on what I perceive to be its major issues.

Next up… the first arc.

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Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Pilot:

There isn’t much major to be changed about the Pilot episode, save the cutting of scenes including Nikki Sanders and her family, so I will take this time to speak a little on our three main leads and about the best thing I think Heroes (season one in particular) does – use the characters’ abilities to show their wants and needs.

Peter Petrelli can only use the powers of those who are near to him. His mothers’ dreams. His brothers’ flight. He literally cannot escape their shadow. Without the abilities of others, without others, he’s nobody. But what sets Peter apart from power-thieves like Sylar or (as we will later come to learn) like his own father is that Peter doesn’t take. Peter shares.

Claire Bennett cannot be harmed physically. Outside, she’s invulnerable, but a teenager is far more vulnerable to emotional damage than physical, and she has no protection against attacks on her mental health. What use is healing her body when people like Jackie damage her mind and her self-esteem every day?

As for Hiro Nakamura, this is where we are taking the time we’ve gained by cutting Nikki from the Pilot and using it to show a little more of Hiro’s deal. And isn’t it funny that we are granting more time to the time traveller?

For Hiro, time drags. He works in an office job where every second feels like an hour. And yet time is also running away from him. If he doesn’t make something of himself, this is where he will stay forever, a slow, dull life with time eating away at him, day by day.

Let’s expand on that, shall we? For Hiro is the son of the CEO of the company he works for. So why is he in a desk job like any other salary-man? Let’s add a scene to the Pilot and use it to introduce a character we wouldn’t have met for a while otherwise: Kimiko, Hiro’s older sister. She currently holds a higher position in the company to Hiro, one they used to share. But Hiro was a time waster, reading comic books and mucking about with his friend Ando instead of putting in the work. But it was Hiro who was meant to take over as CEO when their father stepped down. Kimiko resents this, and managed to use her position to have Hiro demoted. If he wants to be CEO someday, he has to work for it, work his way up from the lowest place in the company so he understands the responsibility of being in charge.

When Hiro is caught away from his desk, Kimiko calls him to her office, demands to see him, and we learn this background. Of course, what Hiro latches onto from this is the phrase “with great power comes great responsibility”, much to Kimiko’s chagrin. Later, Hiro repeats the phrase to Ando, not in relation to his job but to his newly acquired powers. And when he travels forward to the future and sees the devastation that must be stopped, it only reinforces that belief. He is going to show Kimiko how responsible he is, but on his own terms, not hers.

Here we’ve planted through implication that Hiro doesn’t want to be CEO, but pressure prevents him from just saying so. Eventually, he will persuade his father that Kimiko is the right fit for the job, and without that pressure hovering over him, he’s free to give up his desk job and think more clearly about what he wants to do for himself. But that comes later.

The only other thing we’ll do with the pilot is to namedrop Linderman in a scene with Nathan, just briefly, since there are no scenes with Nikki to bring him up. But we’ll expand more on Linderman’s place in the plot shortly.

The last thing I want to add is some clarity on the amount of time between Mohinder learning about Chandra’s death and the day on which the main events of the Pilot happen, considering that Mohinder arrives in New York and gets a job as a taxi driver in the meantime. Mohinder’s job – and the fact that it never comes up again outside of the Pilot – could easily be cut but without it we lose the scenes of Peter watching the eclipse from the taxi, and Mr Bennett scaring Mohinder out of the taxi. Those scenes are too good to lose, so maybe in a later episode Mohinder can mention to Eden that he quit the job after he discovered the Sylar tapes because he needed the time to investigate and he can pay the apartment rent with his savings, since he doesn’t plan to be here long term anyway. I’m going to excuse Mr Bennett arriving home from New York the evening of the eclipse. I believe New York is an hour ahead of Texas and the fight takes about 4 hours? Given that, if he arrives home rather late into the evening I think that timing works out. Given how often he travels, the Company can probably fast track him onto decent flights in business class. One thing I will not be excusing later is the entire cast spamming the fast travel button about as badly as late-season Game of Thrones.

Going into the string of episodes from Episode 2 leading into Homecoming, let’s go arc by arc for those with major changes.

Hiro and Ando:

Sticking with Hiro for now, after witnessing the future, Hiro convinces Ando to join him in going to the US as the comic he picked up from the future. His intent is to go to New York to warn Isaac Mendez of his impending doom, but let’s say the only flight that was leaving was to Vegas. Hiro is fine with that, after all the comic shows himself and Ando in Vegas and hiring a car. Ando is also happy with that. Their time in Vegas begins as it started. Ando is keen to hit the casinos, stating they have plenty of time before Isaac’s imminent death, and encourages Hiro to use his powers to cheat some high-rollers, which Hiro states isn’t right for a hero to do.

The biggest problem with Hiro and Ando’s story in Season One is that they have two break-ups as a result of Ando’s greed, only to realise how much they need each other and come back together again, and they even leave Vegas and head to New York only to return to Vegas later on! It really does play out like the writers had two Vegas plotlines, couldn’t decide which to use, so they used both, shoehorning in the second even though it was a complete distraction from Hiro’s main goal at the time. It only needs to happen once. So, during their time abusing Hiro’s ability, Ando meets a girl named Hope who wants Ando to steal a bag from one of the high-rollers. This is the final straw for Hiro. As far as he’s concerned, if Ando wants to stay in Vegas, he can, Hiro has responsibility. This could be around the same time they pick up Peter’s call with the message “Save the Cheerleader, save the World”. That’s what makes Hiro resolve to stop wasting time, someone’s in danger!

Ando argues that Hope is in danger, but Hiro refuses. He’s used his abilities for greed. He won’t do it now. So Hiro drives off alone and Ando stays behind. Hiro stops at a diner and meets with Nathan, who mostly by accident says just the right thing to persuade Hiro that he can’t abandon Ando.

Hiro returns to Vegas just in time to save Ando from the wrath of both the con-woman Hope, and the high-rollers she cheated. This can be where a car explodes (as a result of the gun fight causing a crash, rather than just a crash), and Hiro saves some bystanders as well as ensuring none of the “villains” die either. Thanks to him, they are incapacitated and arrested. Following the comic, they they make it down to the Texas and the Burnt Toast diner in time for the events of Seven Minutes to Midnight. From there, events play out as they did previously through Homecoming and Six Months Ago. Hiro has learned that he really can save people, but he can’t save everyone. Ando has learned to respect Hiro, respect his abilities and not to be so greedy and lecherous.

There’s also a certain name that I don’t believe is mentioned in the show proper until after Homecoming, but I want to bring it up as early as possible. Takezo Kensei, the folk hero who Hiro grows up listening to stories about, who moulds Hiro’s ideas of what a heroic person is, from whom Hiro takes his inspiration even above all other superheroes. Considering what we know later, the earlier we know about this character and the impact the Kensei stories have on Hiro’s life, the better. So even in the Pilot, Hiro should make a throwaway reference to him, he could mention Kensei and his sidekick in reference to himself and Ando whilst on the journey, and maybe even refer to a tale of an epic quest that Kensei took to save his princess, comparing it to his own quest to save the cheerleader. Just a little bit of plant and payoff that will take a while to really, truly, payoff.

Matt and Molly:

Now this is the fun one. The murder mystery turned conspiracy plot, with a little bit of found family (which will expanded on in later seasons).

Matt Parkman is down on his luck. He was so close to making detective, but he just can’t pass the test. He thinks he’s dyslexic, but it just isn’t being accounted for. On top of that, he recently learned that his wife was having an affair with a colleague and has been demoted after an altercation. This is all implied for the moment. He’s separated from his wife, but the true extent of the situation won’t be expanded on until the episode Six Months Ago. And then, when directing traffic at a crime scene, he hears a child call for help, overhears an FBI agent mention the name ‘Sylar’ – a name the audience has already learned is the murderer of Mohinder Suresh’s father – and discovers the child hiding in a safe room.

Without the burden of needing to continuously go back to scenes with his wife, Matt is now free to join with the FBI on the Sylar case full-time, once agent Audrey learns about his abilities and admits she thinks there’s more to Sylar as well, since no ordinary human could commit the crimes he has.

And then there’s Molly. You see, we’re going to have Molly stick around a bit longer than she does in the show proper. She won’t speak. She’s traumatised by not only witnessing her parents’ deaths but then the attempted kidnapping. An ambiguous kidnapping. I want it up in the air as to whether the kidnapper was Sylar or someone from the Company going after Molly and for it to never be revealed – let’s say we see enough Company workers in silhouette with dark baseball caps throughout the first half of the show to put this into question, maybe even one using telekinesis who Sylar himself can later kill – after all the kidnapper doesn’t try to kill Molly. Sylar might have a “no killing kids” code, but what use is she to him other than for her power? He doesn’t know he can take abilities without killing at this point. A telekinetic Company operative would both have the incentive to kidnap, not kill, Molly and to not follow through on having Audrey pull the trigger when she has the gun to her own head, which is what gives Matt the time to save her.

So, Molly isn’t speaking. But she doesn’t have to, not when the FBI has a mind reader on hand. But Matt doesn’t want to force Molly to relive her trauma. He doesn’t want her to hurt anymore than she already has. Matt and Molly speak telepathically and bond, to the point that its becoming a surrogate parent-daughter relationship. Matt is even thinking about adopting Molly and since he’s convinced her to speak at last, it looks like it may even go ahead.

Enter FBI operative Thompson, who has found Molly a suitable foster home and has all the relevant paperwork signed. Molly is taken away from Matt, to both of their devastation.

Yup, I’m bringing Thompson (accompanied by Candice) in early. And relatively soon after he takes Molly away, he should show up around the Primatech building or even just calling Mr Bennett to let us know that this man isn’t who he said he was.

Matt has also gone through his own kidnapping. The Company bagged and tagged him between Molly’s rescue and his sessions trying to get through to her, and Matt woke up with enough time to see not only Rene (I’m not calling him The Haitian, he will be named onscreen at an appropriate time, probably post-Homecoming he can tell Claire his name) but also Mr Bennett, and catch the name Sylar being spoken before he is released. Now Matt is convinced that Sylar is working for this shady Company, may even be one of the men he saw, and he is determined to track both down. His paranoia, unfortunately, will only grow over time…

Perhaps most importantly, Ted Sprague is not going to be introduced yet, we’re going to wait until after Homecoming for that. The main focus for Matt in this half of the season is him getting to know, and then losing Molly.

The Linderman Question:

Linderman, and his great Explosion scheme, are not the main focus of this first arc. This is all about getting to Claire to save her from Sylar. But the season’s endgame is hinted at from the very start. After all, the cheerleader needs to be saved because – as far as we are led to believe – she is the only one who can get close enough to kill the exploding man.

Hiro sees the explosion in the future. Isaac paints the explosion. And throughout the first half of the season one name keeps being dropped: Linderman. The question is, where is this name going to be dropped without Nikki?

In the scenes with the character on whom he has perhaps the biggest impact outside of Nikki: Nathan Petrelli.

In the show proper, we learn early on that Nathan’s campaign for congress is being funded by Linderman, with money gained through Linderman’s illegal activities and mob ties. Linderman blackmails Nathan to keep him on side. We also learn that Nathan and Peter’s father was Linderman’s lawyer and complicit in his crimes – probably helping to keep them covered up for years so that Linderman can maintain a respectable image and stay out of prison.

Later on in the show proper, we discover that as DA Nathan was going to try to prosecute Linderman (though it would have also meant taking down his own father with him) and once running for congress, Nathan is still aiding authorities to try to bring Linderman down. Let’s shuffle that revelation forward a bit, in order to give Nathan a reason for being in Vegas in the early episodes, at the same time as Hiro.

Linderman is funding Nathan’s campaign. Peter is aware of this and warns Nathan against it. Angela is aware and keeps tight lipped about it. Peter warns he’ll spill to the press in revenge for Nathan talking about his mental health to the papers. Nathan backs off of Peter, at least for a bit. Peter then finds out that Linderman has some of Isaac’s paintings, which he desperately needs to see, and begs Nathan to ask Linderman for them. When Nathan is approached by his law force contacts and he lets them know he has a reason to go to Vegas, they jump at the chance and want to put a wire on him, to get some hard evidence.

Nathan goes to Vegas and meets with a representative of Linderman, the manager of the same hotel and casino that Hiro and Ando are at. She brings him to Linderman’s private gallery and lets him know that she knows about the wire. It must be removed and he has to stop being an informant, or else.

“Or else what?” asks Nathan.

“Or else,” said the manager, “There’s a young woman in the south who would be delighted to tell her story to the press, for a little cash. Not something I think you want getting out, given that you’re running on the principle of family values. Your lovely sons. And dear Heidi, after everything that’s happened to her recently…”

Nathan, slowly, reluctantly, removes the wire. “I’ll tell them it was picked up by security on my way in.”

“Good.” The manager smiles. It barely reaches her eyes. “Now don’t let anyone say that Mister Linderman isn’t a generous man. Which of these paintings are being asked for? We’ll call it a donation.”

The next morning, Nathan is rudely woken in his hotel room by Mr Bennett and Rene, who haul him away, but Nathan is able to fly free and runs into Hiro, as before. He returns to the casino and accuses the manager, who denies the kidnapping attempt and says that Linderman will repay Nathan for the “unsatisfactory experience”.

And the rest:

Elsewhere, Peter’s arc remains intact – he discovers Nathan’s ability and his own ability to copy it and Isaac’s, he falls for Symone, who leaves Isaac for him, he meets Mohinder but can’t prove he has abilities, meets Future-Hiro, warns present-day Hiro, has his mental health exposed to the press by Nathan and starts psychological warfare with him over it, and in trying to track down the cheerleader he needs to save, between Symone showing him the paintings despite Nathan’s attempts to hide them from him, and his messages to Hiro (who he stays in contact with – the brief time when Hiro and Ando aren’t together proving an issue due to Hiro not being fluent in English yet proves frustrating for Peter) he makes it to Texas in time for Homecoming.

Claire’s arc isn’t changing at all at this stage, nor is Mohinder’s. One small thing in Mohinder’s arc though; when he finds Sylar’s apartment, including evidence linking him to the Walker deaths. We’re going to put a little background detail in here: the news article about the train crash and a cheerleader saving a firefighter and coming out unharmed, with Jackie’s picture, printed out from online. This is how Sylar knows to go to Texas to get an ability that will make him harder to kill.

Later, Mohinder returns with the police and the apartment has been cleared out. It’s implied in the show proper that Sylar did it, but I don’t think so. I think it was the Company. If Mohinder told Eden what he saw, the Company swoops in and cleans it out so they can use that evidence to track Sylar without the police getting in their way (and putting themselves in danger, not to mention that Eden wants to keep Mohinder out of danger). Later, Mr Bennett is seen with the print-out in an evidence bag. He now has a bit more concrete evidence early on that Sylar is after Claire, and Isaac’s paintings are just confirmation of when it will happen. It also establishes how ruthless Bennett is. Its Jackie’s photo in the article, but he doesn’t care about keeping her safe. Only Claire matters.

Eden is also going to imply that she likes Mohinder and he will gently turn her down.

And so we reach Homecoming, which is truly one of the best episodes of the show. The only thing we’ll do here is include Matt, who is notably absent from the actual episode, but we’re cutting Nikki so that gives him time. The FBI has tracked Sylar to Odessa and they are closing in on the Homecoming game. Matt and Audrey are the ones to arrest Peter, but at the same time Matt sees Mr Bennett comforting Claire and he recognises him. And so, all subplots draw together by the end of the arc. Hiro, Peter and Matt have all been drawn to Texas. Isaac is in the Company facility in Texas to get clean. Nathan and Symone were instrumental in getting Peter to Texas. The only main character not there is Mohinder, who has had his own revelations in India. And that’s okay, because Mohinder has already met plenty of other characters in the meantime.

And that’s the “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” arc. Six Months Ago is next and then we’ll launch into arc two: “How to Stop an Exploding Man”.

Chapter Text

Six Months Ago

Let's flash back. The classic that became a staple for the show, a mid-season hiatus punctuated by an episode set some time ago, to give a little clarity to the events we have seen... and some we are yet to see.

Hiro’s plot – no change. Peter and Nathan – no change. Chandra and Gabriel Gray, plus Mr Bennett asides – no change. Claire – no change.

On the other hand...

How do you solve a problem like Matt Parkman?

Again, no Nikki, so we’ve got time. I always thought it was weird that they involved Matt in this episode but only really as a vehicle to give Eden’s background and then she’s quickly swept up by Bennett and Rene and Matt has only one or two scenes afterwards and they don’t really revolve around his power. Let’s give him things to do.

So, you remember how we pretty much exorcised Matt’s family drama to backstory in the main storyline up until now. Well, its all going to play out here instead. His first scene remains the same, he pulls Eden over and she uses her ability to stop him from arresting her. Next day, Matt has a test to make detective, but fails. When he returns to his wife, he says he’s always had issues with written tests. The words just blend together.

‘You should be tested for dyslexia,’ he hears.

“What’s that?”

“Huh? I didn’t say anything,” Janice insists.

Okay, it’s probably that but it isn’t just that. He’s been having really bad headaches recently, and he could swear he kept hearing people talking during the test, which isn’t allowed.

‘So many excuses, every time, what’s it going to be next time you fail?’

He could swear he didn’t see her mouth move, but he heard her. Janice is being cagey now. Matt decides to leave it alone.

Janice continues to be cagey and eventually Matt hears her thinking about a positive pregnancy test. He’s delighted. That explains her behaviour. When he gives it away, he lies to her that he found the test in the trash, and she admits it. All seems well.

Until the following day, when he’s noticeably cheerful in the changing room, and one of the other cops starts laughing to himself. Matt confides in him that he’s going to be a father and when he turns away, he hears a mocking thought.

‘Yeah, sure that’s your kid Parkman.’

Matt overhears enough that its pretty clear that Janice is having an affair with this guy and it seems like Matt was the only one who didn’t know. Matt punches the guy.

One meeting with the boss later and Matt’s been demoted to directing traffic. At home, when Janice confronts him about the altercation, he asks her if the baby is really his. We don’t even need to see him hear her unspoken answer onscreen. The last we see him in this episode, he’s leaving the house with packed bags. From his demeanour is fairly clear he wasn’t kicked out, he chose to leave.

And that’s pretty much all of Matt’s marital drama, distilled into one episode and tying into his emerging powers in around five-six scenes. Plus, we’ve established the baby who will come back into the picture in later seasons.

Making Six Months Ago gel with Villains, or 'How Long Does it Take to become Sylar?':

I just want to briefly touch on the timeline with Chandra and Gabriel here too. The majority of this episode takes place in the six-five months ago bracket of time – let’s say after they met, Gabriel was meeting with Chandra for a couple of weeks to a month before Chandra stopped the tests, at which point Bennett and Elle were already on Gabriel’s trail and Bennett spoke with Chandra. The next day, Gabriel kills Brian Davis and early the following morning Elle finds him.

Then the events of Villains takes place over the course of about another two weeks or so (a week before Elle checks in with Gabriel a second time for the pie date, a two to three days later she brings Trevor over). Immediately after killing Trevor, Gabriel creates the “Forgive Me” room, using Trevor’s blood, cleans up, lies low for a bit, then once it’s clear Elle wasn’t undercover police and no one’s coming to arrest him (because the Company covered up both Brian and Trevor’s deaths so they could continue monitoring Gabriel) starts reinventing himself with new clothes and dropping the glasses and returns to Chandra.

That leaves around three months for Gabriel to completely build the Sylar persona – new look included – travel around stealing more abilities, for Chandra to figure out what’s going on and drop contact only for Sylar to harass him over the phone. Eventually Chandra likely blackmails Sylar, telling him he’ll go to the police, so Sylar disguises himself, gets into Chandra’s taxi and murders him. He then ditches New York for a bit, goes after the Walkers, returns for long enough to learn about the fire-proof cheerleader in Texas and make plans, but after first Mohinder, then the Company, then Mohinder and the police all raid his apartment in the space of a couple of days he can’t go back there so he ditches New York altogether and travels the slow route to Texas just in case the airports are looking for him.

Maybe Charlie won a contest thanks to her super-memory and it was in a newspaper, which he found and that’s why he’s staking out the Burnt Toast Diner whilst he waits for Homecoming to roll around. Charlie could mention it to Hiro in Seven Minutes to Midnight, it can happen during the events of Six Months Ago with Hiro cheering her on, and a copy of the article could be on the pinboard memorial for Ando to see. It’s the kind of detail that never has to be explicitly laid out but we can draw the dots if we spot the Easter Egg. I like things like that.

Next up, some more arcs...

Chapter Text

“You Saved the Cheerleader, so we could save the World”

Let’s talk about Claire Bennet (and I apologise for my constant inconsistency in my spelling of Bennet). The all-important cheerleader who was the focus of the tagline of the show itself. I’m not sure the show ever really knew what to do with her after she was “saved” and so she entered a sort of strange loop after Homecoming, where she and her family were forced to reenact variations of the same plot over and over again with minor changes each time. It’s a shame, as Claire quickly went from one of the more unique and interesting characters to perhaps my least favourite. Mr Bennet only escapes the same fate by his having some involvement in other subplots that actually have intrigue, instead of just being stuck arguing with his daughter the whole time.

In season one this is, to be fair, the first instance of his cyclical plot rolling around for the Bennet’s, so I’ll cut it some slack, but it isn’t going to be immune to changes.

Where was Claire left at the end of Homecoming? Well, what was her arc in the lead up?

Claire sees her ability as a curse. She just wants to be normal and blend in at school, for nothing to set her apart from her peers in a way that makes her a target. I think the implication is that she used to be friends with Zack, then started becoming friends with Jackie. Jackie became a cheerleader first and ended up becoming bitcher as they grew into their teens, to fit in. Claire wanted to be a cheerleader too, joined when a spot opened up on the team and started to distance herself from Zack as a result. She only turned back to him when she discovered her abilities, since she knew deep down that he would accept her ability and the cheerleaders would only call her a freak. She’s lost between what society says she – as the typical blonde and athletic teenage girl – should be, and not sacrificing being a good person and real friendships.

To that point, I am going to quickly retcon a tiny amount of the pre-Homecoming storyline for Claire and say that I want to see more of the people she interacts with on a daily basis. More school time. I want some other cheerleaders other than Jackie to have names and dialogue and show that they are all facing the same pressures of what it means to be popular. I want to show that Claire is friends with them but as the newest member of the squad, despite her talent, she is victim to many of the cattier remarks. And I want her to interact more with Lori, the girl whose place she took on the squad after Lori was assaulted by Brody, who then likely made accusations against her of sleeping with the football team members and was likely affected by post-traumatic stress.

Oh, also let’s have Zack come out as canonically gay instead of them treading around the topic with a “so what if I am that shouldn’t change anything” non-committal speech and implying he has feelings for Claire. He comes out to her when he helps her get out of her grounding, thanks Claire for punching Jackie in his defence and says that’s when he knew she was truly safe to come out to. And she “came out” to him with her abilities first. Claire will later be confirmed to be bi- or pansexual so it’s a nice starter to her own queer journey on top of her metaphorical one as well as rounding out this arc for Claire by having them come full circle and reflect each other on their journeys.

Claire punching Jackie will also be made Mr Bennet’s explicit justification for grounding Claire in this new writing of Homecoming, because it just makes sense. I figured that was the case in the original but as he never says it out loud it doesn’t really land from Claire’s point of view.

Claire hates her powers, but her powers also allow her to survive Brody’s attempted assault and to punish him and ensure he can never hurt anyone else. She’s starting to learn how her powers can be an asset, but also show her own self-destructive tendencies. It’s a mix of self-loathing and a degree of “no harm can come to me so I can do whatever it takes to help others… or help by harming others.” There’s room for that to grow into something more.

When Homecoming rolls around, Claire has kept her secret but the events of that night cannot be hidden. Not from her father who is the first person to find her. And so, Claire tells the truth. She tells him about her ability. That should be the turning point.

So, in my version, Claire doesn’t just tell her father. In an additional scene at the end of Homecoming, the camera will watch through the window as Claire – unheard but the intent clear – tells her whole family the truth and they embrace her. Her secret finally spoken and she is accepted. But Mr Bennet’s body language is stiff, awkward, and if he is facing the window we watch through his worried face speaks volumes.

After Claire’s Six Months Ago flashbacks show no change, we come to our next arc for her. And here’s the first big change. She isn’t going back to school. I think after Homecoming, Claire goes to school once, then skives off to visit Meredith and gets in trouble, then the plot barrels forward to the point that she doesn’t attend after that. School might as well not be a factor for all the difference it makes. And besides, there was just a murder on campus which Claire witnessed. School can be closed, indefinitely, whilst investigations take place (and who shall be investigating, well, well, well..)

Our first episode back for Claire after our short mid-season hiatus plays out pretty much as before. Claire knows she needs to speak to her dad about her abilities in more detail but time just isn’t on her side. First she is interrogated about the Homecoming murder by Matt Parkman and even without a warning from her father she knows she shouldn’t be spilling details to the police. But she struggles coming up with convincing ways to fill in impossible details. She says the murderer threw her through the air, then doubles back and says he just pushed her away to make it sound less extreme, since she wasn’t even bruised. She was seen covered in blood (which she cleaned off before the police called her in for questioning so they can’t test whose it is) which she says was Jackie’s, but how is that the case if she was pushed away from the murder. Okay, maybe its Peter’s… but Claire wasn’t with Peter when he fell and was only there briefly after he fell before running off as the police showed up.

How did the killer cut Jackie’s head open? Claire ums and ahs and says she might have seen a knife, but in a later scene Audrey complains to Matt that no knife could make that clean a cut and Claire would surely have remembered seeing an electric saw or other cutting device. Matt is also unable to read Claire’s mind thanks to Rene being present.

Claire will acknowledge Rene. He’s a colleague of her dad’s, she’ll have seen him around. This is where we can learn his name, too, as Claire can offhandedly say, “Hi, Rene,” as she passes by and wonder what he’s doing at the station. Surely paper emergencies can wait. He hasn’t exactly stopped by the Bennet house for dinner, but she often sees him pick her dad up for work in the morning’s and he’s exchanged small talk with Sandra. It just makes sense. This can even be seen in the first half of the season at some point.

Claire visits Peter to thank him for saving her. I think she should get his contact details. Since she doesn’t know his connection to her yet, I think its reasonable for her to hold a bit of a candle for him – an attractive young man who saved her life. But no shipping fodder. Even before the reveal that they are related, he’s ten years older than her and she’s a teenager. They talk about neither of them having injuries and she just kind of jokes that it’s an unexplainable miracle, but Peter is much more willing to talk about abilities and pushes just far enough to maybe twig that she is the root of him gaining healing abilities that saved his life. That might be what prompts him to give his address and phone number, in case she’s ever in New York and wants to get in touch. He can also mention Mohinder as a contact who is interested in regenerative abilities. Now we know why Claire is able to go to his address when she heads to New York and is looking for help there later.

Sticking in this scene, Matt and Audrey are obviously present as the FBI agents doing the questioning since the method of Jackie’s murder makes this a clear Sylar case, which lines up with the clues that brought them to Odessa in the first place. Here, Matt sees several familiar faces.

First, Mr Bennet and Rene, which puts him on edge, even if his kidnapper being Claire’s father kind of eliminates him as a Sylar suspect as Claire didn’t recognise the attacker. He also quickly pieces together that Rene is the one blocking his abilities. But on their way out, he sees someone else he recognises, talking to Bennet.

Its either, or possibly even both, Candice or Thompson. Candice could barge in on Matt and Audrey’s investigation, flashing badges. They are taking over the investigation of this case and the Sylar case in general. Audrey is irritated but they can’t argue. Then Matt turns a corner and BAM! There’s Thompson, by Bennet’s car, talking to him and Rene whilst Claire is waiting in the car to go home. Talking like old friends. Or even colleague. Matt hears just enough being thought before Rene notices and the thoughts go silent. And now Matt knows enough to put the pieces together – its Rene who is preventing him from reading minds.

Back at the Bennet home, all seems normal. Too normal. As if no one remembers the revelation Claire dropped only a day or two ago. Claire quickly prods enough to clarify. Neither Sandra nor Lyle have any idea what she’s talking about. And neither, it seems, does her father. Yup, Mr Bennet is going to be faking amnesia about Claire’s ability too because Thompson snooping around is way too dangerous. Better feign ignorance and hope being interrogated by the police convinces Claire to keep quiet and not try to reveal herself again. Claire calls Zack, and he’s surprised he’s even contacted her. He’s forgotten too and has no idea what tapes she’s talking about. And so, Claire is alone. She tries to sneak out to go and find Zack, but Rene stops her, warns her that he could wipe her memory too but that’s unfair. She will only discover it again eventually and the whole cycle could start again. So she gets to remember, but she must keep silent or bad people, like the man who killed Jackie, or those FBI agents, could come for her. He doesn’t tell her that he did what he did at Bennet’s behest. For now, Claire will believe that her father is just as ignorant as the rest of her family. It won’t yet occur to Claire that this has happened once before, when Lyle forgot seeing the tape of “attempt number six”.

But speaking to Peter prompted a thought, one that was brewing earlier when she wished to speak to her biological parents, and this will be her new goal. Find the truth.

The last scene of the Bennet’s in this episode shows Mr Bennet destroying the tapes of Claire’s self-destruction escapades earlier stolen from Zack, proving to the audience that he has not forgotten.

Claire’s search for her parents will be self-driven. She isn’t going to school, she has time to spare.

Sorry to add another retcon backwards into part one – let’s save the false meeting that Bennet arranges with Claire’s “biological parents” for this half. That time in part one can go to expanding Claire’s school life and peers, as before. Hell, let’s even move the lessons on lizards and their tail growing from Volume Two into Volume 1, part 1, so Claire’s learning about herself through those school lessons (no toe-cutting just yet though, that can wait). Bennet scrambles to pull some colleagues in for the ruse and thanks them and asks them not to tell Thompson, this is strictly off of Company time but he’ll compensate them. That way, the audience will more easily recognise the fake father as the doctor that Sylar kills later, we’ve seen him more recently. The same guy might even be our mystery telekinetic in a baseball cap who could have been Molly’s attempted abductor, with the fake mum being the “one of us” to his “one of them” pairing.

Claire isn’t convinced, and this is clue number one to her that her dad’s amnesia isn’t as genuine as it seems. She’s putting the pieces together. So she digs deeper.

Maybe she calls Zack for help. I don’t like leaving Zack behind in the first half of the season but I really can’t find much to do with him after this and leaving Zack with the school setting of Claire’s “old” life feels a tad more natural than bringing him briefly back, revealing her ability to him all over again to no real consequence and then him just ubering Claire to Meredith before disappearing entirely from the narrative. Maybe Claire calls him once to ask advice on using the internet to search for what she needs, but no more than that. She discovers articles about a fire and a survivor which lines up with the timeline of her own birth and visits Meredith as in the actual show. Meredith will call Nathan, confirming Claire’s parentage and the truth behind Linderman’s blackmail of Nathan but he won’t visit in person. Its too risky for him and too far to travel when he could just speak to her over the phone. So, Claire won’t see Nathan at all. Not yet.

This, coincidentally, lines up with Sylar’s escape from the Company and visit to the house. Claire isn’t away at school, she’s away visiting Meredith in a happy timing quirk which keeps her safe from the killer. When she gets back, ready to tell her mum that she found her birth mother and maybe on the edge of spilling the truth once more in her state of high emotion, but finds Sandra behaving oddly. She’s scolded about missing school. But school isn’t on, it was shut because of Jackie. Because of the murder. Sandra’s trauma over Sylar’s attack is triggered and causes a fit, and so she goes to hospital. But even now, Bennet hasn’t revealed his hand and Claire can’t accuse him of knowing the truth yet. Who Claire is growing more and more wary of is Rene, who admitted he has memory wiping powers and has clearly done this to Sandra and Lyle more than once. Claire starts wondering who her father really works for, just in time for them to return from hospital to another home invasion…

Let’s go back to Matt, now, since he’s also in the Bennet’s area.

Is he still going to attempt his raid on Primatch to catch Bennet? Um, yeah, he can do. It’s a fun scene and the idea of seeds being planted in Audrey’s mind against Matt is probably important. It plays out as before. Matt can’t break through Rene’s power and find his way through the secret door. There’s only paper. Plus, Candice is present. Matt and the team pass a receptionist who welcomes them sheepishly, before quickly turning back to Candice once out of sight and calling Thompson, saying she’ll “delay” the cops. Her powers could cause some fun shenanigans with doors before Matt confronts Bennet and Rene, quickly trailing off into demanding why he was kidnapped, accusing them of also hiding Molly, which really sends Audrey into a spiral.  “Is this about catching Sylar, Matt, or is it about this effed up kidnapping story?”

Thompson shows up just in time to give a stern warning and reassign Matt and Audrey to a new case – Ted Sprague – whose wife is sick with radiation poisoning. And its Matt’s last chance. Matt asks after Molly and Thompson says she’s living happily in New York now.

Matt starts getting texts from someone, codename: Wireless.

Primatech isn’t what it seems. Don’t trust Thompson. He is one of them. They took me too. We are against them. We are resisting. We are growing. Join us.

These messages keep coming in over the following episodes as the Ted Sprague case plays out as it did in the show, up to his escape. When Ted escapes, Matt is quick to blame Thompson and revisit his Primatech conspiracy theory and Audrey blows up at him. She’s heard enough. Yes, Matt’s been through some hard stuff lately but as a cop he should know better than to dream up conspiracies in which he is the hero to make himself feel better. They lost Sylar, now they lost Ted. Nothing makes sense, least of all Matt being a mind-reader. He might pick up on something in her mind that hits a bit too close to home and she loses it. Maybe that she just thinks of him as her pet mind-reader, not as an equal or a proper detective. Not even a proper cop. Tells him to go home, cool off. That he’s pretty much off the case and she will really need to chat to her bosses to convince them that he’s worth keeping around.

That’s when he finally talks back to Wireless, saying he’s in. She sends him a map to follow and there he meets her – Hana Gitelman – and Ted Sprague. She used to work for the Company, with Bennet, before she saw him betray a partner. Fearing the same would happen to her, she fled when the opportunity arose, helped Ted escape what was an inevitable recapture by the Company (thanks to Thompson’s airtight fake FBI cover), and she’s been watching Matt for a while. They all have a bone to pick with the Company and with Bennet, so its time to get some answers.

Why have I dedicated so much airtime to Claire and Matt this chapter? Because they are the two arcs that lead naturally into the episode Company Man.

Whilst most plotlines in this second half of the Volume tie into the overarching ‘How to Stop an Exploding Man’ plot, you can consider ‘Company Man’ to be its own mini-arc with that titular episode as its turning point. After Company Man, nothing is the same for Claire, her family or for Matt. Its as pivotal a moment as Homecoming is, and just like Homecoming it kind of a perfect episode. No notes. We don’t even need to add Hana to proceedings, though she could be present. She might also be elsewhere, watching from afar and doing reconnaissance via the internet. Claire will also learn in this episode – thanks to Matt’s mind-reading – that Bennet was lying about forgetting that she told him about her powers and, in fact, knew (or suspected) all along that she had powers. Her anger for this lie comes out briefly here, but as it hasn’t been bubbling and spurting for episodes and episodes, this is a little plant we can pay off later, without it coming off as repetitive.

One other change. Claire is going to be given a choice. She can sedate Ted, but she also picks up her father’s gun. She could shoot him, kill him, to stop his radioactive destruction, and from a further distance than she needs to stick a syringe in him, causing herself less harm. But ultimately, she chooses to let him live. Once more, she does a good thing even though it hurts her more, but she does it knowing she’ll survive. Maybe one day, she will need to make a true sacrifice for someone else.

The episode ends with Bennet, Matt and Ted in Company custody, Claire on the run with Rene and Hana (due to either absence from the home invasion or a strategic escape earlier on) waiting on the outside and able to lend a hand to her little resistance when the time is right.

Next up, we go back to Hiro, Mohinder goes on a bro-adtrip and Peter finally gets his time in the spotlight.

Chapter Text

How to Stop an Exploding Man

First you have to figure out who the exploding man is!

The last we saw Hiro, he was entering the Burnt Toast Diner after taking the long route back to Texas after his trip six months back in time, where he reunited with Ando. Following the last of Isaac’s series of paintings of the Homecoming incident, they follow the trail and run into the man himself, hopping off a bus and planning to head home after the Company helped to get him clean. Isasc still finds it difficult to paint, but with Hiro’s encouragement, he is able to create some sketches to help push Hiro in the right direction. One features the sword of Takezo Kensei, one is Hiro facing down the dinosaur, one is the image of Hiro killing Sylar with the sword (instead of it being in an unfinished comic) and the last is somewhat concerning – man exploding with nuclear force. This is where I think the show benefits once more from introducing Ted in this second half. We had the concept of the explosion destroying New York, now we see its source being a superpowered human, then we meet a very likely candidate for the human in question. It follows on neatly and helps keep the development of tension.

Isaac asks why Hiro can’t just time travel to the future again to stop the crisis or – more implied than spoken aloud – save him from his own murder. Ando has asked similar questions and Hiro admits he’s finding using his ability difficult right now. This is an aspect of Hiro’s ability that I think needs to be set in stone. He’s now performed two quite hefty time jumps; six weeks into the future and into a different continent, then six months into the past (in the same location but a much greater time leap). After both, he struggles to even teleport short distances or just stop time in his current location, let alone time travel. Hiro might put this down to some failure on his part but its actually just him tiring himself out. It takes tremendous energy to make a leap of that scale. That’s why they had to fly to America after Hiro jumped six weeks forward and back again (its easier when you’re panicking!) and six months after his last jump he doesn’t want to risk losing his abilities again on a frivolous leap forward when he might need his powers at full strength once he gets where he’s going. Besides, it looks like he needs a tool – the sword – to help him achieve his destiny. Though he’s wary that apparently his destiny involves killing a man. Ando points out that if that man is Isaac’s killer and the exploding man, killing him isn’t a bad thing. Hiro’s still not sure.

The pair part ways with Isaac, even though they are all on the same track to end up in New York. Before they get far, however, they are apprehended by Kaito Nakamura, there with Kimiko, there to bring Hiro home. Kaito tears up the pictures of the sword and of Hiro and the dinosaur, but not the other sketches Isaac gave Hiro. The pair are given an ultimatum: return to Japan, return to work, return to your responsibilities, or you’re fired. As in the show, Hiro speaks with Kimiko and convinces his father to give her full responsibility over the family business. He then tells them that he’s quitting his job. They can boss him around as family, but they can’t tell him how and where to work anymore. He’s going to do what he wants to do. Save the world. Then maybe open a comic shop/crime fighting business.

Ando doesn’t have the luxury of being the son of a wealthy businessman, however, and can’t just quit the way Hiro has. He has to go back to work or risk being fired. So, instead of Ando and Hiro splitting up a second time due to arguments over how Hiro uses his abilities and Ando’s greed, they are separated by Kaito’s interference. Ando will be absent for a little while, but he’ll be back.

Hiro travels the rest of the way to New York alone (remember how Stan Lee had a cameo as a bus driver? That made me so happy to see!), tries to steal the sword from a museum, sees it’s a replica with the original owned by Linderman and has to break into Linderman’s building to get the real sword, after seeking help from Isaac and running into Nathan again on the way – as in the show proper – who helps him get in by having Hiro deliver a painting, at the very same time that Nathan goes to meet with Linderman himself. The only difference is that they aren’t returning to Vegas for these events to take place, its all going to happen in New York, in a hotel that Linderman co-owns at Kirby Plaza. Hiro is then helped when he triggers the security system by Ando showing up. Ando tells Hiro that he quit his job too on the way to the airport and followed Hiro to New York, keeping an eye on him from afar and managing to sneak into the building and steal a security guard uniform and keycard which got him in here. Using the keycard, they flee to the roof… The roof of the Devaux building. Yes, that’s right, the Devaux building is now on Kirby Plaza, Charles owned the penthouse and he co-owned the building with his Company co-founder Linderman. With nowhere else to run and the real security guards hot on their tail, Hiro teleports them both to the same spot, five years into the future. I like the idea that we keep seeing this building throughout the story, its in some ways where Peter’s story begins and the other characters are drawn to it, and its also kind of where the tale ends.

Now to Peter. For Peter himself, I don’t see much need for change. After Matt and Audrey question him about the Homecoming incident, Nathan springs him out of jail and Peter faints on his way out, falling into a dream where friends and strangers run from him as he glows with nuclear energy and explodes. Nathan brings him back to New York where he lies comatose for a while. When he wakes up, he feels drawn into the street to a spot he saw in the reoccurring nightmare and runs into an Invisible Man.

Claude is one of my favourite characters in the show despite his short tenure and being kind of underutilised. And not just because Christopher Eccleston is just great, making the character incredibly memorable. The way he provides another link between Peter’s story and the Company is great. I’m going to keep myself reigned in and not take liberties by making him more of a lead. I just want to do more with him in the time we have, because Claude is the perfect character through whom we can learn more about the Company, providing more set up heading into the Company Man episode and insight into our antagonists and their motivations. Claude can tell us more about the Company founders – telling Peter (whilst training him how to control his wildly fluctuating abilities in fabulous trickster-mentor fashion) that Charles Devaux himself was one of those founders, as was Nathan’s patron Daniel Linderman. He stops just short of implicating Peter’s own parents but leaves the possibility open. Devaux took Claude in after the Company destroyed his life and let him hide out in his building, use his roof and take care of the pigeons. They had a good arrangement and Claude worries what will happen now Devaux is dead. Claude was privy to conversation that occurred on this very roof, he saw and heard Devaux trying to persuade Linderman not to go ahead with his plan to “heal the world” by killing millions. Between the two of them, Peter is clued into the plot and figure out that if Peter is the bomb, then he’s the linchpin of Linderman’s whole scheme. All the more reason to control his abilities and to warn Nathan that his patron isn’t to be trusted. Peter isn’t to know that around this point, Nathan has confronted Linderman himself and, between Linderman and Angela, he’s being swayed to the plan.

Peter wants to warn Nathan but Claude protests. Then Bennet shows up (Rene isn’t there because why would Rene allow Peter to fly away invisibly with Claude) to try and take Claude out. Bennet isn’t there on Company business, that’s why he’s alone. He’s desperate to take out loose ends who know about Claire, and Peter is as much a target as Claude is.

Here’s the thing about Claude – in the show, after Peter saves him from Bennet, he peaces out and is never seen again (minus the flashbacks in Company Man), and that just isn’t a satisfying character arc. Claude needs an ending. He deserves an ending! So he ditches Peter for now, but its not the last we’ve seen of him!

It’s been a while since we checked in with Mohinder. I don’t want to change much about his arc to begin with, save that when he returns from India to New York he finds a note left by Eden apologising that she’s left on work business. She also leaves him a business card with a number and address for a company called Pinehearst. It’s a biotech company with offices in New York… where else but on Kirby Plaza, right next to the Devaux building. In this version of events, the Company has two front organisations. Primatech paper – with head offices in Odessa, Texas – is the front for the bag-and-tag operation. That is, the capture and containment of superpowered individuals and tagging them for tracking or long-term imprisonment. Pinehearst is the front for its scientific and medical research.

And yes, this is where Arthur Petrelli is currently waiting, comatose, to be revived and take his revenge. But he will not be unearthed for another two seasons.

Mohinder pops in and chats to non-other than Thompson (seeing as Thompson is our kind of secondary antagonist to Big Bad Linderman, being more of a face for the bad side of the company, I think he ought to pop up more frequently than he did), who starts talking to him about the currently broken Walker system and that with their system and his list – once the system is working – they’ll be able to find anyone with powers. And with more research at their disposal, they could invent ways to remove powers, even ways to create powers.

Mohinder isn’t so sure, and saying he isn’t sure he can help fix their “system”, he leaves Pinehearst for now for his own pursuits. He seeks out Zane Taylor and opens the door to Sylar. And in this version, we won’t follow Sylar after Zane opens the door to him. We’ll just see Zane open his door and ask if the man he’s speaking to is Doctor Suresh, see Sylar standing there, cut to black. Then we see Sylar open the door to Mohinder and the first we see of Zane’s power is Sylar demonstrating it to Mohinder. Sylar and Mohinder have their bro-adtrip and I’m going to cut to the chase on something here.

Mohinder in my version of this story is gay. Rewatching the show, through seasons one and two, he came across to me as quite queer coded. He walks away from an engagement to a woman and can’t give his mother a reason why. His strained relationship with his father might come from Mohinder being different, but not in the way his father would have wanted. A move to America is a new start for him in many ways. His chemistry with Sylar in the few episodes they spend together (and Sylar in my writing is one of many characters I would also put explicitly on the bi-to-pan scale) is so clear that they still are a huge ship within the fandom. And there’s the little family set-up he gets with Matt and Molly in season two which is written so much like a true family dynamic that I am certain it was deliberately done so. In seasons three when he suddenly starts kissing Maya, it comes across as such a swerve that I could blame the homemade formula he injected himself with made him straight!

So yeah, Mohinder is gay now and he’s even more betrayed when lovely Zane turns out to be his father’s murderer.

After fucking calling Nathan instead of hauling Peter’s entire dead-ass body to the Petrelli mansion in his taxi completely inconspicuously, Mohinder returns to Pinehearst to take up Thompson’s offer and meets with Molly. He spends the next few episodes firmly cementing himself as Molly’s second dad, after Matt.

Other than what I’ve already mentioned, there isn’t much need to change Nathan’s plots save for the continuation of his conflict over spying on Linderman vs. working for Linderman, and once he’s spoken to the man in person for the first time since his father’s death, the slow, two-sided attack by Linderman and Angela on Nathan’s psyche that persuades him that their plan for New York will work. For Angela, its not so much about healing the world as putting Nathan in the White House. Its about power. A power that Arthur never achieved, but Nathan will. Linderman – “disciple” of a certain other Company founder with similar beliefs – truly does think this will heal the world. He’s been dreaming up this plan since the 1970s, he tells Nathan. There are many possible ways to make it happen. A plague, for instance. Or initiating a war. But those methods are dangerously unstable, targeting without mercy and without end, this is much more refined. And, he notes, most recorded instances that the Company has traced of the genetic mutation occurred after the nuclear bomb was developed, tested, used to slaughter. Linderman believes that nuclear energy and abilities are connected. He truly believes that the Exploding Man Plot will trigger genetic evolution in more of the species, allowing the evolved to inherit the earth. The last hurdles are electing Nathan to a position in which he can lead the current generation through the tragedy and so inspire the new one…

But how to ensure Nathan is elected to Congress when we don’t have tech-whizz Micah to make it happen.

I did say I had a plan.

Molly Walker.

You see, Molly can find people. But in this version, she doesn’t find people by imagining them and pointing to a map. She finds them by talking to machines. If she knows a person’s name, or sees a photo, she can ask a computer to use any connection to any other electronic device it can muster to access archives, records, security camera feed and secure encrypted data to find any information about them from their social security number to their last known recorded location. And she can also tell machines to do other things, like rig an election in favour of a particular candidate. So Thompson needs her to be cured of her illness, an illness she’s been suffering from since before the start of the series and spoke about to Matt, in time for the election. And Mohinder is able to achieve that in time for Candice to take her out to a voting booth.

When Mohinder finds out what Thompson had her do, who he’s working for (mob boss Linderman) and to what end, he is furious. He is determined to protect Molly and get her out of there.

That’s what brings Sylar to Kirby Plaza too for the final battle. Not just a painting of himself fighting Peter, but because he also paints or sketches Molly being at that location. With her ability and Mohinder’s list, he could have any power he wanted and its location at his fingertips. And being able to talk to machines and learn anything he could ever want to learn, maybe that will finally satisfy the deep, deep need to know how anything and everything works that is the blessing and curse of Intuitive Aptitude. None of this “Hunger” BS from Volume 3. Intuitive Aptitude is simply the ability to be able to understand perfectly how something works and replicate those mechanics instantly. Unfortunately, to make it work, the “something” needs to be taken apart and studied, and not everything can be cleanly put back together like a clock.

Seriously, to get away from Sylar all you’d need to do is scatter broken watches all over the ground behind you like that myth about leaving your clothes behind if a polar bear is after you. He’d have to stop and fix all of them.

Of course, in Five Years Gone (the best episode of the show ever made, no notes) we see where it all leads. Linderman was wrong. The world didn’t heal, it turned on itself. Nathan didn’t lead a new generation of evolved humans to inherit the earth, the humans turned on those who were different and dangerous and Nathan, seeing where the wind was blowing, bowed to their whims even before Sylar killed him. Sylar killed Molly, sending Matt and Mohinder into spirals of depression which led to Matt turning on the “evolved” and Mohinder blindly following “Nathan’s” word. All Sylar wants is the one ability that slipped away from him. He doesn’t even go to an easier target (a target who has been sitting in a jail cell for 30 years) to get it. He wants Claire Bennet because she got away the first time. He’s petty like that. But Claire is off the grid. New name. Barely any technology around her if she can help it. It takes Matt reading Bennet’s mind to finally find her.

Oh, and if Peter has a stripper for a girlfriend whose son died in the explosion, I guess that’s fine, she can be called Jessica, I don’t really care.

I want Future!Hiro to tell Ando a tale of Takezo Kensei which Ando later repeats to Hiro to motivate him before they teleport back to the present. Hiro is drained once again – no more big jumps for a while, he thinks, though Ando points out his jumps have been getting bigger and bigger with less recharge time required. Hiro is somewhat more traumatised by watching his future-self die in front of him than the show makes out, though.

So, our characters are converging on Kirby Plaza. Hana Gitelman helps Bennet, Ted and Matt break out of Primatech and get to New York to find and destroy this “new Walker tracking system Thompson keeps going on about”. There, they run into another helpful face. Claude. Yup, he’s gonna help them too.

Isaac and Symone both die like they do in the show proper. Rene brings Claire to New York, where she gives him the slip and runs to Peter’s apartment but finds Angela waiting, who reveals the missing part of Claire’s parentage to her. But she is going to stay with Angela until the final episode. She doesn’t go with Peter and find her father again. She won’t see him until the final episode of the season.

The police officer who Sylar tips off to Ted’s location won’t be Audrey, I’m afraid. Its Candice. The arrest happens away from Kirby Plaza when Peter meets up with Bennet and his resistance group after Claude brings him along to join them. The (fake) police showing up means the group has to split up, as Bennet, Hana and Matt recognise Candice and Claude and Peter go invisible. The convoy Sylar hijacks later is actually bringing Ted to Pinehearst to prepare him for being the bomb. When Ted dies, Candice reports back to Thompson, who informs Linderman, and Linderman says he’ll have to stay in New York longer than planned to ensure that Nathan either doesn’t find out Peter is the secondary bomb, or to ensure that Nathan doesn’t turn back on the plan if he finds out. With Ted dead, Peter speeds off to get out of New York but can’t get out by car and his attempts to fly keep failing. He passes out and has the dream/vision/memory of his mother talking to Charles Devaux.

Hiro goes through the motions of “The Hard Part” and “Landslide” as before, training with his dad and handing the sword of Takezo Kensei to Ando because it isn’t the sword that makes the hero, it’s the hero that makes the sword.

The resistance gang infiltrates Pinehearst. Matt and Bennett find Molly and resolve to protect her from the Company and from Sylar. Bennet kills Thompson, Claude will take out Candice (non-fatally). Linderman decides he’ll go out with the bomb (ensuring that Arthur Petrelli is taken out with him – that’s why Linderman has kept the comatose Arthur at close hand but refused to heal him. Unable to get close enough to kill him himself or order anyone else to, since Arthur’s mind-control would render the attempt useless and worse he could force Linderman to heal him, he always intended for the bomb to take Arthur out for good). Linderman does have to die so I think he ought to pull a “better to die than be killed” and go out a window when confronted by the resistance gang.

Either that or Sylar gets him when he tries to leave the building. Or he survives this season but is killed next season by the new Big Bad, but that would 1. make me a hypocrite because I hate the use of that trope particularly in the case of this show and 2. it would be breaking my own rules for Linderman to survive Volume 1. So, it’s either he throws himself out of a window or he gets Sylar’d trying to save his own skin. Pick your own, depending on how much dignity you’d like Malcolm McDowell to go out with, I guess.

Oh, and Linderman couldn’t heal Molly because healing powers can’t kill a virus, it would just multiply within her blood steam again, she needs Mohinder’s antibodies. Potential plot hole fixed.

Having united once more as allies and with mutual respect after Bennet saves Claude’s life in some way, Claude peaces out of the show with a more satisfying bow on his story. Bennet dips out in search of Claire after Molly tells him where to find her. Then Molly starts looking for Sylar but “he’s already here”.

Meanwhile, Claire tells Angela her plan is stupid and Nathan to go fuck himself and throws herself out a window too. She is the one to find Peter and then Bennet finds them both, tells Peter to “call him Noah” and they all head back to Kirby Plaza so Peter can delay Sylar.

Matt and Mohinder get Molly out of the building through the back, to safety. Hana can be the one to shoot at Sylar and get the bullets back at her (but she lives to see the comic spin offs, after all she’s promised Molly to help her out with her ability!).

Sylar and Peter have their punch up and its much more epic than the show because imaginary pitches have no budget constraints. Peter almost goes boom. Hiro shows up and stabs Sylar then teleports to who knows where (or when…). Claire takes Noah’s gun to shoot Peter before he explodes. Nathan – humbled by being told to go fuck himself – arrives and flies Peter up into the sky. Big boom. The cheerleader was saved. New York was saved. The world was saved. Molly has two daddies now. There’s a mysterious blood trail leading from where Sylar fell, not to a sewer but to the door of the Pinehearst building…

To be continued…

In Volume Two: Generations, as Hiro lands in a field as an eclipse covers the sky, a warrior in samurai armour wielding the sword of Takezo Kensei as a caption reads: Japan, 1671…

Chapter Text

I decided I hadn’t challenged myself enough, so even though I said at the top of this thing that I wasn’t planning on splitting the plot by episodes, I wanted to stretch and see if I could make it work.

In an ideal world, I would love to be able to sacrifice some episodes from the longer seasons in order to flesh out the shorter ones (mostly season 2 and to give Volumes 3 and 4 a bit more space as well).

So, Season One is going to get 19 episodes (I tried to cut it to 18 but couldn’t make it work). Season 2 is getting between 13 and 15, giving it a bit more breathing room but not adding so much that it becomes bloated and drags like the original Season One. Then we'll go back to 19 episodes for Season 3, so Fugitives and Villains will have a 10/9 episode split to account for both having a flashback episode and Vol. 3 having the Eclipse 2-parter. My mind is not yet made up on Redemption... or whatever may follow it (Reborn tease?) ...

Can I make it work? Let’s see how Genesis runs down in its new form…

Note : you might see some further adjustments and alterations from what was described in the previous chapters, this is just how things end up developing as you synopsise!

Episode One: Genesis

After hearing of his father’s murder, Mohinder Suresh travels to New York to find out what happened to him, and pick up on his research into human evolution. Hospice nurse Peter Petrelli dreams of flight whilst his brother Nathan campaigns for congress. Artist Isaac Mendez struggles with his additions and the terrifying visions of the future that he paints. In Texas, cheerleader Claire worries her healing abilities will mark her out as a freak, and in Tokyo, Hiro Nakamura struggles with his responsibilities, but is delighted to discover his time-bending powers, teleporting across the world to New York.

Episode Two: One Giant Leap

Hiro time travels more than a month into the future of New York City; there he finds Isaac dead, and witnesses a nuclear explosion.

Politician Nathan Petrelli tries to dismiss his recent self-propelled flight, and lies to his brother Peter about it. At a press event, he humiliates Peter in public by exposing his supposed “mental heath” issues.

Policeman Matt Parkman uses his telepathic powers to find a girl named Molly Walker, whose parents have been recently murdered by a serial killer called Sylar. Parkman is nearly arrested but his ability gets him assigned to the case, only to be kidnapped en-route home.

Claire’s heroic achievements are claimed by former friend Jackie, but she still catches the attention of quarterback Brodie… with deadly consequences.

Episode Three: Nothing to Hide

Matt is released from his kidnap by the Company with foggy memories, and starts using his abilities to get through to the traumatised Molly Walker, foiling an attempted abduction attempt.

Aided by Zack, Claire speaks to the cheerleaders and former cheerleader Lori to learn more about Brody’s crimes, and takes revenge by driving him into a wall.

Nathan holds a family breakfast to butter up the press, which is almost ruined by Peter. Later, Peter confronts Nathan, who reveals the truth about his ability to fly, and Peter is able to mimic it.

Hiro and Ando fly to Las Vegas, where Ando persuades Hiro to cheat some high-rollers using his abilities.

Aided by neighbour Eden, Mohinder continues to investigate his father’s death, finding the apartment belonging to Sylar, but finds it cleaned out when the police arrive.

Episode Four: Entrapment

In hospital, Claire confronts Brody about his crimes. When her father learns what he did, he orders Rene to scrub Brody’s memory. Returning to school, Brody is barely himself and Zack’s camera is missing. Mr Bennet watches the stolen footage, learning of Claire’s manifested ability.

Though Hiro wants to move on from Vegas, Ando tries to persuade him to help a waitress in distress, named Hope. When Hiro refuses, Ando turns his back on him.

Nathan is encouraged by the FBI to uncover Linderman’s criminal dealings. Peter asks Nathan to retrieve paintings from Linderman. However, in Vegas, Nathan is blackmailed with entanglements from his past to break ties with the FBI.

Peter finds Mohinder and encounters a mysterious version of Hiro on a train.

Episode Five: Don’t Look Back

The mysterious future-Hiro delivers the message ‘Save the Cheerleader, save the World’ to Peter. Charles Devaux passes away.

Mohinder discovers a USB left hidden by his father but it is password protected.

In Vegas, Nathan is kidnapped by Bennet and Rene, but escapes. Meeting Hiro at a diner, the a conversation compels Hiro to return for Ando. On his return, he is given the paintings he asked for. Meanwhile, Ando discovers he has gotten in too deep with a con-woman.

Matt continues to get through to Molly, even getting her to speak.

Episode Six: Hiros

Returning to Vegas, Hiro is found by the high rollers, who are in pursuit of Ando and Hope, believing Hiro to be in league with them. Discovering the pair, Hiro saves Ando’s life and several onlookers from a car explosion.

Seeking more answers from Isaac, Peter successfully calls Hiro and delivers the message to ‘save the cheerleader’. Following clues in the comic, Hiro and Ando continue on to Texas.

Eden brings Isaac to Texas to paint the future on Bennet’s orders, whilst Claire prepares for the upcoming Homecoming game.

Matt is separated from Molly when special agent Thompson claims to have found a foster home for her in New York.

Episode Seven: Seven Minutes to Midnight

At the Burnt Toast Diner in Texas, Hiro gets to know a waitress only for her to be murdered. News of the murder makes its way to Audrey, who brings Matt with her on the trail of Sylar.

Nathan attempts to destroy paintings that could lead to Peter being harmed, but Symone passes on the information to Peter.

Bennet forces Isaac to paint whilst high.

Mohinder returns to India for his father’s funeral and finds answers in dreams.

Episode Eight: Homecoming

Eden helps Isaac to get clean.

Mohinder learns the truth about his sister, and unlocks his father’s “list”.

Claire is grounded for punching Jackie but Zack helps her make it to the Homecoming game, revealing his own secret to her.

Peter makes it to Texas in time to save Claire from Sylar, but Jackie is murdered and Peter is arrested by Matt and Audrey. Eden and Rene are waiting to capture Sylar as he flees the scene.

Claire reveals her abilities to her whole family.

Episode Nine: Six Months Ago

Hiro finds himself six months in the past, falling in love with the waitress Charlie.

Nathan and his wife are the victims of a hit ordered by Linderman, after Nathan threatens to prosecute the mobster and bring his own father down with him. Before anyone can testify, Arthur Petrelli is said to have killed himself.

Claire’s cheerleading dreams are almost scuppered by an injury.

Chandra Suresh brings a watchmaker named Gabriel Gray under his wing, unknowingly creating the monster known as Sylar, whilst Bennet scopes out Suresh to find out what he knows.

Matt Parkman discovers he can read minds, with devastating consequences to his marriage. 

Episode Ten: Fallout

This episode is almost entirely set in Odessa, dealing with the aftermath of the Homecoming incident. Matt Parkman and Audrey interrogate Claire Bennet and Peter Petrelli about the Homecoming incident, but when Claire returns home, no one remembers her revelation about her abilities, leaving her feeling lost. She grows suspicious of her father’s colleague Rene.

Hiro and Ando cross paths with Isaac, reaffirming his own ability to draw the future without heroin, and assuring Hiro that his weakened powers will return. Each is resolved to take the next step in their journey, with Hiro in pursuit of a sword and Isaac in possession of a gun given to him by the Company.

Nathan collects Peter from jail, only for Peter to fall into a terrifying dream in which he explodes with nuclear energy, and from which Nathan is unable to wake him.

Here there is a short mid-season hiatus, which also encompasses a short time skip in-universe.  

Episode Eleven: 0.7%

Some time after the events at Homecoming, Claire – once again keeping the secret of her abilities to herself – asks to meet with her biological parents.

Matt Parkman leads a failed FBI raid on Primatech – not knowing Sylar is held captive within the very building – and agent Thompson reassigns Parkman and Audrey to a new case – Ted Sprague – with Matt on his final warning. Matt starts receiving messages from a mystery person named ‘Wireless’ who reassures him that he should be suspicious of Bennet… and of Thompson.

Eden attempts to kill the imprisoned Sylar but is murdered.

Returning to New York, Mohinder Suresh follows a note left by Eden which leads him to Pinehearst Biotech, where he is introduced to Molly Walker, a girl infected with the virus that killed Mohinder’s sister. He donates blood in an effort to cure her and promises to return when he knows more.

Isaac reunites with Symone after getting clean in their time apart, but continues to paint devastating futures, to his distress. He begins work on a new run of Ninth Wonder comics.

Hiro and Ando are waylaid by Hiro’s father Kaito. Hiro quits his job, giving his sister his role of future CEO, but Ando must return to Japan.

Nathan meets in person with Daniel Linderman, who explains his a plan which will allow the evolved to inherit the earth, at the expense of 0.7% of the population.

Episode Twelve: Godsend

Claire meets with her so-called biological parents, but is left sceptical after the awkward conversion. The man hired to play her father returns to work as a doctor at Primatech, discovering a seemingly dead Sylar, only to be killed himself. Sylar imprisons Mr Bennet and escapes the facility.

Parkman and Audrey pursue the radioactive trail of Ted Sprague, discovering him at his dying wife’s side and allowing him to grieve before taking him in.

Still haunted by dreams, Peter sees a new face and hears odd conversations between Charles Devaux and his mother. Waking from his coma, he sets off in pursuit of the invisible stranger.

Hiro tries to steal Godsend - the sword of Takezo Kensei - from a museum, only to discover it is a replica and go through time-bending shenanigans to return it.

Angela Petrelli continues to talk Nathan around to the plot to destroy New York, planting in his mind the desire to become president.

Episode Thirteen: Run

Claire travels to meet her biological mother, Meredith. At the same time, Sylar invites himself into the Bennet house to wait for his prey and steal Bennet’s files, being chased off by Bennet and Rene before Claire’s return, though with terrible damage done to Sandra.

Peter meets the invisible man from his dreams and convinces him to train him to control his abilities.

Linderman meets with Nathan at home and heals Heidi. (Nathan learning from a kind-seeming  mentor with malevolent inventions and Peter from an antagonistic but well-intentioned mentor is a deliberate parallel).

Mohinder continues to meet with Molly as she is treated for her illness, and she talks to him about her other hero – the policeman who saved her from a serial killer called Sylar. Molly’s nurse – Candice – assigns Mohinder to find several superpowered individuals and let them know about Pinehearst, starting with Zane Taylor.

Matt and Audrey interrogate Ted Sprague, Ted and Matt realise they were both kidnapped by the same man, and Matt continues to exchange messages with the mysterious “Wireless”. When Thompson shows up to take Ted Sprague to a secure facility, Matt accuses Thompson of being part of a conspiracy. When Ted escapes from custody, Audrey accuses Matt of helping him and throws him off the case.

Following the stolen files, Sylar arrives at the home of Zane Taylor and is invited inside…

Meredith calls Nathan Petrelli to tell him that their daughter found her, and requesting money for her silence. Claire returns home and and witnesses Sandra suffer a seizure after she talks about the Homecoming murder.

Episode Fourteen: Unexpected

Matt Parkman meets Hana Gitelman – Wireless – and the escaped Ted Sprague, and they set out to find answers from Bennet.

Claude teachers Peter about the history of the Company and the machinations of Angela Petrelli and Linderman. Peter tracks down Nathan to warn him about the impending explosion, but after learning he’s been converted by Linderman to believing in the plan, Peter flees again.

Hiro meets with Isaac, just as Isaac sends off his final copies of Ninth Wonders and his sketchbooks away with a courier. When Nathan arrives, looking for Peter, he sets Hiro the task of delivering a painting to Linderman. Nathan warns Isaac that Peter has become dangerous. Isaac hides paintings of himself being murdered from Symone. Later, Peter arrives at Isaac’s loft in search of answers, frightening Isaac, but when he shoots towards a noise, he finds that he has killed Symone by mistake.

Mohinder meets “Zane Taylor” – actually Sylar – and they set off for Pinehearst, running into a mechanic with super-hearing along the way. Sylar returns later and murders her.

Claire learns the truth about her father and the Company whilst Sandra recovers from her seizure in hospital. They return home to find Parkman, Sprague and Gitelman have broken in, demanding answers.

Episode Fifteen: Company Man

Flashbacks reveal Bennet’s recruitment to the Company, work with Claude, taking on the assignment of protecting Claire, and how his betrayal of Claude caused Gitelman to go on the run from the Company. When Ted threatens to go nuclear, Hana gets Sandra and Lyle to safety and Claire helps her father out of the building. Torn between killing Ted and injecting him with a sedative, Claire pushes her ability to the limit to avoid murdering the man.

Ted and Matt are captured by Thompson, and knowing he will be caught too, Bennet puts Claire into Rene’s care, taking a bullet and allowing them to escape.

Episode Sixteen: Parasite

Bennet, Matt and Ted break out of company custody, reuniting with Hana and saying farewell to Sandra before heading to New York to destroy their new tracking system.

Candice and Thompson help Isaac cover up Symone’s death.

Mohinder drugs and interrogates Sylar, but his attempt to kill his father’s murderer is interrupted by Peter, allowing Sylar to escape and seemingly kill Peter in the process. Mohinder calls Nathan and they bring Peter’s body to the Petrelli mansion.

Claire attempts to get away from Rene, and to find Peter in New York, arriving at the Petrelli mansion just in time for her healing abilities to save him, and learning the truth about her parentage. Sylar goes to Isaac’s loft and kills him.

Hiro delivers the painting to the Devaux building and breaks into his storage room to take the Godsend sword. When he triggers the alarm, he is rescued by Ando, and they flee to the roof. Hiro teleports them five years into the future.

Episode Seventeen: Five Years Gone

Hiro and Ando navigate a future in which the explosion killed thousands and turned humanity against people with abilities, an agenda pushed by President Nathan Petrelli, who is really Sylar posing as the long-dead Nathan. No notes on this episode except to say that Molly’s death in the explosion was what jaded both Matt and Mohinder, and they are explicitly antagonistic towards each other because neither of her “heroes” were there to save her.

Traumatised by seeing his future-self die, Hiro is only able to save himself and Ando after Ando motivates him with a tale of Takezo Kensei, which was earlier relayed to him by the future-Hiro. Unfortunately, Godsend has been broken.

Episode Eighteen: The Hard Part

On election day, Candice takes Molly Walker to rig the vote in Nathan’s favour.

Mohinder returns to Pinehearst to take a job with them.

Hiro goes to get his sword repaired and comes across his father, who trains him in swordsmanship.

Peter tracks down Claude – who is in the middle of fleeing the city – and they discover Bennet, Matt, Hana and Ted on the way in. Peter and Ted agree that they should both leave New York, but en-route they are caught by Thompson. Peter escapes by Ted is captured. Peter than sees Nathan’s election victory on TV and turns back, resolving not to be a coward and to try to talk to his brother one last time.

The rest of the resistance group break into Pinehearst, but are shocked to discover that the Walker system is a child. They decide to rescue her from exploitation by Pinehearst and potential death in the explosion. Claude takes out Candice when she tries to twist reality to stop them from getting away, and Thompson confronts Matt, who seems to be pushing Thompson with mind control before Bennet steps in and kills Thompson outright.

Unfortunately, the building goes into lockdown with no way out, and Linderman himself in their way.

Sylar visits his mother, but after killing her in an accident, believes it is his destiny to be the bomb. He intercepts the convey transporting Ted to Pinehearst and kills him, taking his ability.

Episode Nineteen: How to Stop an Exploding Man

The traffic jam caused by Sylar’s toppling the truck carrying Ted, and general celebration over the election results, prevents Rene and Claire from driving out, so they return to wait for a helicopter with Nathan and Angela. Claire gives a speech to tell Nathan how much of an idiot he’s been for following Linderman’s plan and leaps out of a window. Rene then reveals that he called off the helicopter, leaving the Petrelli’s to think about what they’ve done.

Linderman tries to turn the Company resistance force to agree with his plan, to no avail. When he learns that his escape route is gone, he says he’ll gladly die in the explosion, as he’s sure all will go as he believed.

Hana teaches Molly more about her abilities. Molly tells Bennet where to find Claire and lifts the lockdown on the building. Bennet and Claude leave together and go their separate ways with mutual respect.

However, Molly then realises that Sylar is in the building. She is able to help navigate a safe way out, and Hana remains behind to cover them.

Hiro has a final talk with his father about his responsibilities, then swaps out the sword of Takezo Kensei for one from the shop, giving Godsend to Ando.

Sylar finds and kills Linderman, and Hana then has to stay away from him in a very horror-movie-esque scene, because Sylar is at his scariest when he is operating on horror movie killer logic.

Peter makes his way through New York when he has one final attack of his powers overwhelming him, and a motivating dream of Charles Devaux. Bennet finds Claire and they both find Peter. Bennet tells Peter, "call me Noah”. They all head to Kirby Plaza to reunite with the rest of the  resistance group. Unfortunately they are met by a terrified Hana, who is flung aside by telekinesis. Noah shoots at the implacable Sylar and has bullets reflected back at him. Peter is able to pin Sylar down and they fight. Peter starts going nuclear and Sylar threatens to kill him, only for Hiro to teleport in and run Sylar through, but Sylar sweeps him into the air before he can teleport Peter to a safe place. Hiro teleports away. Claire takes Noah’s gun and makes to kill Peter but Nathan arrives and flies him into the sky, where an explosion lights the night.

A few days later, Nathan and Peter are missing, presumed dead. Claire and Noah reunite with Sandra and Lyle and they prepare to go into hiding. Matt and Mohinder are seen with Molly, visiting Hana in hospital. Rene is also going into hiding. And a trail of blood leads from Kirby Plaza to the door of the Pinehearst building…

Ando is at the Devaux building with Kaito, commenting that Hiro has been missing too, but unlike the Petrelli’s no one has put up missing posters for him. As Kaito comments that he is sure Hiro is okay, as he trusts his son, Ando discovers that the handle of Godsend is hollow, and contains scrolls.

Cut to Hiro’s materialisation in Japan, 1671, as an eclipse covers the sky…

Chapter Text

I am kinder to Generations, I think, than most people. I genuinely think – given my recent rewatch – that it actually holds up for the majority of episodes (or many of the subplots do. Not all, which we’ll get to). Some even have solid beginnings, middles, and endings. There’s a fantastic twist and reveal for its main villain, and its secondary antagonists are pretty strong, too. Like season one, it builds nicely to a mid-season reveal and cliffhanger, followed by a flashback episode to fill in some gaps, much like season one did after Homecoming, with Six Months Ago.

However, after Four Months Ago, the season only has three episodes remaining and it just cannot bring everything it set up to a conclusion in that time. So many subplots are left as if they are on a mid-season hiatus, without the gravitas that a finale should give them, and instead of carrying on into the following season, Villains instead resets most characters to a new start, leaving their arcs in Generations like roads that go nowhere. Lost in the ether.

Much has been said about the original plan for the virus to be released and the season to conclude in a new Volume – Exodus – which would have seen Maya’s subplot concluded with more satisfaction, though it’s not clear how new characters like Monica, or pre-existing ones like Mohinder, Matt, or Sylar would have played a part, if at all. We will never know whether that would have worked better than the ending we actually got for Generations, nor whether Villains would have been stronger afterwards? The writers’ strike happened, the writers were justified in striking just as they (and the actors) are justified in the current strike at the time of writing. The reasons why these things happened are not for me to dwell on here.

The sudden stop really is the season’s biggest problem, but there are other cracks. For a start, the title. Generations. This season promised answers about the past. Sure, we do learn a bit more about the Company and at least two more of its founding members but if anything, Villains fulfilled the ‘sins of the fathers’ (or father, I guess) premise more so than Generations did, and Fugitives gave more answers as to the Company’s past. Volume Two could have been called Virus, or Plague, or maybe even Bloodlines (which implies dealing with generational or familial secrets and hints towards healing blood being a huge aspect of the season) and it would have fit.

So, what are our strengths and weaknesses with this season? What are we keeping, what are we expanding on and what just needs an all-out fix (or scrapping altogether)?

Strong subplots

• Mohinder and Bennet and their infiltration of the Company. I love how Mohinder is introduced in this season as being recruited by the Company, then at the end of episode one its revealed that he’s been working with Noah Bennet the whole time to get himself recruited so they can take the Company down in a double-pronged attack. Then Mohinder gets brainwashed by Bob and turned away from Bennet due to the latter’s lack of morality. Its great. And it (Bennet having to deal with his daughter’s awful subplot and some muddling for Mohinder where Nikki shows up aside) stays It comes to a fantastic conclusion that also brings in aspects of Claire’s arc. Its one of the plots I’m really going to latch onto as a centrepiece for this season.
  
  
• Matt, Molly, and the murder mystery… to a point. I love the little family dynamic between Matt, Mohinder and Molly. I love how they are written in the scenes they have together in the early episodes. The concern both adults have for their adopted child is written in such a genuine way, and you could place those lines in the mouths of any actual couple in a show. The only thing in this show is that Matt and Mohinder are never confirmed to be a couple in the romantic sense. Matt – in his new capacity as a police detective – is brought in to investigate the murder of Kaito Nakamura and I love me a good murder mystery.
  
  But then it kind of gets sidetracked. Maury’s role in the murder plot isn’t very well explained and Matt sort of has to rush to get to Adam and Peter by the finale and then barely participates (much like most of the season is rushing to the finish line). But I like that Matt teams up with Nathan (odd couplings of characters who didn’t meet in a prior season but are brought together in a subsequent one is a favourite trope of mine) and they could make a great Detective-Assistant team, tracking down a murderer and solving what happened to Peter, if given the proper amount of time to flesh it out.

• Hiro and Takezo Kensei. Here’s where I show my hand. People hate the Hiro-in-Japan subplot. I love it more and more every time I rewatch this season. It isn’t perfect, it is far from perfect, and perhaps my love for it stems more from what it doesn’t show than what it does. From where my brain fills in the gaps based on what’s revealed later. But for Hiro… this is his best season. The narrative never has to go out of its way to depower him. He faces conflict that leads to character growth (despite said growth being reset in the next season), and the show creates a true hero-rival relationship with so much potential (again, sadly not fully explored due to Vol. 3 being the worst). What I want to do is to explore that potential with a bit more onscreen clarity.
  
  
• The new characters (especially the villains). I’m mainly talking about the Bishops. Bob is kind of the lead antagonist for the season before Adam shows his face in the present day, kind of how Linderman and Angela overshadowed the overarching plot of season one, and Elle is just a lot of fun, perhaps the most “comic book” character the show had introduced up to that point. Even Tim Kring admitted that Elle and Bob were the best integrated of the new characters because they were introduced as part of already running subplots, as opposed to Maya and Alejandro who were brought in completely separately and interact with only one established character until the finale (and not even meeting him until episode four). That isn’t to say that the ideas behind Maya, Alejandro, or even Monica are complete failures. They are all good characters in their own right. They just need to contribute to the complete narrative.

Weak subplots

• Nikki. It goes without saying, Nikki wanders around this season with even less to do than in season one. She doesn’t even show up until episode 3 and that’s just to drop off Micah with his grandmother (and we met DL’s mother in season 1, so is Micah staying with his great aunt? Or his great grandmother (DL’s grandmother)? Or did the writers just forget?). She disappears again, pops up at the company for like, two episodes to apparently partner with Mohinder, but doesn’t, gets infected weith the virus, disappears again, then returns to Micah just to be unceremoniously killed off, just as her husband is unceremoniously killed off and it isn’t even because he was shot at the end of Season 1. But we’ve cut Nikki from our version of the show, so we won’t need to worry about her in our rewrite.
  
  
• Claire and the boyfriend drama. Good lord, this is the original sin subplot for Claire Bennet. West is an awful character. Just the worst. And I don’t mean badly written, I mean he’s a bad person, incredibly condescending and irritating and I cannot see any teenage girl falling for his schtick, let alone Claire. Its like she regresses in age. She grew up over season 1, why is she acting this way, except to give her a reason to have conflict with her father which is all the writers seem to know what to do with her. Like they said, “hm, what do teenagers do? Argue with their parents.” And that’s Claire Bennet for the rest of the show. Arguing with her dad, who is almost always in the right, by the way, even if his methods are “morally grey”.
  
  There is potential, though. West was kidnapped by Noah as a child. When he sees Noah, he rightly freaks out. Noah and West both have beef with the Company. Bob and Noah and Elle and Claire are great foils. This subplot is not unsalvageable. It’ll take work, but its work I’m willing to put in.

• Peter in Ireland. After season one, the risk became that giving Peter a handle on his powers would make him too powerful, so the writers gave him amnesia and shipped him off to Ireland. Peter stays mostly separate from everything else happening this season until its revealed he was Adam’s pawn all along. But by then, its too little too late. With only three episodes for Peter to meet back up with Adam, have the plan explained to him, follow along and then realise he’s been played by a villain and save the day. The rushed nature has the unfortunate side effect of making Peter seem like a complete idiot, to be duped and just go with it, no question. Like most everything else after ‘Four Months Ago’, rushed. I don’t like amnesia plots at the best of times but I don’t think Peter’s time in Ireland is necessarily terrible. It just needs to be balanced with what happens after he meets back up with Adam, so he can retain his braincell (because let’s face it, the main characters of this show tend to share one braincell between them and at any given time its usually with Noah or Nathan).

• Sylar and his glorified uber drivers. And this subplot didn’t begin weak. Maya and Alejandro start the show with a lot of promise. Fascinating powers that tie into their strained relationship, tension in their fleeing from the law to America for answers. Then they come across Sylar and actually the scenes they have – as scenes – are still quite strong, as we know the danger the twins are in whilst Sylar manipulates Maya into trusting him and not Alejandro. And then… it just falls off in the last couple of episodes. Sylar somehow trains Maya into controlling her powers because… she just conquers them instantly? Then they reach Mohinder in New York and Maya spends the episode either in a corner with Molly or dead and a guinea pig for the healing blood (which we, the audience, already know works). The spotlight goes back to Sylar since the episode is basically just his reset button back to full power. And yeah, its great to see Sylar and Mohinder interact again but it doesn’t have any impact on any other storyline. It doesn’t need to. The Shanti virus is destroyed elsewhere. And Maya then hangs around for half a season more even though she has nothing to do. Character wasted. So can we make Maya matter?

Last points of significance. Let’s make some clarifications about the Company.

I think we need to establish some ground rules about the Company, because in Season 1 its fine that they are something of a mystery force, but as we move into further seasons and it becomes clear that they are bigger than just one facility operating out of Primatech Paper in Texas, the rules become murkier and it gets hard to track where certain places are.

We know that there must be:

• A bag-and-tag operation that tracks people with abilities, based out of Primatech Paper factory and warehouse, Odessa, Texas. This facility has a small number of holding cells of different security levels: including the ones with observation windows and a concrete slab bed for longer-term, high-security prisoners – where Sylar is held – and some larger, windowless cells with cot beds for lesser risk, short-term prisoners not under medical observation – Bennet, Ted, and Matt – and at least one nicer, more medical-facility-esque room where Isaac spends his time getting clean.

In the show, this building also holds a high-security vault containing important materials (including the sample of the highly infectious and deadly Shanti virus variant). We are going to move this location, however, so for rewrite purposes the Odessa Primatech facility is just used for short-term confinement and a central base for the bag-and-tag tracking operation.

• A facility in California, run by Bob Bishop. This facility contains long-term confinement cells on several levels for prisoners of different threat levels, including Level Five which is reserved for the most dangerous super-criminals. There is also a laboratory and medical facilities.
• The Pinehearst company, which appears to be a bio-chemistry research facility and in the show proper seems to be adjacent to but not technically part of the Company, and is in New Jersey. In our rewrite, we’ve already made Pinehearst a more public facing front for research into abilities and relocated it to Kirby Plaza, New York City.

For clarity, I’m going to cement down the following locations:

Primatech Paper’s main base of operations is in its central warehouse in Odessa, but there are factories dotted across the states which are fronts for Company containment cells and storage.

Pinehearst Biotech – the Company’s research and development division – has locations in New York, New Jersey and California, and offices in Montreal, Canada. The Company started with the New York Pinehearst location owned jointly by Charles Devaux, the Petrellis and Daniel Linderman, and later branched out into these secondary facilities.

So, what do we want to achieve here?

On a character level, Claire needs to keep her growth from season one and not lose all likability. Peter needs to not lose all his intelligence. Matt’s murder investigation needs to not run out of steam so that he feels key to the climax of the season. Overall, a stronger connection needs to be made between the murder mystery, the plot to destroy the Company and the virus. A satisfying conclusion is our main goal here. Something that brings the characters together by the end the same way they were in season one, instead of them remaining so desperate. And an avoidance of the rushed nature of the final episodes which left the virus feeling like an underwhelming MacGuffin. This should feel like a complete season, not half a season.

We also want to give this season some structure. A bit of a genre to follow. And it already has a perfect set up, the thread just needs to be pulled that little bit tighter.

If volume one was about self-discovery and stopping a political mass-murder/domestic terrorism conspiracy, then volume two is going to be a murder mystery, where the murders uncover the sins of the past.

And the title of the volume is Bloodlines.

Chapter Text

Before we flash forward to the majority of the plotlines, I want to dedicate this chapter to the past. To what Hiro Nakamura is getting up to for the first half of the season and put some more flesh on what we got.

At the end of season one, Hiro landed in a field just as an eclipse started, in the middle of a battle between a small group of raiders and a warrior carrying the distinctive Godsend sword. We’re going to make a couple of additions in this first scene. First – whilst Whitebeard’s men are distracted by the eclipse and Hiro is distracted by seeing Takezo Kensei supposedly in the flesh – a couple of arrows fell one or two of Whitebeard’s men. They fire back in retaliation and Hiro stops time to protect himself and “Kensei”.

Important note: Hiro stops time during an eclipse, ergo eclipses stopping powers is nonsense, keep that one in the back pocket for Volume 3.

Hiro moves the arrows that are going to strike “Kensei” out of the way, also moves more arrows that would have hit Whitebeard’s men, then teleports himself and “Kensei” away. But we don’t follow them. Instead, we cut to the woods as time restarts, where someone is crouched in the trees with a crossbow, but all we see is the crossbow and their gloved hands in close up for now, as an arrow slams into the tree trunk beside them, startling them.

From there, episode one proceeds as previously. The false Kensei gives the sword back to Hiro and flees and Hiro meets the real Kensei, a white British man, a drunk who collects bounties by having other people dress in armour and distract his target whilst he snipes from afar. “Fighting smart,” he claims, whilst Hiro protests he’s “fighting dirty.”

They return to town but its been ransacked, the blacksmith has been captured by Whitebeard and the blacksmith’s daughter Yaeko takes the sword back from Kensei. In the legends that Hiro read as a child, the Blacksmith’s daughter was an important character and eventually became Kensei’s princess, and Hiro instantly recognises that Yaeko is this character. He’s as astounded by her presence as Kensei’s because it proves he’s walked into the legends. And the first story of Kensei was that of the rescue of the Blacksmith.

So, Hiro takes the armour whilst Kensei is sleeping and not only helps Yaeko (who holds her own against Whitebeard, by the way), but also uses his ability to full on rescue her father (and the bandits are travelling at this stage – they ransacked the town, took the blacksmith and were on track to take him to another town – after Hiro takes their weapons they flee). The Blacksmith is not a Macguffin being held in captivity by Whitebeard all season, he’s an active part of this storyline.

Next big change is that we are not leaving the other big revelation about Kensei for another episode. The first episode of the season ends with Whitebeard – alone  or possibly with one or two identifiable cronies – catching Kensei outside in the dark and unarmoured and shooting him before fleeing into the night. Hiro finds him and gets him inside. He laments that he broke history and goes to find Yaeko and her father. The episode ends with the wound from where Hiro pulled out an arrow healing and Kensei opening his eyes. That’s the episode one cliffhanger, not Peter.

The majority of episodes following this involve Hiro teaching Kensei to be a hero, enacting the legends that he read as a child, then writing his exploits and hiding the scrolls in Godsend. He recalls – as does Ando in the present, reading along – that Kensei was said in some of the legends to have had a sidekick of sorts. One Ando claims to the restorer was clearly an addition to children’s retellings to add some comedy and appeal for young readers. The assumption Hiro makes, along with Ando and the audience, is that it was him all along.

But with that comes another realisation. A more horrific one. The sidekick who would occasionally pop up was – in some telling’s of the legends, depending on translation – occasionally conflated with the dragon who taught Kensei the way of the sword, the same dragon who would covet the blacksmith’s daughter and be Takezo Kensei’s undoing.

Its probably quite clear to the audience what this will end up meaning but Hiro doesn’t think that way. He thinks about how he changed the future once by stopping the exploding man. If he could do that, he can stop this future too. He won’t become a dragon.

And yet… he finds himself falling in love with Yaeko all the same.

I also want to expand here a bit on Kensei’s background. It probably won’t actually have time to be explored in the show but I had thoughts so I’m sharing them. Here's the thing about the accent David Anders is using. It wavers. Most notably, when he raises his voice in excitement or anger. But I don't think that's a mark against the actor, and whether or not its deliberate, it works. Because the veering remains within Britain. He'll stray from the usual RP and towards something more regional that is considered more "working class".

I think this works because it implies that Kensei’s accent isn’t genuine. He isn’t a high-born Brit like he pretends to be. His background is more likely regional or rural. He was born and raised working class. Let’s say, somewhere on the outskirts of London. After all, the accent does veer in that direction occasionally. But this boy – whatever name he was raised under, possibly Adam, possibly not – had aspirations. He wanted more. He became a thief, learned how to “fight smart”, and by young adulthood had enough money to both masquerade as someone of a higher class and buy his way onto a ship to Europe. After all, a thief makes enemies and there are people in London who know who he really is and could expose him.

He gets to the Netherlands – who are trading with Japan at the time – and learns he could make his fortune there, so hops on another boat and sails across, getting into the country. Probably steals a bunch of the goods that were being traded so he can get some money in his pocket, cons or steals or murders to get his armour and starts his bounty-hunting con and building the name and reputation of Takezo Kensei. Makes it to the town Hiro finds himself in and commissions the Godsend from the blacksmith shortly before Hiro’s arrival. He isn’t planning to stick around once he has the sword, he was probably going to short change the blacksmith out of his money. Hiro’s arrival and the discovery of his ability changes his direction in life completely.

Next big change, perhaps the biggest. In the show, it’s not clear how long Hiro is in the past for but it doesn’t seem to be long. A few weeks. A few months at most. All the little group seems to do is find some map pieces which take them to Whitebeard’s camp.

In this rewrite, Hiro is in Japan for a several years. Like, up to five years. Enough time for word of Takezo Kensei’s adventures to spread. For the town to benefit from what he gains in treasures or payments for helping people out. It grows from a small village to a full township with much more splendid buildings and resources. Kensei is essentially a lord. He and Yaeko aren’t married but more and more often, people refer to her as his princess. And it isn’t like being referred to as like-royalty is going to go to the head of a man with aspirations of nobility and what he sees as a god-given ability to never be harmed…

Yaeko also knows he can heal, by the way, and so does her father. They saw him heal from the arrow wounds when Hiro brings them to mourn his apparent death in episode two.

So, years pass. Kensei is a hero. Yaeko and Hiro are by his side. But almost all of the adventures we see relied on Hiro’s abilities in some way or another to save the day. And Yaeko and Hiro have feelings for each other. Feelings that eventually spill over, that cannot be hidden. It is when Hiro saves Yaeko on one adventure that it all comes out. She realises – or perhaps says out loud what she suspected all along – that it was Hiro who came to her aid against Whitebeard that day. Hiro who she fell in love with under the cherry blossoms.

And as they kiss. As Hiro leads Yaeko back to his own home and they both go inside, someone is watching.

This should be in episode, say, four. So we have an episode of establishment, one dealing with the fallout of the revelation of Kensei’s ability (where Hiro also decides to stay), two episodes of adventure and time passing and at the end of that fourth, the turn. No going back.

In episode five – which is where Hiro in the past and Ando in the future worry about Hiro being “the dragon” – word arrives that Whitebeard has accumulated an army and is marching to the capital to overthrow the Emperor. And he has guns. He kidnapped the blacksmith in episode 1 to get guns, the plan was foiled, he’s had a few years he’s gotten guns from elsewhere. So Kensei, Hiro and Yaeko go to stop him and Kensei betrays Hiro and hands him over to Whitebeard. Yaeko doesn’t get captured, though. Kensei loves Yaeko, he isn’t going to show his bad side to her, he just wants Hiro gone.

Kensei gets into the tent where Hiro is being kept prisoner (Whitebeard is keeping him alive to 1. Find out the secret of his ability and 2. Maybe execute publicly as an intimidation tactic) and have a bit of a “you got me monologuing moment”. It starts off as Kensei just ranting about Hiro “taking” Yaeko from him and wanting Hiro out of the way because Hiro’s presence infuriates him. How could Hiro have taught him all he knows and yet betray him like this? How dare Hiro make him feel this way.

(and yes this is his bisexual confusion talking because this entire thing could have been solved if they’d just all admitted they all love each other and considered being a throuple. Big “Hi, I’m Yaeko, this is my boyfriend Hiro and his/our boyfriend Takezo” energy).

Perfect Illusion by Lady Gaga is playing as I write this, by the way, it feels somewhat fitting.

Everything, he says, is Hiro’s fault. He heard Hiro say he had broken history. He put the pieces together once he figured what Hiro could do. All of this happened because Hiro stopped Kensei from sniping Whitebeard back in episode one.

Off the back of this, Hiro manages to keep him talking. “Why would you side with Whitebeard?”

“Oh, I’m not working with Whitebeard. I’m going to fight him. Sadly I won’t be in time to save you, but I’ll avenge you. Then I’ll let him kill me. His whole army will see me rise from the dead and kill Whitebeard, and they’ll fall to their knees before me. Then I will lead them against the Emperor and take my rightful place on the throne.”

He leaves, not realising that Yaeko was listening in and goes to rescue Hiro as soon as Kensei’s gone. They teleport away and Hiro laments for a bit, telling Yaeko about the stories and how he’s the dragon. Yaeko talks him around by telling him that the whole time he was the real Tazeko Kensei and its his story that will be told. Then they plan to destroy the guns.

The next day, Kensei faces Whitebeard as planned and lets Whitebeard stab him in the heart. But when he falls, he doesn’t get up. Has he found the limit of his abilities? Its Hiro who takes up his sword and kills Whitebeard. He killed a villain before. He can do it again.

There’s chaos. The entire camp stampeding as Hiro runs to destroy the guns. The army scattering without its leader. In the confusion, nobody notices Kensei heal and get up.

The final scene between Hiro and Kensei, which is one of my favourite scenes of the show, by the way, plays out as before. Kensei has a sword he picked up from somewhere. Hiro has Godsend. They fight, a lamp gets knocked onto the gunpowder trail. Hiro holds out a hand to save Kensei and is refused. “As long as I draw breath, anything you love I will lay to waste. I swear. Omae wa kurushimu darou.”

And Hiro gets away just before everything explodes.

There’s a little more epilogue then in the actual episode. Yaeko sits with Hiro as he makes the decision to leave. Yaeko asks how the legend of Takezo Kensei ends. “The dragon demands Kensei’s princess. Kensei cuts out his own heart. That’s how Kensei dies.”

They both know what this means. Hiro has to leave her behind, cutting out his own heart to save her. Neither knows if Kensei is really dead, its impossible to know what a healer can come back from. But Yaeko can defend herself.

“I will tell your story,” she promises, and Hiro returns to the present.

“You will be remembered,” says Yaeko, placing a hand on her stomach.

Remember that Ando is learning all of these events as the story goes, from the scrolls that Hiro hides in the handle of Godsend (which he left with Ando at the end of season one). In the real show, this is pretty much all Ando does all season. Sit, read, and wait for Hiro to return. In the following chapters we’ll get to what else Ando is up to, considering he witnessed the murder of his boss Kaito. But his role in learning about Hiro’s time in the past will also be somewhat more active, as he works with the researcher to restore the scrolls and compare against the text of Hiro’s childhood copy of the Legends of Takezo Kensei. The author put a dedication in the front of the book.

The tales my grandmother told me, told to her by her mother, for whom I was named: Sakura.

Chapter Text

The very first scene of the volume is of a murder. Before we see anything in Japan or catch up with any of our Season 1 characters, the very first thing we see if a man doing his best to barricade himself inside his (rather run-down) apartment. Unfortunately for him, he discovers a photograph on his table – a group shot of the founders of the Company, several already with their faces blotted out by the helix symbol – that tells him the person he was running from is already inside.

An unseen person stalks towards the man, who starts tilting his head, the mind-reading sound effects play. Nothing happens. We cut away as we hear a scream, shadows moving close to the table, then a door opening and slamming shut. Zoom in, past the victim’s body, onto the photo, now with the man’s face drawn over with the helix in blood, but the zoom continues not onto his face but that of the man standing down the line: Kaito Nakamura.

(Dead Meat voice) TITLECARD! – Volume Two: Bloodlines – Then we cut to Hiro’s first scene in 1671.

And because this summary is about telling the story clearly – the victim is Maury Parkman and I’ve decided that healers are immune to mind control, which is why Maury couldn’t stop his killer. I did umm and err over whether to keep Maury alive, so I did a count on what he actually achieves in the show, because its one of those things that’s implied but never really explained in a fashion that gives a decent reason for the actions of the characters involved. We know Adam went after Maury but didn’t kill him, instead he hired him to… scare Angela Petrelli into harming herself/implicating herself in the murder of Kaito. I’m not sure what Adam is trying to achieve here, seeing as he has other murders planned after Kaito’s that fit his M.O. (leaving the calling card photograph behind).

It seems Maury’s real purpose in the show is for Matt’s character development, which does make sense, but Maury being Molly’s Nightmare Man and Molly just happening to have been adopted by the Nightmare Man’s son felt always felt like a contrivance given that Molly was apparently having nightmares about the guy since before season 1 ended (was Thompson making her look for Company founding members? When? She was infected with the Shanti virus). Though we do get a fun “battle in the centre of the mind” scene between Matt and Nathan out of it, I think we can achieve that even without Maury being an active presence in the season. And after that, in Season 3, everything he does re. Linderman ghost falls apart when you think about it for five seconds and then Arthur “serial villain murderer” Petrelli kills him for no reason. Despite the fact that he was trapped in a mind prison by Matt the last time we see him in season two. No clue how he escaped.

So though will keep the contrivance that “random cop and everyman who’s entire gimmick was that he was the everyman who gets pulled into this giant conspiracy mess-‘s dad happens to have been a founding member of the giant conspiracy”, I’m still offing Maury here to strengthen the murder mystery aspect of this season.

That’s what this chapter is going to concentrate on. Our key location is New York and our key players are Kaito and Ando, Angela and Nathan, and Matt and Molly, with some police side-characters and Mohinder occasionally providing some commentary (seeing as he is interacting with Bob, who is very aware that he is on the killer’s hit list).

It’s been more than four months since Kirby Plaza. I'd have liked it to have been a full year so that Kaito and Angela could meet on the anniversary of the explosion, but I want it to be the summer, so its not quite been that long.  Hiro has been missing for almost a year. Peter Petrelli has been missing for almost a year (so Nathan believes). Kaito returns from Japan to New York with his new personal assistant, Ando, to speak to Angela. He’s received the founders’ photo with the faces crossed out. Twelve people in the photo. Thirteen in total, but one of them was in prison when the picture was taken. The founders who are already (believed) dead have been blotted out in blue, or black ink. This includes Charles Deveaux, Linderman and Arthur (whose face is conveniently obscured because he hasn’t been cast yet). 

The rest – barring Kaito, Angela, Bob, Victoria – are marked red. If I have my maths right, there are four founders whose identities the audience never discovers. One might be Bob’s wife – who is probably dead pre-show (something, something, dead in childbirth, electricity overload?). Thompson could be a founder, he seems to be the right age? Change some of Candice’s backstory and she could be one, masquerading as a younger woman via illusion. If you want to go really contrived one of the founders could have been a Gray (but I don’t like that level of contrivance so I’m not going there). Regardless, other than the three surviving founders we know, and the one woman we haven’t met yet, red helixes. Our killer has been busy. Kaito is not his first Founder kill. They have a serial killer on their hands. And they know who it is and why he’s doing this. At least, they know half the story. This is revenge. Possibly even revenge in order of grievance? (Adam doesn’t like Kaito because… well… he doesn’t have anything personally against Angela, but he is using Peter, Bob was his primary goaler and Victoria is the key to the virus so she’s last).

So Kaito and Angela talk, they can say “Adam” out loud since the audience has no context for him yet. They can talk about their missing sons, how that is conflicting with their feelings about the success of their elder children (Kimiko is running Kaito’s company, Nathan is a congressman). Later on, on the roof of the Deveaux building, Kaito is pushed off the roof by a killer who takes the fall with him, all witnessed by Ando. Newly promoted detective Matt Parkman investigates, interviews Ando who points them towards Angela as having seen Kaito the same day, mentions the name Adam, and that the killer fell with Kaito but wasn’t there when the paramedics arrived.

Matt can later mention this detail at home and Mohinder comments how that detail reminds him of Sylar. Mohinder and Molly have shared Sylar trauma, so Matt shushes him even though Molly’s already asleep.

Angela – suspect no. 1 – is interrogated but denies involvement. She goes to Nathan. Nathan is not a shut-in with a depression beard. He’s a congressman, he’s still living in the mansion, he’s still with Heidi (their kids are off at boarding school somewhere) but he misses Peter so much that he spends a lot of his free time and many of his nights in Peter’s apartment, and that’s driving a wedge between him and Heidi (so she can appear but she doesn’t have to have immense amounts of screen time. And he told her he can fly and what happened the night of the election and she’s struggling to wrap her head around it).

Angela is (supposedly) grieving Peter too but is a bit stiff with Nathan and implies he should move on, because Peter isn’t going to walk through that door. But Nathan survived that night. He walked out of a hospital, unharmed, even though the last thing he remembers from that night is immense pain as Peter emitted huge amounts of radiation in his arms. If he lived, he thinks Peter is responsible and therefore alive too.

Angela receives her Founder photograph threat, telling her she’s next, and gives herself up to the police as Kaito’s murderer because a police cell will protect her from the killer. Matt – also unconvinced that Angela’s the killer – has been independently researching the other victims. This is where Molly comes in, and Mohinder and Ando can also play a part. Ando is able to find out the names of some of the other people in the photo from records Kaito kept. Mohinder – recognising Bob in the photo – looks too, and also looks for contact details because he doesn’t want Molly getting involved (Matt wants Molly to search for hidden information on the victims). At this point, he’s already had Molly dig the internet for “Adam”, which is just too wide a search term. That could be a fun montage with images of the ‘Creation of Man’ painting and Garden of Eden imagery and Adams from history and Matt’s voice encouraging her to narrow the search by cross referencing with the company with that push that suggests his power is taking hold then FLASH Shanti Virus and FLASH of blue eyes and she screams and can’t look anymore. That’s the Nightmare Man. His eyes. She keeps seeing those eyes. Ooh, and a fun sequence where Matt looks into her mind when she’s sleeping and sees a nightmare of a horrifying, monstrous, bogyman version of Sylar looking for her after murdering her parents – but her parents get replaced by Matt and Mohinder - and then Sylar looks right at her, and his eyes are Adam’s blue eyes. Now come on, that’s a memorable visual!

Its also the only time we’ll see Sylar outside of photographs and stock footage for the first half of the season.

Mohinder gets real pissed off that Matt did that to Molly and buggers off to another state to be conflicted about the Company closer to where Bob can gaslight him. But Matt does convince Mohinder to use the tools at his disposal to test the blood used to draw the helixes and Mohinder reluctantly agrees.

Maury’s face is completely obscured by the helix but Nathan uncovers a clean photo in the Petrelli mansion and brings it to Matt, who recognises his father, and they fly to his apartment so we can get the battle in the centre of the mind sequence. Maury’s body hasn’t been found before this moment, so its squishy and horrible. Matt – unable to confront the truth of his father’s death – probably manifests an illusion of a clean apartment and Maury there to greet them and apologise for abandoning his son, but he can’t answer any questions about the Company because Matt doesn’t know the answers. Then the vision twists and Matt and Nathan get separated and Matt sees his ex-wife and the baby he doesn’t think is his, and Nathan sees the twisted version of himself and the destroyed, irradiated New York, but the twist-Nathan turns into Peter. Then they snap out of it and Matt is horrified at the extent of his ability and he accepts that his dad is dead and they bond over having shitty dads. And they find something that shows that Maury met Peter shortly before his death, proving that Peter is alive. Just before Mohinder calls, to say that he has identified the blood on the photograph. Its Peter Petrelli’s blood.

Peter becomes suspect no. 1. Maybe he’s using ‘Adam’ as an alias, Nathan claims. Matt is sceptical but he’s led to believe it. Maybe there was an Adam, but Peter is using the identity to cover his tracks whilst he takes revenge on the people behind the Company. And now Nathan is pressuring Matt to pressure Molly into looking for Peter.

And she does.

To be continued…

Chapter Text

That was fun. Let’s move away from that plotline and into the other main plot of the season, which is what the Bennet’s are getting up to. This storyline is covering the full volume, not just the first half, for the reason that there’s no major twist point or change at its centre. At least, non-that align with the positioning of the flashback episode. Its turn is more like two thirds in, with our equivalent ‘Company Man’ ep for the season.

They’ve been living as the Butlers in California for a year. Claire is a cheerleader at her new school (because its stupid that Noah would prevent her from following her passions or even making friends). Noah is working at a paper shop. Sandra’s working at a dog groomer’s. But there’s caveats. Claire has to make excuses to not go to competitions (where she’s likely to end up in photographs) and it’s jeopardising her place on the team. Sandra misses competing with Mr Muggles in dog shows. Lyle is… he’s Lyle, he’s fine. Essentially, they are all doing what they love, they just can’t do it to the fullest extent, so they’re happy but they are always aware of having to be careful, of treading carefully.

If anything, Noah’s the one who is stewing the most in this retail job where the most excitement he looks forward to is promotion to area manager. He even has to talk to Sandra about whether it’s a good idea to take a promotion that will put more attention on him. But, being area sales manager is a great excuse for being out of the office, on the road, travelling a lot… and Noah knows this.

Noah has also been planning with Mohinder for almost a year to help him take the Company down from the inside. And, like in the first episode proper, Mohinder notices that Bob Bishop has been following him around from talk-to-talk and initiates a confrontation that gets him a job offer from Bob. Mohinder finds Rene and sends him Noah’s way. Rene doesn’t have the virus – I don’t know how he’s meant to have contracted it in the first place – he’s just in hiding and Mohinder is able to tell him where Noah is and then get his mind wiped so he can honestly tell Bob that Rene got away and forget Noah’s location.

Noah actually ends up failing his area manager interview because he breaks down how crappy working in retail is and how overqualified he is, but Rene shows up and mind-wipes the shop manager to make him think Noah did get the job, even though Noah actually quit, giving Noah an excuse to go roaming and tell his family its for conferences or training or out-of-state sales stuff. So Noah can go hunting for paintings and murdering old colleagues and just generally do kind-of spy-adjacent stuff with Rene and it will be cool.

It will keep him out of Claire’s way, so they aren’t constantly arguing all the time. It also means that Claire loses her biggest form of protection against the Company because there’s no one there to recognise Bob and Elle Bishop when they show up.

I think I said before that I hate West.

I hate West. Not, like, as a character (although he is wasted potential in that the writers ignore everything interesting about his backstory in order to just make him generic boyfriend) but as, like, a person. Like how he’s written is as the most obnoxious, fake-philosophical arse of a person. He is completely passive-aggressive to Claire, and it comes across like he outright hates her. And that’s before he knows who her dad is! So, we’ll remove that. He’s a classmate, they don’t really move in the same circles but they get made science class partners close to the end of the school year because someone got sick or something. The class can be about diseases and mutations, so it ties into the themes of the season, and Claire can ask about healing mutations (citing the lizards growing back their tails, which we moved to her learning about in the first season). She and West actually find that they get on. Claire talks back against a bully who is mocking another girl and West admires that. But she backs down from performing the backflip she’s challenged to in front of the group, then does it when alone and West sees her heal afterwards.

Oh, and the plot point where she’s gifted a car (maybe its her birthday) and then it gets stolen stays. Mostly because its funny where the car ends up.

The school year has just about ended, and Claire and West have started developing feelings. Claire sees his scar and he tells her how he was abducted but doesn’t describe who did it, so Claire remains ignorant of her father’s involvement. Maybe as far as he gets is “he had these glasses”. Enough for the audience to twig but Claire doesn’t make the connection. Its West who sees Noah at Claire’s home, after dropping Claire off, and then sees her cut her toe off and grow it back. West becomes suspicious, not just of Noah but of Claire and her whole family.

So that’s West. As for the rest of Claire’s subplot, she isn’t going to be doing boring school stuff teaching a bully the error of her ways. We don’t need another Jackie. We just need a one-off bully for an establishing moment of Claire defending someone. Instead, Claire is going to be approached by Bob Bishop, on behalf of Pinehearst. Neither Claire, nor Sandra, know that Pinehearst is connected to the Company and Primatech. They were conveniently never privy to that information in season one, and Noah isn’t around to warn her.

Maybe I’m treading into some real comic book shit here, but Claire is going to be convinced by Bob (with reassurance/legitimacy added by her teachers and even Sandra can scout it out and see no issues) to start a summer programme at Pinehearst, and Claire is led to believe that its almost like a Young Avengers scenario. An organisation unaffiliated (to her knowledge) with The Company – that encourages and trains and finds a purpose for people with abilities. So, she’s now going along to Pinehearst and lets her blood be taken for testing. And West sees this and gets even more suspicious because he’s connecting conspiracy dots. He’s connecting the wrong dots, but he’s connecting them.

At Pinehearst, Claire meets Monica. Yes, new character time! We’re bringing in Monica, the Hurricane Katrina orphan struggling to support her grandmother and cousins including Micah. Monica and Micah discover their abilities at about the same time, Monica fends off a thief with her skills and Bob brings both her and Micah over to California to participate in the same programme as Claire. They also get introduced to Elle, who Bob says is the star graduate of the programme, so the Elle-Claire rivalry can be nicely set up. Because everyone around her has very active abilities, Claire starts to doubt her usefulness to the programme. What can she do?

Bob is also trying very much to convince Mohinder to bring Molly in for the programme. Mohinder won’t spot Claire for a while but once he does, he almost tells Noah but ends up not doing so, because Claire seems happy. What if, Mohinder starts thinking, the Company is changing under Bob’s leadership? What if its going to do some good for these teenagers and for the world?

Mohinder is otherwise going to be occupied mostly as he was in the actual show. Beyond his contributions to Matt’s investigations, learning about Adam because Bob is afraid of being on the killer’s hit-list, being concerned about Molly, and being Noah’s man-on-the-inside for his anti-Company spy-shenanigans, he’ll be slowly gaslit by Bob into thinking that what Noah is doing is wrong. But he’s also there because of his expertise on the virus.

We need to introduce the Shanti virus as a plot point early-ish. We know from season one that it takes powers away and is ultimately deadly, but Mohinder has antibodies in his blood that can cure it, and healing blood like Claire’s can cure it too. So, what does Bob want with it and what does he want Mohinder to do with it?

Bob wants Mohinder to develop a strain of the virus that can remove abilities without killing the infected person. So that the Company can depower people that they consider “dangerous” or “unco-operative”. Like Sylar, Bob says. Like Peter, if we catch him. And though Mohinder refuses to experiment on the children in the training programme, he starts to be swayed. After all of the stressful person-hunting that

Ultimate, we get the same fab episode of Noah teaming up with West – as Noah is able to convince West that he’s working against the Company now - to work together to help Claire, Mohinder turning on Noah, Noah coming clean to Sandra, Noah kidnapping Elle and doing a hostage exchange with Bob for Claire, then being shot by Mohinder and revived and imprisoned by the Company but assumed dead by his family. Claire, Sandra and Lyle actually end up heading to Texas with West when they discover that’s where the plot has gone for the end of the season. This is probably episode 11 (third episode from the end of the season) and might be a bottle focussing on only this plotline, as its our ‘Company Man’ for season two.

And that’s where we’ll leave California for now. Trust me, I have plans for our little team of superpower pre-teens/teens, and I hope you like what they are!

Next time, we clean up the remaining strands of the first half of the volume. Namely, some of our new characters and what the heck Peter has been up to!

Chapter Text

Okay, before we check in with Peter, let’s move across to catch up with Maya and Alejandro, our main set of new characters and the ones who will go the longest before interacting with any pre-existing character. I think overall their first few episodes don’t need a huge amount of change. One of the main complaints is that Maya ends up quite victimised, but she does start to show some level of control over her powers around the time she rescues Alejandro from a police station, in that she deliberately puts herself into a situation where she knows her power will be triggered and that it will give her the upper-hand.

Maya’s power is, essentially, weaponised anxiety. Stretch the metaphor too much and it does become deeply problematic (“your mental health issues poison the people around you” – yeah, no, we are not letting anyone speak that conclusion out loud on the show). But there is depth to be mined without treading down that road.

We don’t even need to stretch out what we have too much to give the pair enough content to cover six episodes, especially if you consider that in six episodes almost every subplot is going to sit out one, possibly two episodes (but should never skip two consecutively). Maya and Alejandro already have 3 episodes of storyline to use as they make their way up to America to find Chandra Suresh – one where they buy a spot on a truck but Alejandro is left behind and the drivers want to abuse Maya, and she poisons everyone, one where an old friend helps them across a border, and one where Alejandro is arrested and Maya uses her power to break him out, along with an American who provides a car.

Oh, and that car is (in the show itself), Claire’s stolen car, which I can only assume was because two completely different sets of characters happening to drive the exact same model of show-sponsoring car would have been considered too much of a coincidence. I think that’s hilarious.

So, we have three episodes for them already set up with no change, though we can give that first one a bit more detail to perhaps remove some of the victimisation of Maya, where she is accepted onto the truck and Alejandro is left behind, but the drivers don’t start insisting she (or perhaps another passenger) sit up front with them until later. Maya starts panicking but we don’t see the results until Alejandro shows up. Having some ambiguity where Maya suspects she might have been conned by traffickers, but they could have just been perverts, and either way she killed all the innocent people she was travelling with as well could be interesting.

I think maybe Alejandro’s ability needs more clarity. In the show he seems to only have the ability to absorb Maya’s poison into him and, I guess, destroy it. Would it be interesting if the twins actually share the same ability? Both can emit poison, and both can absorb it – making them both functionally immune to all poisons and toxins. But because Alejandro doesn’t suffer from anxiety the same way Maya does, he has complete control over his ability, he can direct it with much more focus, he just chooses not to use it because he doesn’t want to kill anyone. There could be a moment where Maya says he could have used it to help himself, or both of them, but he says it would be immoral. Driving more of a wedge between them. I don’t want this to be properly revealed to the audience for this first half, though.

I am going to add on a first episode for them which will actually start at the church where Maya has become a nun, and she and Alejandro avoiding the police and the area being shut off for some sort of toxin or outbreak, retrieving her copy of Activating Evolution and deciding to head to America to find Chandra Suresh. In this episode, we won’t learn that Maya was the source of the plague that has killed everyone at the church (the first showcase of her ability will be when Alejandro finds her as the only survivor on that truck) but we will see a call go out for the twins’ arrest.

I’m also going to move their border crossing forward and have Maya choose to use her ability on the false border patrol herself instead of panicking into it under Sylar’s insistence, frightening Alejandro as he wonders what his sister is capable of. Just giving her a bit more agency and ambiguity. By this point, plague and disease have been set up as a key point of the season and Peter has seen a future overrun by a pandemic (hoo-boy does that plotline hit different in a post-2020 world). The audience should be led to wonder whether it could be Maya who is responsible.

At the end of this episode, as they drive up from the border with a mixed feeling of victory and apprehension, they run into our first major mid-volume cliffhanger. Literally. They almost run him over. Maybe they actually hit him because they aren’t paying attention to the road?

Exiting the car, they come across an injured and exhausted man who is revealed to be – in his first non-flashback, non-nightmare appearance of the season – Sylar.

Peter

Oh Peter Petrelli, what am I going to do with you?

Seriously, Peter is the character I have had the most trouble sorting out for this first half of the season. I’ve found ways for him to have an impact in other people’s plotlines: finding Peter is Nathan’s driving motivation, that ties into Matt and Mohinder’s relationship and Molly ending up in California with Mohinder because Matt used her powers to find Peter for Nathan, and Peter becoming the main suspect for the Company Founder killings because his blood is found on the calling cards.

But where does that leave Peter himself. I had to think a lot about what’s wrong with his plotline in the actual season 2…

1. Amnesia – pointless amnesia as a character reset (or, in this character, a character power-nerf) is one of my least favourite tropes and the more I think about it, the less I can fathom as to why it was required for Peter here. Because making him forget about his abilities makes him weaker? He was never really in control of his abilities to begin with, even by the end of season 1. Because remembering Nathan will make him want to go back for his brother. But if he had his memories, he’d remember that Adam healed Nathan and Nathan is fine. Because Rene wants him to forget about Adam? Adam finds Peter and Peter remembers everything as soon as the plot requires him to, and he remains Adam’s pawn up until the very second the virus needs to be destroyed. He doesn’t even confront Adam for it. He never meets Adam again. All the amnesia does is make Peter stupid because he has to be retaught things the audience already knows and then he just follows a villain’s plan with no questions. He doesn’t recover for ages, certainly not in Volume 3. I recall him getting better in Volume 4 but that’s far too late. Better to not let him regress in the first place.
2. He’s being sidelined until he’s useful. The most notable plot-related thing Peter does in before he goes to the bad future is that we are introduced to Elle when she shows up to look for him, and he isn’t even there when she arrives. He’s hiding. And at this point he doesn’t even know why he should hide from her, he just hears that a woman is looking for him and his instinct is “hide”, not “oh this might be someone important from my life I’ve forgotten, maybe I should speak to her”. He might as well not show up at all until Adam finds him in Montreal. But we don’t want that – Peter’s one of our core three after all – so we want his time on the outskirts of the plot to be at least interesting.
3. Why Ireland? Honestly Peter could have ended up anywhere, and his plot involvement doesn’t begin until he goes to Montreal, so Ireland just ends up being an arbitrary ‘not-America’ setting. Its so random. If he met any characters who ended up sticking around, it might be different, but he doesn’t, so in my opinion the location just doesn’t really matter. He might as well have been in Montreal the entire time, waiting for Adam.
4. As a character she’s fine, but “Peter left Caitlin trapped in a bad future that got erased” might as well be Heroes’ original sin. It always gets cited as not just a bad season 2 writing decision but a huge oversight on the writers’ part that clouds the entire show following it, and especially Peter’s character (though pretty much everyone forgets any hanging threads of season 2 by the beginning of season 3 so he isn’t the only one to blame, let’s be fair). I like the idea of Peter coming across this little found family and thinking he might have found a place amongst them, only for the past to tear it apart.

So even if Peter is kind of sitting on the sidelines for these first six episodes, let’s give him a reason to sit on the sidelines. Adam gave him instructions. ‘Go to Montreal, lie low, I’ll meet up with you there and we’ll take the Company down.’ What Peter doesn’t know is that Adam is using that time to blast through as many Company Founders as possible and set up Peter to take the fall for the murders and the release of the virus. So, when we meet Peter again in season 2, episode 2, he’s walking into an Irish-owned pub and asking “I’m looking for Adam” like it’s a code word. These people know Adam from the months between his and Peter’s escape from the Company (or Adam could even have been a frequent visitor back in the 70s and set up connections and a safehouse and everyone just assumes Peter’s a family friend of an older man) so they give Peter a room at the safehouse and let him hang around in the pub. Because its episode two, enough time has passed that its plausible for Peter to have committed the murders of Maury and Kaito (and the ones that happened in the past couple of months in the meantime).

Peter gets to know that the pub owners run a smuggling business on the side (hence the need for safehouses), starts to suspect a traitor to the scheme and reveals his abilities when a fight breaks out. Then he can be tied up and beaten because what everyone just witnessed was crazy and what the hell even is Peter, rope him into using his abilities to help in a robbery. Peter and Caitlin get close and when Elle comes snooping around he recognises her and its his choice to hide from her.

Instead of teleporting into the future, Peter will instead dream the bad future, more in glimpses than anything else. Enough to see that millions are dead, Maya somewhere in the mix to implicate her, and seeing the future version of himself with the scar his future self always gets. Just throwing more and more suspicion onto every character who could be responsible for the plague. Even more firmly planting the question for the audience: is “Adam” actually Peter? Maybe Adam was an old frequenter of this pub back in the day who also knew the Founders before turning on them, and Peter is now using his name. The pieces should fit together so perfectly that the audience is as convinced as they could possibly be before we drop the other shoe with the big reveal.

Caitlin has been watching Peter whilst he has these dreams, his powers activating violently, and she wakes him up before he can irradiate the place, but she’s hurt. When she gets a call from the pub and discovers Ricky has been killed by Elle, it’s the last straw. Caitlin doesn’t get left in the future. She pushes Peter away because his presence has only caused her family harm. What Peter thought could be his new family has been broken apart because of ghosts of his past.

Its not perfect. It does relegate Caitlin to a half-season-only character but at least she isn’t abandoned. Peter is still kind of side-lined until the plot decides to integrate him again, but at least it feels more like a deliberate character choice. I wondered if there might be something virus related in Montreal that Peter could be looking into on Adam’s behalf, but there might not be time for that and for Peter to build and break his found family.

So, Peter is alone in the safehouse he trashed with his ability, looking at a photo of Nathan and wondering if he ought to return to New York since he hasn’t heard anything from Adam. Just to *tell* his brother he’s alive. He could even be picking up the phone, dialling Nathan’s number…

Then we get our second mid-season cliffhanger, as Peter hears a noise and blasts towards it with electricity, striking a hand that heals, and Takezo Kensei steps from the shadows, not a day older than when we last saw him in 1675, and says “Now what was all that about, Peter, don’t you recognise me? It’s me. Adam.”

Which of the two villain reveal scenes is the actual cliffhanger to leave off episode 6, I don’t know. Adam is the more important reveal for the season, but Sylar probably has the bigger shock factor for the audience. Your preference, I guess.

Chapter Text

Oops, I’ve been neglecting my Heroes, haven’t I?

Look, blame the god of mischief, okay, that show has taken over all five of my braincells and I’m saving my rewatch of Dual for a destress when its all over after next Friday. Also, I have had a semi-nightmare trying to untangle all the threads I dumped in my own lap leading into reworking Four Months Ago. But I think I have it down now…

Season Two, Episode Seven is going to be called Twelve Months Ago.

And yes, I know earlier I tied myself in knots deciding that season two wouldn’t be set a full year after ‘How to Stop an Exploding Man’ in order for Claire to be on summer vacation. And bitch, I said what I said but forget that, it is far more impactful for the season to begin on the anniversary of Hiro and Peter’s supposed deaths and it gives Kaito and Angela a reason to meet up at the Deveaux building and look down on the place where it happened and grieve together. Claire’s extracurricular superheroing can be happening after school and it makes more sense that she’s lying about being out late at cheerleading practise and Noah (or Sandra) can sus her out on that later in the season.

Now we’ve got that tangle out of the way, let’s get to the episode.

Yes, since several weeks to somewhere like a month has passed since the season’s premiere in in-universe time, it isn’t technically ‘Twelve Months Ago’ from where we left off (Adam revealing himself to Peter/Maya and Alejandro picking up Sylar, whichever cliffhanger takes your fancy… I am even tempted to make the former the true cliffhanger and the latter a mid-credit scene that gets repeated first thing episode eight!), so we’ll begin back at the premiere with a short extension of the scene between Kaito and Angela to remind us that ‘How to Stop an Exploding Man’ took place exactly a year ago (from the point of view of Ando perhaps, or even a mystery third angle), and then we jump back and see the episode’s titlecard.

From here we follow the start of Four Months Ago fairly closely. We repeat the final scene of Claire pointing the gun at Peter, Nathan swooping in and flying Peter away, then cut to them just before Peter explodes and a rapidly healing Peter then catching the badly irradiated Nathan and carrying him to a hospital. From here we detour. Peter speaks to a nurse after he hands Nathan off, but the nurse (possibly wearing a face mask that she can dramatically take off, despite the top part of her face likely being recognisable to the audience anyway) is Elle. And yes, that is a Kill Bill reference. Get her whistling whilst walking down a hallway to really cement it.  

Peter lingers in the hospital waiting for news from Nathan, and from where he’s watching he sees a man cuffed to a wheelchair being pushed towards Nathan’s room. Its Adam, prepped for the blood-transfer. Curious, Peter follows, but is distracted by a covered stretcher going to a neighbouring room, accompanied by Bob Bishop, and the doctors chattering making it clear that this person is being set up for surgery and another blood transfer once Nathan is healed. In fact, Nathan is only the priority over this person because Angela Petrelli insisted.

A blood stain over the chest of the covering already makes Peter suspect, but an arm wearing a distinctive black peacoat sleeve falling from the stretcher makes it clear. He whispers “Sylar!” and goes after the stretcher, only for Elle to step out and knock him out with a bolt of electricity. Bob leaves the surgery in time to see this. “Did you really have to give him the full blast?” “He can take it.” “He’s not a toy, Elle.” “He could be.”

When Peter wakes up, he’s in the California facility, on Level 3 (not as urgently dangerous as the level 5 inmates, still in need of high security). Elle and Bob show him that he’s missing-presumed-dead and proof that Nathan is alive but only because of the Company’s interference. Having successfully convinced Peter that he’s a danger to himself and others and that they are working on a “cure”, he is convinced to stay in his secure cell. Peter’s portion of the episode plays out pretty much as it did before. He gets to know Adam from the other side of the wall, who convinces him that there is no cure, that they are both unfairly imprisoned and need to get out, if only so Peter can tell Nathan he isn’t dead. But, Adam says, the Company would never let that happen, so they need to take it down, and he’s been putting a plan together over the last forty years.

Peter doesn’t have phasing in this version, because there’s no DL, but he also isn’t being given drugs to supress his ability. He just isn’t using them because he believes he deserves to be in the cell to protect the world from him, until Adam convinces him that’s BS. But he has plenty of abilities to choose from to help the escape, including invisibility, so the escape goes ahead. This is between six to nine months of time. They can be found by Elle after some time on the run which is when they split up with the intension to meet in Montreal. Peter slowly makes his way there and Adam now has time to start putting his murder plot into action and become a regular at the “villain bar” from season 3 that he absolutely would not have had the time to frequent in the time-frame the show proper presents us with.

Maya and Alejandro have the same plotline, pretty much, mostly taking place at Alejandro’s wedding before Maya goes on the run, but ending before she goes to the convent because that is now in episode one. It can therefore be split over more than one scene, with a bit more build up to the wedding itself, establishing some side characters (Alejandro’s fiancé, his best man, maybe some relatives) and Maya being suspicious of Ajejandro’s fiancé. Twist, however, when Maya is threatened by the best man after discovering the affair, she’s panicking, but she isn’t the one who’s power triggers. Instead, Alejandro walks in, sees what’s happening and its him who emits the poison out of anger, killing his wife and his best man. Maya panics and Alejandro can’t calm her. She runs out into the crowd, but no one will listen to her pleas for help, that’s when she starts emitting poison and kills the whole wedding party before Alejandro finds her and they breathe together. Then she flees, and by the time Alejandro finds her at the convent she’s convinced herself that she killed the fiancé and best man too.

I’d quite like to use a little time for Nathan and Heidi, to show some good he’s done as senator, and perhaps also for Matt, Mohinder and Molly, including Mohinder being in touch with Noah and establishing their plot. But where we have lost a thread by excluding Nicki, we are mostly going to use that time for Sylar.

Sylar’s plot line picks up with him in the Texas Primatech building once more, his healing helped along by Adam’s blood, but infected with the Shanti virus which has taken his powers and is slowly killing him. This is mostly an expanded version of the plotline from the show’s episode Kindred, with Candice (no new name required) keeping him in an illusion and every time he sees through it she has to conjure a new ‘layer’ to keep him from knowing he’s in Texas. A paradise beach, a shack in the jungle, etc. Her illusions could even convince him that he still has his abilities, at first, but he starts figuring things out. Eventually, when he’s broken the final layer and tries to kill her, she taunts him. He'll never get his abilities back. He’s dying. When he moves to kill her anyway, not believing her, she pleads. The company is working on a cure. They kept him alive for a reason, to study Intuitive Aptitude. He’s still useful to them, he just needs to wait. But Sylar is done being used as a lab rat. He kills Candice, finds information about the virus, about the California facility. He leaves the building and heads for the Bennet house, but the people living there aren’t the Bennet’s and though he is tempted to kill them, without his abilities he’s powerless when threatened with a gun. He’s weak from the virus. He has nothing. He can barely pay for a cab. He’s wanted for murdering his mother. A man matching his description is still wanted in Odessa for murdering Charlie (he quickly ditches a baseball cap he found when he figures that out).

He might end up at the Burnt Toast Diner briefly. In fact, let’s slot the Burnt Toast Diner into Episode 6 – Maya, Alejandro and Derreck (is that the guy’s name) end up there after they make it into America but before they run into Sylar, and Sylar is actually there the whole time, in the background, not focussed on enough to be recognisable. But when we get his perspective in Episode 7, he overhears them talking about finding Mohinder, follows them and deliberately collapses in the road where they will find him, bringing us full circle at the episode’s end.

Time is shown passing with “X Months Ago” captions throughout the episode, eventually culminating in “X hours ago” for this final Sylar scene.

I think that ties everything neatly together, I’m satisfied by that.

Latter half of the season incoming, but also requiring a bit more thought than the first half. But hey, I have twice the amount of time than the show-proper’s three episodes post flashback! But forgive me if I have to wait until next weekend and I’m no longer buzzing from post-Loki-finale-adrenaline.

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I’ll have you all know that the quintuple whammy of Great British Bake Off, Taskmaster, Loki, and Drag Race seasons UK 5 and Canada 4 all dropping in succession (another show I’ve been meaning to watch) has meant I still haven’t gotten around to ‘Duel’ in my Heroes rewatch. I’ll probably get around to it before 2024…

But we aren’t yet at Villains in this rewrite. Bloodlines continues and the way I see it, we have three main plots to follow on the 6-episode tread to the finale (double the amount of time the real Generations season gave us after its flashback episode!)

The first of these is the Bennet family plotline – something leading to a culmination of both Claire and Noah’s main plots and dealing with secondary antagonist Bob Bishop in the same vein as Season One’s lead into Company Man, and we’ll do something similar with Bloodlines by dedicating a full episode to this subplot’s conclusion a couple of episodes before the finale.

The second plot is the main one of the season – Adam’s murder plot, in which we will aim to bring together the key players with a personal stake in that narrative: Peter, and by extension Nathan and Matt on investigation duties, and Hiro with his incredibly personal stake in Adam’s mere existence.

Third is the virus, which does also tie into Adam’s plan but will have its own separate conclusion bringing in relevant players Mohinder, Maya and Alejandro and Sylar.

As the order of thing will lead to our ‘Company Man’ equivalent occurring first, that’s the storyline we’ll tackle first. It also involves the fewest changes from the show proper.

Claire has been attending the after school sessions at Pinehearst for a few episodes, getting to know new characters Monica and Micah, and developing her relationship with West on the side. However, not only have Noah and Sandra become suspicious that their daughter isn’t attending cheerleading sessions as she claimed, West is also growing more and more wary. He’s discovered and kept to himself that Claire’s father is the man with horn-rimmed glasses who abducted him as a child and he’s been introduced to Bob at this point and is very suspicious of him, too. Claire (perhaps after an incident much like the one in the show where they spook a bullying cheerleader into changing her ways) has invited him to come along to Pinehearst but after speaking to Bob, West decides this isn’t for him. He’s started watching Claire at home, trying to confirm his suspicions that the entire ‘Butler’ family is in on some sort of conspiracy – the same one that abducted him as a child – and they have come back for him.

Of course, Sandra, when she catches on that there’s a young man hovering (literally, though she probably doesn’t catch him flying yet) about their home and confirms that Claire is no longer attending cheerleading practice, decides that Claire is just seeing a boy and being secretive about it. Noah, because he isn’t an overcontrolling arse – just properly paranoid about his family’s safety re. the Company – hasn’t banned Claire from having a boyfriend. In fact, when they do confront her about lying about cheerleading and Sandra outright asks if she has a boyfriend, she jumps on the chance to say yes because it’s the perfect lie to cover up where she’s really been going after school. Then there can be a fun and awkward meeting between the Bennetts and West where lies are thrown around about their past and West only grows more wary as a result. Finally, he tells Claire the truth about why he’s so antsy and outright accuses her of being a Company agent. Unfortunately, this is around the same time Noah catches Elle lingering and finds evidence that Claire lied again – possibly because Mohinder gives the same away by accident – and when Noah confronts her in the only big blow up argument they will have in the season because by god that got old fast in the show proper when it was every other episode. And that argument is exactly what Bob counted on to drive Claire to the one place where she feels accepted for who she is, where she doesn’t have to lie. To Pinehearst.

In the meantime, the other important lead ins to this episode are what Noah and Mohinder have been doing. They have been plotting since before the season started to take down the Company from the inside, and they have help. A “third party with mutual interest” who has told them about the existence of the deadly Shanti Virus strain. Even as Bob convinces Mohinder that what the “New Company” is doing is better than what happened under Linderman and Angela’s watch, Noah keeps bringing up the virus as a linchpin. The Company is experimenting with a virus Mohinder is personally familiar with – one that will eventually kill anyone with the mutated genes of a superpowered individual who is infected with it – and there is a far more deadly strain being kept somewhere, one that could be unleashed if it ever fell into the wrong hands. That’s enough to want to destroy the Company.

But Noah has also independently been covering his own tracks with deadly consequences as he seeks out information about the virus’ location, to keep his family protected. Bob shares the evidence with Mohinder, so as to try to convince Mohinder that Noah is in the wrong and the Company is changing for the better… and Mohinder is helping with that. Just look at the growth that Monica and Micah and Claire have gone through. They’re happy.

They’re also going on superhero adventures on the side taking down petty criminals, but the grown ups don’t know about that.

Wouldn’t Mohinder want Molly to have a friend group like that?, says Bob. And Mohinder, swayed, asks Matt if Molly can come to California to stay with him whilst Matt is investigating the Company Founder murders. Matt agrees.

So, our pieces are in place. Claire is pretty much fully team Pinehearst and Mohinder isn’t far behind, pretty much kitted out to become a full Company Man with Elle as his ‘One of Them’ partner. Its Noah Bennett against the world as we head into Cautionary Tales.

This episode will play out as pretty much an extended version of the episode in which the Noah vs. the Company subplot of Generations plays out, but with no other plots playing out at the same time. Its fully the same deal as Company Man, a singular plotline dedicated episode.

West goes to Noah and they discover they are pretty much on the same side after Noah apologises for what he did in his Company role and they decide to work together to get Claire away from Pinehearst. Elle and Mohinder go after Noah, resulting in Elle being captured. Bob shows his true colours by taking Claire’s blood as a failsafe against the deadly virus strain – this is possibly where he threatens to infect one of the other kids to see if Claire’s blood works as a cure, not in front of Mohinder but in front of Claire. Then when he learns that Noah has Elle, he ensures that Claire can’t leave so a hostage exchange is arranged. At this exchange, West flies away with Claire, Noah shoots Elle in the arm and Mohinder shoots Noah through the eye.

The Bennett’s are led to believe that Noah is dead and for their safety Sandra decides to pack up and move out, and Claire decides she wants to go to her Petrelli family in New York for a while. She and West go together. At Pinehearst, on the secure Level 1, Noah is brought back to life by Claire’s blood.

The fallout in the next episode will include Bob chewing Elle out for getting caught and Noah’s speech to Elle about seeing the terrible things she was put through as a child and wanting to protect Claire from that. But Noah is being very deliberate when he does this because he knows Mohinder is watching. Hearing this speech, hearing what could very well happen to Molly, Mohinder realises the error of his ways and takes all of the virus research that he and Noah have gathered over the course of the season, calling the “third party with a mutual interest” who he and Noah have been communicating with unseen and unheard and faxing all of the information across. Including the current whereabouts of Company Founder Victoria Pratt. He feeds her right into the hands of Adam Monroe.

See, tying the subplots together really is my main intension here. Big Bad Adam should have a hand in as much as possible this season, just as Linderman influenced everything in Season 1 and Sylar hovered on everyone’s minds, too.

For now, though, let’s conclude subplot number three, which is the one least involving Adam, primarily because I think it ought to wrap up in the penultimate episode rather than the finale (as it will free up necessary characters for the finale, too). Its also set primarily in California so we’re sticking in place with many of the same characters.

It starts, however, directly after Twelve Months Ago in Texas, with Maya, Alejandro and Derek picking up Sylar. They very quickly realise they are on the same path; to New York to meet with Chandra Suresh and Sylar breaks the news that Chandra isn’t around anymore but his son Mohinder is, and that they know each other. Delighted by this sure sign from the heavens, Maya is happy to let ‘Gabriel’ travel with them.

As in the show proper, at a rest stop Dereck discovers that his fellow traveller is wanted for murder… not Maya and Alejandro but Gabriel Gray, so Sylar kills him and Sylar comes up with a valid reason why Dereck won’t be joining them on the trip anymore.

The whole group makes it to New York but no one’s home (Mohinder and Molly are in California, Matt’s off searching for Peter). But they manage to find out where Mohinder is (maybe a business card, a voice message left for Matt, something like that). Alejandro discovers that Gabriel Gray is wanted for murder and confronts him at their hotel, but Sylar kills him before Ajejandro can turn the poison on, and fakes that Alejandro has gone. Sylar has pretty much seduced Maya at this point so she continues on with him to California. And hey, amongst the evidence that Mohinder left behind was news that a certain healing cheerleader is at the very place they’ll find Mohinder. It’s all so convenient for Sylar.

So, in the penultimate episode, Mohinder is planning to return to New York with Molly and that’s about the time that Sylar shows up with Maya. Its all politeness at first as Sylar subtly threatens Mohinder and all of the kids with painful death if they don’t get what they want. Maya is fully willing to be infected with the virus to take her abilities away, and Mohinder has to break it to her that it will kill her, but when they are alone and Sylar can’t overhear he lets her know that his antibodies can help her out like they helped Molly. Once Sylar has enough and shows his true colours in an effort to get Claire’s blood to heal him, it becomes everyone in the facility vs. Sylar. Elle breaks Noah out of Level 1 to help. Maya refuses the “cure” of the infection so she can weaken Sylar enough for Elle to deliver the last blow, but he does get one of the vials of Claire’s blood and pettily destroys the other.

Elle pursues him but even when she has him in her sights and a potential kill shot… she doesn’t take it. They lock eyes. There is something unspoken between them. She lets him go.

At the end of this episode, Mohinder once again receives a call, this time from Matt, who has been at the crime scene of Victoria Pratt’s murder and has evidence that Peter – the suspected Company Founder killer – is not working alone and they have the same of his accomplice. Adam Monroe. Asking Bob about Adam, Bob tells Mohinder and Noah why they had Adam locked away and Mohinder realises Adam is going after the virus. Molly is able to confirm where Adam and Peter are, the information is relayed to Matt. Maya wants to help, so she and Mohinder head towards the finale’s location…

Bringing everything together! But what have Hiro and Ando, Matt and Nathan, and Peter and Adam been up to? All in the final chapter of Volume 2. Coming… sooner than the last few chapters!

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Can you tell I really care about this season and wanting it to come together? Seven parts to cover all the tracks!

So we arrive at the final plotline and the conclusion to the series. What must we wrap up? Well, Maya – the biggest wasted potential of the real show – has gained full mastery and acceptance of her abilities but she now must use that great power with great responsibility to save the day. Claire has spent the season learning what it means to be a hero and the full potential she has to save people, and the season presents the perfect opportunity to show her what someone with the same ability and ill-intentions could become, with time. The brothers Petrelli have not seen each other in a year and whilst Nathan is very aware that Peter saved his life, he also believes he’s a killer, and both are suffering as the result of the sins of their father (and mother). Mohinder has debts to pay after a season of being manipulated by both sides of a war he wants no part in, and Matt wishes to catch a killer he’s spent all season chasing (avenging his father in the process).

And, perhaps most importantly, Hiro must confront the man he thought long dead, the man who killed his father, the man he taught to be a hero and turned into a villain, the man he once loved.

Let’s start with Adam and Peter, since everyone’s pretty much following their trail. Without wishing to have an entire episode dedicated to exposition, Adam should spend some time reminding Peter and the audience about his plans in the most ‘this isn’t a serial killing spree I swear’ way possible whilst also doing as much as he can to plant evidence framing Peter as possible. He is perfectly placed to explain the virus to Peter (and the audience). There are two strains: one only affects people with the superhuman gene, first shutting that gene down (thereby eliminating their powers) and then moving on to destroy the immune system which leads to slow death. However, some people are immune, some carry antibodies (such as Mohinder) and it simply does not affect people with Healing Factor. They tested it on Adam, so he knows that to be true. That’s the strain which the Company has been working on, trying to create a version that takes powers away without continuing on to the deadly symptoms.

The second strain was engineered in the 70s when the first was being researched and was not only much more potent but also airborne and not specific to superhumans. Some blame can maybe be laid at Arthur Petrelli by Adam for its existence as a bioweapon (something about the Cold War, perhaps, could come into the reasoning). Adam can also wax philosophical about having lived as long as he has, the wars and destruction he’s seen. The difference between Adam and Linderman is that Linderman wanted a population of the evolved to emerge from the ashes of the disaster he was engineering. Adam wants everything and everyone gone, save the worthy immortals, who will rule as gods over whatever surviving humans remain (who will be deprived of the chance of powers once the non-deadly strain is perfected).

The superpowered shall inherit the Earth vs. the immortals shall rule over the non-powered and ensure no more war.

Of course, Peter has the immunity granted by his ability, so Adam sees him as a worthy disciple, but he’s still withdrawing the full details of his plan because he knows Peter won’t stay on side if Nathan dies. So, Adam’s planting other breadcrumbs as they go, deliberately leaving a trail for Hiro Nakamura specifically to follow, since Adam wants Hiro to be blamed for the virus being unleashed. Hiro won’t live to see the world he creates, but his memory will be tainted forever. If Adam wants to be god of the new world, he wants Hiro to be seen as its devil.

As in the show proper, once Mohinder hands over the necessary information to find her, they go after Victoria Pratt who gives away the Virus location when Peter reads her mind, and Adam twists events so he can kill her and make it look like self-defence, plus ensure Peter’s DNA is all over the crime scene.

Matt and Nathan – relatively convinced at this point that Peter is responsible but reluctant to believe he’s working alone – reach the scene an episode later and by luck, Victoria had CCTV that shows Adam is there too. Consulting with Angela and separately with Mohinder who is able to confirm with Bob, they finally discover who Adam is and what he might want, and Molly is able to direct them towards Texas too.

Hiro is the final piece of the puzzle. Returning from history, Ando has to break the sad news of Kaito’s death to him, which puts him into contact with Matt since he’s the lead investigator. But though Ando tries to convince Hiro to go back in time to find out who murder Kaito and even save him, Hiro finds it difficult to use his abilities. Its only at his father’s funeral that he goes back to his mother’s to talk to Kaito and, as in the show proper, gather the strength to return to that moment. However, Kaito convinced him that it wouldn’t be right to save his life, only to discover the identity of his murderer, and so Hiro sees Adam’s face. He is then able to follow the trail left by Adam deliberately for him and in the penultimate episode, he is the first person to arrive at Primatech in Texas to confront Adam and Peter.

That penultimate episode ends with Peter overpowering Hiro and Adam reclaiming Godsend from him. Instead of in a lobby, this is actually by the vault. Nathan, with Claire, and with Matt in tow, arrives just in time to distract Peter away from the vault so Adam can enact his plan, but this is unseen. We stay with Peter and Nathan, but then Nathan collapses, coughing up blood, the infection taking hold of him whilst Claire and Peter remain unharmed.

Outside, Mohinder and Maya have just arrived in time for Matt to stumble out of the building. Angela gathers up Maya and drags her away before they come into contact with the contagious Matt, but Mohinder runs to Matt’s side. The episode ends on the cliffhanger of Peter running to Adam in the vault, who pins the blame for the release on Hiro whilst Nathan succumbs in his daughter’s arms, and Matt and Mohinder in each other’s, and Angela frantically calls for a quarantine crew.

The finale will open with a bit of a ‘how did we get here?’ by starting with the various disparate groups of people travelling to Texas – Matt, Claire, Nathan and Angela on the one hand and Mohinder and Maya on the other. From their point of view, we go through the episode to reach where we left off at the ending of the previous – with the release of the virus.

In the vault, Hiro, still alive, grabs Peter by the ankle and teleports both of them back in time. How is Hiro not affected by the virus? He himself isn’t sure but he thinks he may have frozen himself in time so the infected air couldn’t get to him. Hiro takes Peter across time to reveal everything Adam did to manipulate him and frame them both, and culminates with a true reunion between Nathan and Peter where Nathan gives Peter the pep talk he needs. This will lead to a kind of new-ability unlock for Peter that he’ll use later.

In the present, Claire and Adam can have a conversation about what it means to be immortal, so she can see what she might become, given time. Though she does reject his philosophy and states she’s a hero, he’s still an adult twice her size who is holding a sword, so she can’t really stand in his way. He leaves the building, passing the quarantine crews, into the new world he’s created. Claire doesn’t want to leave Nathan behind so she stays with him as he laments he was a terrible father to her and to his other kids. Because Claire believes that Noah is dead, and wasn’t able to spend his final moments with him, she hears him out and talks to him as he grows weaker. Then she thinks about why Bob wanted her blood and attempts to give him an on-the-spot transfusion. It works, though temporarily, enough to get him up and moving out of the building but they can’t get out of the quarantine area and the airborne virus is spreading. The quarantine crews and even Angela are starting to succumb and despite Claire’s efforts, Nathan is weakening again too.

But because Maya is in Angela’s immediate proximity, she notices the similarities between the effects of the virus and her poison and she realises that since Alejandro was able to take in and nutralise the poison they could both create, maybe she can do the same. She tries it with Angela, taking her hands and getting her to breath the way Alejandro did with her. It works. She absorbs the virus out of Angela. So Maya – despite Angela’s warnings that it could kill her to take in so much of the virus – strides into the quarantine zone, ignoring all warnings. She takes Matt and Mohinder’s hands and cures them, then carries on towards Claire and Nathan. By that point, she no longer needs to touch her patients. She absorbs the poison from the air, all of it, and neutralises it, before she succumbs.

But Claire knows how to save her. As the quarantine crew moves in, they confirm that there is no longer any trace of the virus in the air. They descend towards the vault.

And what have Peter and Hiro been doing all this time? Well, back in time, Hiro has shown Peter Adam’s true colours so they go to the moment that Hiro confronted them back by the vault. They don’t interfere, all the way up until Adam drops the vial, at which point Hiro freezes his past self in time so he won’t be infected and can wake up to take Peter back – good old stable time loop.

Hiro follows Adam when he walks away thinking he’s won. Out somewhere quiet, they have a final battle. Adam has the sword but Hiro can teleport. Hiro can even use time travel to make it so there are multiple Hiro’s all at one time. Even ones who are carrying their own version of Godsend. This drives Adam mad trying to cut his foe down, until suddenly he’s disarmed. Hiro – just one of him – has Godsend at Adam’s throat and Adam knows if he loses his head its over. He tells Hiro it doesn’t matter if he kills him, he’s already won. Hiro refuses. He will not kill his old friend, but Adam will never see nor be god of his “new world”. Adam gives him one last smile. He calls Hiro ‘Takezo Kensei’ acknowledging that Hiro was truly the legendary warrior all along, and Hiro responds by calling him ‘Adam Monroe’ for the first time.

He teleports Adam away and the next we see him, he’s buried alive in a coffin beside Kaito Nakamura. Godsend is planted upon the freshly dug grave. I like the idea that Adam never knows for sure if he won or not, either way he’ll never see it (until he’s released next season because I plan to actually give this amazing character the Volume 3 arc he deserves).

Hiro returns to Ando, content in his closure, and Ando shows him the dedication in the old edition of ‘The Tales of Takezo Kensei’ that he found.

Back in Texas, Peter unlocks the new aspect of the time manipulation ability (one that Hiro has as well but he hasn’t discovered it yet, Peter will probably show him and allow Hiro to learn the capability later). He’s debating how to prevent the virus from spreading. Go back in time before it smashed? But that could break the time loop, which Hiro warned him about. But if he can go back in time, if he can take other people back in time, how about reversing the time of specific objects. Yes, very Doctor Strange. He reaches out and with immense concentration he reverses the time of the smashed vial, collecting up every trace of the virus and securing it. Maya dealt with that which was released on the outside and now Peter will ensure it is never released again.

Whilst Angela ushers Maya, Claire and Mohinder to a medical room (the same one Sylar was kept in earlier in the season) so Claire’s blood can be transfused to Maya, saving her, Nathan and Matt follow the quarantine crews down to the vault where they find Peter with the vial. Thinking he’s about to smash it, they train guns on him and Nathan and Matt try to talk him down once again, still perhaps harbouring the fear that Peter agreed with Adam’s plans. They tell him to put it back into the vault where it’s safe.

“It will never be safe as long as it exists,” says Peter, and he uses the Nuclear ability to destroy every atom of the virus. In front of the quarantine crews. Who are also swarming the building with police and SWAT and will inevitably discover evidence of everything the Company did, of the existence of superhumans.

“Peter… what have you done?” gasps Nathan.

“You got what you wanted, Mohinder,” thinks Matt. “Its all out there now.”

Mohinder digs up the files on Sylar, which show that the Company was experimenting to try and find out how Intuitive Aptitude works as a means of granting people abilities. But Claire catches a glimpse and manages to pull some of the paperwork away from Mohinder, confirming that Sylar is still alive and that the Company saved him. Under Angela’s watch and orders. All her trust in the Petrelli’s is stamped out immediately.

So, we’re still leaving on a cliffhanger threatening the exposure of superhumans but without Nathan being randomly shot because we know with hindsight that went nowhere. We also plant the seeds for the main plotline of Volume 3 being about giving people abilities, and how that was something that was on the Company’s radar.

The final scene of the season will also act as the opening scene of Volume 3: Villains, the same way that Hiro landing in the past was shown as the final scene of season one and the opening scene of Volume 2, and will show Sylar injecting himself with Claire’s blood and recovering from the milder version of the Shanti virus, regaining his abilities. It never really landed with me that Sylar would regain both Intuitive Aptitude and Telekinesis but no other abilities, but it does make sense to put him on the back foot by taking away things like Future Painting, Freezing and Nuclear powers (though he always seemed to have much more control over it than Peter did). So, I won’t change it. As much as it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me, it could be explained away by him being more attached to telekinesis as the first ability he stole.

But as one addition, he has also taken files from Pinehearst with him, which include some hints at new characters for the third season, and the Bennett’s California address…

To be continue in Volume 3: Villains.

Chapter Text

Once again we reach the sum up, where I attempt to Wikipedia summary the episodes I have conceived in order to wrap up the season in one, neat, easy-to-consume package with the main intent of discovering if I’ve done my job correctly. If I have, then this sum-up shouldn’t miss any major plot beats or skip over vital character stuff.

Maybe I’m just trying to delay getting to Volume 3 for a little longer. Anyway, let’s go…

Episode One: Twelve Months Later

One year on from the events of Kirby Plaza, Angela Petrelli and Kaito Nakamura remember their missing sons before Kaito is murdered by a mystery assailant. Elsewhere in New York, Matt Parkman passes his detective exams and Nathan struggles with memories of Peter on the anniversary of his election as Congressman.

Mohinder accepts a job offer with the Company at the behest of its new head, Bob Bishop, having conspired with Noah Bennett to bring the organisation down from the inside.

Alejandro Herrera tracks down his twin Maya at a convent, narrowly avoiding arrest as they plan to find Chandra Suresh in the United States.

In Japan, 1671, Hiro Nakamura is disappointed by the truth about the hero of legend: Takezo Kensei, but there is something more to the man than Hiro realises…

Episode Two: Kindred

Having settled into a new home and school life in California, Claire Bennett befriends a new student named West in her science class, and defends an aspiring cheerleader against a bully.

Matt Parkman investigates the death of Kaito Nakamura, questioning both Ando and Angela. He and Mohinder struggle with the idea of asking Molly to use her ability to help them.

Discovering Takezo Kensei’s healing abilities, Hiro resolves to stay in the past to help turn Kensei into the hero of legend.

Maya and Alejandro fall afoul of traffickers, and Maya’s devastating ability is revealed.

At a bar in Montreal, Peter Petrelli enters and lets the staff know he’s waiting for Adam.

Episode Three: Fight or Flight

In New Orleans, cousins Monica and Micah each discover their amazing abilities, with Monica fending off a would-be thief at her workplace.

Claire continues to get to know West. She tests the limits of her ability by cutting off her toe, which West sees her regrow.

Maya and Alejandro enlist the help of an old friend to cross the border into Mexico.

Ando returns to Japan, where he discovers scrolls hidden inside the handle of the Godsend sword, describing Hiro’s adventures with Kensei and Yaeko, and revealing Hiro’s hidden feelings for the blacksmith’s daughter.

Peter is tied up and interrogated by the Montreal bar gang and befriends Caitlin, sister of the bar’s owner, Ricky. Mind-reading that one member intends to betray the gang, he saves Ricky’s life and gains his trust.

Episode Four: The Line

Ando takes the damaged Godsend scrolls to a restorer and begins researching different version of the Kensei legends, including the story of the treacherous dragon who stole Kensei’s princess. In 1675, Hiro and Yaeko admit their mutual feelings for each other.

Claire is approached by Bob Bishop to attend an after-school programme for superpowered youths at the Pinehearst building. West reveals to Claire that he can fly.

Angela is attacked, but rescued by Nathan and put into police protection. Nathan and Matt resolve to find the Company founder killer, even if it means breaking police protocol. Matt begins to discover he can control minds as well as read them.

Monica eludes police questions about the theft she prevented, and is also called by Bob Bishop who offers her and Micah a place at Pinehearst.

Peter aids the Montreal bar gang in a heist and debates telling Caitlin the truth about his past life as he grows closer to her.

Episode Five: Sparks Fly

Hearing that Whitebeard is marching to overthrow the Emperor, Kensei and Hiro set out to obstruct him, only for Kensei to betray Hiro.

Claire takes the place at Pinehearst, even though it means lying to her parents and to West, where she meets Monica and Micah. The trio settle in with help from Mohinder.

Maya and Alejandro fall afoul of the Mexican police, but Maya uses her ability to get them out of the sticky situation (gaining a new car in the process).

Urged by Nathan, Matt asks Molly to use her ability to find his father.

Elle Bishop searches for Peter Petrelli in Montreal and kills Ricky, whilst Peter is haunted by nightmares.

Episode Six: Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Ando discovers an antique copy of ‘The Tales of Takezo Kensei’ owned by Kaito. In the past, Kensei’s plan to confront Whitebeard does not go as planned, and Hiro and Yaeko destroy Whitebeard’s guns. In one final confrontation, Kensei swears revenge on Hiro before his supposed death, and Hiro returns to the present to protect Yaeko from Kensei’s wrath.

Noah Bennet tracks down an old mentor and discovers missing Isaac Mendez paintings that reveal a terrible fate.

Mohinder feels betrayed by Matt’s pressuring Molly to aid in his investigation, and unsure of Noah’s morality. Bob persuades Mohinder to bring Molly to Pinehearst.

Matt and Nathan search for Matt’s father and are trapped in a mind-game before discovering that their suspect is already dead, with evidence that Peter is the Founders’ Killer.

Distressed by Ricky’s death and Peter’s terrifying visions of a future pandemic, Caitlin kicks Peter out of the Montreal bar. Peter is finally approached by Adam Monroe – the still living Takezo Kensei.

Episode Seven: Twelve Months Ago

Across the year between the events at Kirby Plaza and the death of Kaito Nakumura, Peter makes an ally of the imprisoned Adam Monroe and helps him escape Pinehearst, Noah and Mohinder concoct a plot to bring the Company down, Maya discovers her deadly abilities for the first time, Nathan struggles with the weight of his new responsibilities and the disappearance of his brother, and Sylar fights through layers of illusions to escape captivity.

Episode Eight: The Kindness of Strangers

Maya and Alejandro bring Sylar onto their road trip to New York, but Derreck suffers the consequences when he learns the hitchhiker's identity.

Claire introduces West to her family in an effort to maintain her lies, whilst Molly, Monica and Micah begin moonlighting as superheroes to take down a gang of small-time crooks.

Adam catches Peter up on his plans to eliminate the Company’s bioweapon strain of the Shanti virus.

Mohinder confirms Nathan’s fears that Peter is behind the murders, whilst continuing to argue with Matt over Molly’s safety.

Hiro finds himself unable to attend his father’s funeral, vowing to Ando that he won’t rest until he has found Kaito’s killer.

Episode Nine: Alone in a Crowd

After learning about Noah’s murder of his old mentor, he gives up his plans to Bob Bishop, who partners him with Elle as an official Company agent. With full access to Company records, Mohinder delivers the vital location of the final Company founder to his and Noah’s initial informant – Adam Monroe.

Facing antagonism from citizens and authorities, Sylar guides his shiny new toy Maya in learning to control her abilities.

Claire helps the other Pinehearst kids out of a bind with the small-time thieves, but argues with West and her father once her lies are uncovered, leaving her feeling more alone than ever.

Nathan struggles to tell Angela what he and Matt discovered, and has a vulnerable and revealing talk with Heidi.

Episode Ten: Cautionary Tales

In California, things come to a head between Bob Bishop and the Bennett family, with Mohinder and West caught in the crossfire. Believing her father to have been killed by Mohinder, Claire and West leave to reunite with the Petrelli family.

Episode Eleven: Truth and Consequences

Adam and Peter hunt down Victoria Pratt and discover the location of the potent virus strain.

Noah Bennet is revived with Claire’s blood but must remain imprisoned in Primatech, where he talks with Elle.

Shaken by the events of the previous day, Mohinder learns from Bob who Adam really is.

Hiro time travels to his mother’s funeral to speak with his father, watches Kaito’s murder from a distance to accept his death, and learns that Takezo Kensei is still alive, and the nature of his horrific plans.

Maya, Alejandro and Sylar arrive in New York. With no sign of Mohinder, Alejandro tries to kill Sylar, only to have the tables turned on him, and Sylar and Maya follow Mohinder’s trail to California.

Episode Twelve: Powerless

Sylar and Maya arrive at the California Pinehearst facility, requiring Mohinder and Noah to work together with the Bishops and the Pinehearst kids to take him out. Maya truly learns to control her abilities and Sylar gets away with a vial of healing blood, destroying the rest.

Matt and Nathan investigate the death of Victoria Pratt and deliver the identity of the Company Founder killer and his true intentions to Mohinder.

Peter and Adam travel to Texas where Hiro confronts them but is overpowered by Peter, enabling Adam to reclaim Godsend. Adam successfully releases the virus, with Nathan as its first victim.

Episode Thirteen: Quarantine

Matt and Nathan, Mohinder and Maya, and Claire, West and Angela all convene on the abandoned Primatech facility in Texas and fight to prevent the deadly strain of the Shanti virus from spreading outside of the building, whilst Hiro shows Peter the truth about Adam Monroe.

In California, Sylar regains his powers and plots to take the one ability he has coveted since that Homecoming celebration over a year ago…

And that’s season 2. Did I miss anything vital? I found that Matt and Nathan, more than any other major characters, felt a bit underutilised and were the hardest to find space for in the episodes that didn’t cover major story beats, so they ended up gravitating towards each other a lot. I feel like they sort of end up as confidants to each other, realising they have more in common than they thought, and kind of help guide each other through similar issues. It does mean that the relationship between Matt and Mohinder that I want to expand on is left unexplored beyond them arguing a lot over what’s best for Molly, but they spend much of the season apart so I don’t know how much more I can do in this volume. Maybe the next volume will prove to have more material (as I am not making Daphne a love interest for Matt).

Small tweaks from what I’d established in previous chapters – I want Nathan to have a heart-to-heart with Heidi which is where he will reveal to her that he can fly and that he has a child from a previous relationship, instead of it having happened off-screen between seasons. She will be understanding but also overwhelmed and decide to separate from him for a while, possibly travelling to Europe to be with her extended family, enabling him to be more alone in the latter half of the season and freeing me up from worrying about factoring her into seasons she never appeared in. They are still married, she’s just taking time to process, so she’s viable to come back in later seasons.

I feel like Claire and West’s relationship hasn’t ended up quite as I planned either, but my main intent with them was to make Claire’s conflict more about feeling alone even though she’s surrounded by a support network she’s just too afraid to open up to, and to just make West a more likable character who has a more pronounced conflict of his own.

And as a last note, I want to bring up - for the sake of fleshing out a character I’ve already put way too much thought into - one of the Heroes tie-in comics, called The Ten Brides of Takezo Kensei, in which Adam thinks about his marriages across the centuries whilst trapped in the coffin Hiro buried him in. At one point in that comic, one of his brides mentioned was Yumi, the great granddaughter of Yaeko. I want to make my own elaboration on this even though it’s not something that would ever be mentioned “on-screen”, just to add to my interpretation of Adam’s character. In the comic, he states he got bored and faked his own death to leave Yumi. Now I’ve established that Yaeko had Hiro’s child, that adds an extra layer. Of course, when Kensei supposedly died in the gunpowder explosion he didn’t know Yaeko was pregnant, but he probably lingers for enough time to find out and wouldn’t know if the baby was his or Hiro’s. Maybe he has informants let him know when the baby is born.

Later he returns to Japan in the late 1700s and marries Yumi, the great granddaughter of Yaeko and Hiro. To him, it’s a way of being with both Yaeko and Hiro again, to be with their descendant. But to add on a twisted layer of villainy, he just cannot bare it. Everything about her reminds him of them.

So he murders her and flees.

Because the only thing more satisfying to Kensei/Adam than being with Yaeko and Hiro is murdering them both.

Oh, and he was also Jack the Ripper.

I have a thing about my making my favourite villains somehow even worse don’t ask me why. Also, yes, I am stalling from moving on to the biggest mess of a season ever. Villains is going to be a doozy! I swear I won’t take as long next time getting to it, I’ve just been busy. But y’all be prepared for a RANT in the preface chapter.

Happy New Year and thanks for sticking with me!

Chapter Text

I used to be a Villains defender. I thought it was very “comic book” and should be taken as the show going for a new tonal direction after Vol. 2 wasn’t well received (that ultimately didn’t work out either so it shifted back to something more serious for Vol. 4).

I was absolutely SyElle blinded. Volume 3 does not work. It does not tell a cohesive story and even more so than Vol. 2 it is a very clear writers’ strike victim. If I did a running count of plot points that could have been the focus of an entire season that are raised and then dropped, I’d be drunk. Not because it’s a drinking game, because I’m drinking to cope.

And then there’s the villain. Oh… Oh… the villain.

I have thoughts. I have words. I am breathing very deeply.

I’ll give it one thing (okay two things, because of the SyElle) – it’s a brighter season than the last two. Seriously, they do inject a real pop of colour that Vol. 1 especially was missing (which again disappears when Vol. 4 rolls around as they backtrack back towards “gritty realism”.

Okay, I’ll be generous. Here are the things that work about Vol. 3:

1. The titular episode. Villains is the traditional flashback episode for the volume, focussing on thread story-lines: one that’s fine and two that are fantastic. The Gabriel-Elle storyline and the Petrelli-Linderman storyline are not just amongst the best scenes of the volume, they are amongst the best of the entire show. And even though the Thompson-Gordon storyline isn’t as good, doesn’t really feel impactful in the grand scheme of things and ends on a pretty convoluted tie-in to season one, its still entertaining to watch and Thompson has more personality and character in the single episode than he did in all of his Season One appearances combined. Its amongst my top episodes of the whole show and stands alongside a similar episode from Vol. 4 that proves that when the show just sits down and concentrates on a limited number of characters at a time, it can make those characters shine.
2. The beginning of the season does have some potential and some great “horror” scenes that do make me excited to watch. There’s the Halloween/Scream homage that is Sylar stalking Claire through her home which once again reinforces that Sylar works best when he’s a horror movie villain transplanted into this superhero show. There’s also Angela’s dream, with its promise of bloody ends for the heroes and a villain team up including the return of my favourite immortal. But so much for Angela dreaming the future, for that promise did not come to pass.
3. Honestly, making Mohinder a mad scientist and stretching the limits of his morals was a great idea and at first the execution is good, before the big bad gets hold of him and drags him down into the quagmire of making-it-up-as-we-go. They kind of gave him a Bruce Banner/Hulk thing going on, along with a horror riff on Spider-Man. The leaning into “comic book” does work when they give it these twists. Looking at it through his lens, even the formula plot starts making a small amount of sense, as something Mohinder created to try and raise himself to the level of the superheroes he’s been running around after for two volumes. Its only when the show overcomplicates the formula’s origins with no set purpose
4. Nathan works best when he’s sitting on the moral grey line, much like Noah does. Vol. 2 probably had him at his most on the “good” side of the line, but Vol. 4 will find him at his most on the “bad” side, and though the start is very rocky and there isn’t a great sense of direction, he wobbles his way back across the line well enough. Enough for me to call it a suitable foundation to build a neater path on.
5. They took Claire out of high school and that was the best possible thing they could have done for her. No more repeating the same tired tropes, they found something else for her to do and they hinted at a dark turn for her. Did they follow through? No. But the idea of Claire Bennet: Villain Hunter/Vigilante was there (before it was usurped by Claire Bennet: chosen one/MacGuffin, which also proved pointless)
6. Sylar and Elle. A lot of what they throw at the wall with Sylar shouldn’t work this volume, especially when they start off with him literally murdering Claire (yes, she gets better, he didn’t know it would happen, neither did she, so it’s as good as murder) and its borderline portrayed as a sexual assault allegory. But the next step is to put the horror monster in a suit, trick us all into thinking he’s a lost Petrelli brother and make him team up with Noah Bennet in a buddy-cop scenario? It really shouldn’t work and yet its some of the most entertaining material of the season. And then they turn it all around again by bringing Elle into the picture and cementing the most compelling, complex and utterly believable romantic relationships of the whole show between two sociopathic murderers. And you’re rooting for them!
7. They promised me an Adam-Hiro reunion/team-up with Ando in the mix and I got it for about five seconds and I enjoyed those five seconds, I take what I can get.
8. Depowering everyone is not a bad idea and though the logic behind the eclipse is shaky and not every subplot makes the most of the time, there are good ideas in there, such as Claire being struck by all the infections her immune system never had to fight, and Noah using the window of time he has when he can out-fight Sylar to his advantage. Plus, it just gives some characters time to sit down and talk to each other and
9. Duel is great. Duel is a mostly good episode and really the whole second half of the volume should have been just expanding on the ideas from Duel – turning Nathan to the dark side, giving Mohinder and Ando set-in-stone powers, and horror-movie Sylar taking stage again this time in Jigsaw mode.
10. Tracy is a more interesting character than Nikki. There, I found ten things. I’m gonna bitch about the volume now, buckle up.

Problems!

1. Villains is directionless. What’s the threat? What risk does the formula pose?
2. What does the dark future Peter goes to even mean? What’s so bad about it? Who is Claire working for? Why is Future!Peter considered a terrorist? How does the painting of the world exploding factor into anything?
3. Characters are left flip-flopping in the wind with nothing to do. Maya is paid dust. Adam is wasted. Bob is unceremoniously killed. Monica is nowhere to be seen. Why do the writers hate the Vol. 2 characters?
4. In an effort to make Hiro less game-breaking they take away his memories but do nothing with that premise except some comic relief.
5. Trying to make Claire ‘the Chosen One’ with the ‘catalyst’ plot takes away from her much more interesting ‘vigilante’ arc and ultimately goes nowhere since Arthur steals it from Hiro instantly anyway.
6. What did giving Peter Intuitive Aptitude and the accompanying “hunger” even accomplish? He gets depowered almost immediately anyway.
7. Making “the hunger” into a physical thing driving Sylar felt cheap and makes him less scary, not to mention clashing with his pre-established characterisation (losing his powers didn’t make him want Maya’s powers any less).
8. The “Villains” are wasted. After being hyped up as the worst of the worst who will do terrible things now released into the world, three are killed off with no ceremony (two in a single episode and one we don’t see again except in a flashback and the finale), one is a mere side-boss for Claire to briefly face and the last two end up minions to the volume’s actual big bad… and speaking of…

I’m sure there’s more I can’t think of right now. But we reach my biggest complaint of the volume:

Arthur Petrelli could have been a great villain. He should have been a great villain. The ingredients were there. Robert Forster played him well and was fully capable of being a frightening, threatening presence, as shown in

But your villain needs a motive. Your villain needs a goal, in opposition to your protagonist’s goal.

The question that plagued me throughout my entire rewatch of Vol. 3 was “what the heck does Arthur Petrelli want?” And my answer was: “idk, to make the formula, I guess?” But… for what? He doesn’t need the formula to escape his coma (oh we’ll get there). He is pretty much the most powerful character on the show, especially after he takes Peter’s powers. What does him creating a successful formula and giving people powers make him gain?

Money? Fame? More power for himself? We don’t know, we’re never told, we’re never shown. We know from Vol. 1 that he was involved with the mob via being Linderman’s lawyer, but that doesn’t come up outside of the Villains flashbacks, and even then barely. He wanted to kill Nathan when Nathan set out to bring down Linderman and Arthur with him, considering it a betrayal, but in the volume’s present he’s willing to work with Nathan and even drive him towards higher political positions. So he isn’t after revenge either. What does he want?

And why does anything he does help him gain what he wants?

He’s “putting together a team”. He’s got Daphne and Maury Parkman running around to steal the formula and recruit people. Nathan, and the escaped Level 5 convicts (notice how little they’ve come up in the volume ostensibly named after them, by the way), and then Hiro maybe but not really, Sylar eventually.

And Adam. Except he isn’t being recruited. He’s taken to be murdered.

And thus, in one action, before he even revives from his coma, Arthur Petrelli was cemented as the stupidest villain the show ever had. Because for the sake of waiting about one day more, he lost one of the best potential assets in his catalogue. And the writers wasted a character they had no reason to kill off and didn’t even have to include in the volume at all.

Literally one episode after Arthur wakes up, or even the same episode, Peter shows up and Arthur takes his powers. Powers which include Healing Factor. Arthur could have waited one more day and taken from his son the very power he needed to revive, and neutralised the threat Peter posed. And think how that scene could have played out – a huge emotional gut punch to both Peter and the audience as he learns his father is still alive and reaches to him only to be betrayed and all Nathan’s warnings confirmed when Arthur takes his abilities just to revive himself.

And Adam could have been such a useful asset to Arthur. Adam’s a fighter who can’t be hurt, perfect to put into the fray. He’s a smooth talker who can sway people to his side, as proved with Peter, so great at recruiting. He’s smart and has centuries of experience to make plans. And he’s powerless against Arthur. Especially if Arthur can read minds, Adam can’t make a move against him, so his only options are loyalty or run and running is dangerous because if he gets caught, Arthur is one of the only people who can kill him. Or he could face a fate worse than death, just as Hiro gave him. Adam’s an asset that Arthur could so easily have used.

But no. Arthur not only kills off someone who could and probably would have helped him, he then kills Maury Parkman for no real reason (Arthur already has mind-reading by proxy at this point from Peter or would have absorbed it from Maury using Peter’s stolen ability), so he’s left with Flint and Knox as his minions. And that’s what they are, they’re minions. Hardly the team he was using Daphne and Maury to supposedly acquire. And then he brings in the volatile, only-out-for-himself, incredibly dangerous Sylar and lets him keep his abilities, with only the flimsy foundation of “daddy issues” keeping the serial killer loyal to him. Its hardly surprising that when Sylar learns he’s been lied to, the first thing he does is go and murder Arthur. Like, what else did you expect. That was the inevitable and only conclusion, mate.

So that’s Arthur being stupid. Why are the writers stupid?

Because Adam was in a box they could have kept him in for as long as they needed to. If you can’t get the actor, don’t script the actor into the show and then kill the character. Keep him in the box until the actor is available and you have a plot worth including the character in. Also, having your new big bad kill your old big bad just to prove how big and bad the new guy is is tacky and overdone and there’s a reason I didn’t have Linderman survive Vol. 1 just to be killed by Adam even though it would absolutely have fit Adam’s M.O. And yes, I am bitter that they teased my favourite character at the start of the season, teased a showdown with Hiro, teased a team-up with Hiro and then followed through on none of it and threw Adam away in a fashion that meant he could never come back. When they never needed him to be a part of the season in the first place, had Peter fill the role they brought Adam in for, and saved Adam in the box for another time.

This moment pretty much kills Heroes for me and only the SyElle and my own sheer pettiness keeps me with it on a rewatch. I didn’t feel this way at the time, that’s why I kept watching. But as my respect for Vol. 2 grows, all enjoyment of Vol. 3 reduces an equal amount.

At least the Fourteenth Doctor got a happy ending, I tell myself, crying in “my faves aways end up dead or alone”.

So, our goal with this season is to give it direction and the characters an actual goal to focus on, with its villain also having a concrete goal that the heroes are opposed to.

In writing these prefaces, I’ve really noticed the threads of genres in what works about a certain season, and wanted to pull on those threads to weave that potential into something well-rounded. So, let’s work with that. Vol. 1 was our political thriller. Vol. 2 was a murder mystery. Villains works best when it leans into horror, so Vol. 3: Villains is going to be a horror story.

Happy 2024, guys :D

Chapter Text

This really is the trickiest volume to restructure, so I am absolutely going to have to tackle it in chunks. The first chunk being fallout from Vol. 2 and everything leading up to the revival and emergence of Arthur Petrelli, the second chunk being Arthur’s rise in the lead up to the eclipse/great depowering and the third being the fallout from the eclipse. I am dedicating so much brain space to this puzzle of a conundrum of a storyline. I could be spending this time writing my own novel but I do this for us. The Heroes fandom. Such as we still exist.

So, what are we trying to achieve in this season and how is this first “arc” going to help us accomplish that? Well, what’s our goal? What are our collection of “heroes” (Peter, Hiro, Claire, Mohinder, Matt and nominally Nathan) trying to achieve or stop? Well, they are trying to stop Arthur Petrelli from creating an ability-granting formula.

Why does Arthur want to create this formula? What’s his goal and why is him making the formula so terrible, terrible enough that he needs to be stopped? Well, Arthur’s just a nasty guy. He made his money through illicit and immoral means and he kills to achieve his own ends being even willing to brainwash his wife and assassinate his own son just because they threatened his power. Arthur wants power. Not just abilities but power over others. Power via status. Power via money. We’ll expand his backstory to show that everything he ever achieved he managed through lies and manipulation and backstabbing. He wasn’t an original Company founder, after all. He worked his way into their midst and eventually became the most powerful of them all through his schemes. Everything he does will be tied into these wants and that includes the formula. This isn’t about Arthur gaining abilities but gaining more money, more status. Controlling the world not via fear but via capitalism. Plus a dash of revenge in the mix.

Let’s extend this thought to make it one of the key themes of the season. Abilities, up until now, have been portrayed as very positive in the show. Power can be used or misused but its overall been a good thing. Let’s challenge that by leaning into the theme POWER CORRUPTS. And that’s gonna be literal. ABILITIES, in this season, will be shown to have devastating effects for those who have too much.

Powers are destroying Arthur Petrelli. Even healing factor is just a temporary ease – in fact it’s a sentence worse than death because although gaining healing factor will free him from his coma (which, ironically, was halting the progress of his deterioration) it can’t stop the progress of the destruction that occurs to the body and mind when have too many abilities to control. It destroys your body, your mind. It turns you into something inhuman. Arthur’s first attempt to prevent this happening to him was the virus, but that backfired. The formula is not only another attempt to save himself but its one he can monetise and use to give himself more societal power as well.

Now Arthur has motivation, he has a tangible goal and it can tie into other characters and act as set-up for the future.

In later seasons the writers would depower Hiro by explaining that time travellers almost inevitably will develop terminal cancer from power use (both Hiro and the time traveller in Samuel’s carnival have this happen in Vol. 5). Instead of having that come from nowhere, we’ll set that up with our theme of power corrupts. This theme is also going to prove relevant to Sylar and to Peter as their abilities cause them to accumulate multiple powers over time, can relate on a more personally thematic level for characters like Matt and Claire who start using their powers in ways that are morally wobbly (mind-control and vigilante justice), Nathan who’s growing power isn’t his ability but his status (which has and will continue to pull him in dangerous directions) and Mohinder and Ando who desire power but must weigh the costs. This also ties into the eclipse. With the characters forced over the course of the season to wonder whether their powers are a good thing or not, when they lose them they start to wonder if they are better off without them.

Okay, so we’ve now got our major threat of the season established, so the first few episodes have to do the job of setting it up and foreshadowing not just Arthur Petrelli but the great villain team up we were bloody promised.

The first episode is going to have to clean up the fallout from the Vol. 2 finale and begin the set up, so where was everyone left at the end of that episode?

• Peter, Nathan, Matt, Mohinder, Maya and Angela were left at the Primatech facility in Texas, with Peter having just obliterated the virus using his nuclear abilities in front of a bunch of SWAT and virus quarantine officers.
• Peter is being held at gunpoint whilst Nathan and Matt watch, the secret of abilities at risk of getting out either because of what the regular people have already seen or because if they shoot Peter, he’ll heal in front of them.
• Mohinder, Maya and Angela are in another room of the building going through files and watching the going’s on via security cameras
• Claire – after finding out that the Company kept Sylar alive – stormed off and is returning to California with West.
• Sandra and Lyle Bennet are lying low until all this blows over.
• Noah Bennet is alive and being held at the California company facility (under the Pinehearst medical research branch), which is also where Bob and Elle Bishop currently are.
• Monica, Micah and Molly are also at Pinehearst, California, having just dealt with Sylar
• Sylar is en-route to the Bannet house, having gotten back his original ability Intuitive Aptitude.
• Hiro has returned to Japan and is there with Ando, things are pretty chill with him
• Adam’s in a box. Adam will stay in his box until I need him.

Starting with Peter, let’s go back and do one of my famous post-season retcons. You know how the original Vol. 2 ended with Nathan being shot as a cliffhanger. Now Vol. 2: Bloodlines is going to end with PETER being shot by the SWAT team because they think he’s got some kind of weapon on him after he destroys the virus with nuclear powers. Nathan runs in to embrace Peter, but Peter, of course, heals himself. That’s the big revelation the SWAT Team witnesses, the undeniable proof of supernatural abilities.

So, the episode opens with a recap of that moment and now there’s a standoff. A bunch of SWAT officers pointing their guns at a man who just shrugged off a hail of builets and also there’s a New York congressman in the line of fire now shielding the supernatural entity. Matt is behind the SWAT team, reading their minds, hearing their thoughts racing at this madness. Nathan is desperately trying to infer that he’ll explain. Then Peter turns himself and Nathan invisible and (unseen by the audience) hurries them both away, leaving Matt alone with the officers. He shows them his badge, their thoughts beginning to overwhelm him. Then he narrows his eyes.

Cut to Peter and Nathan in some room they’ve hidden in, and they can have a conversation picking up after where their heart-to-heart in the Vol. 2 finale left off. With Adam and the threat of the virus gone, this can be a proper reunion for them, and they think about how to handle what just happened. Nathan suggests a press conference, just coming out and exposing abilities, but given time they are able to decide they ought to discuss it with their mother (though Peter isn’t sure they can trust Angela – after all she knew he was alive the whole time and never told Nathan. Angela keeps secrets).

In the room where Angela is, Mohinder will get a phone call from Molly which is where we’re going to sort out the absence of Molly, Monica and Micah throughout the season. As much as I’d love to keep them around, they weren’t (well, Monica wasn’t at all and Molly and Micah were barely) in the original Vol. 3 and the volume is bloated enough as it is without trying to find room for them in subplots. They’ll get a scene in this episode where they confront Bob about everything he did in Vol. 2, Micah wipes his computer (which will be important later) and Molly reminds him that she can find him wherever he goes to send a very clear “leave us alone” message. Bob might order Elle to deal with them, but Elle is not able to bring herself to hurt kids.

Molly then calls Mohinder (they saw on the news that there was a quarantine in the area where Mohinder and Matt went) and they reassure each other that everything’s okay. Angela will then let them know she can pull some strings to get them all somewhere safe and (since all three of them are orphans, though Molly has been adopted by Matt and Mohinder, and out of school for a while) into a good school. This arrangement will be assumed to have been fulfilled offscreen and they will be last seen getting into a nice chauffeur-driven car to go to the airport together. They’ll be back eventually.

I may end up doing the same thing with Maya. I’d love to keep her around since having another major female character would be great, but the real Vol. 3 treats her even worse than if we’d just never seen her again so I’ll need to find things for her to do, reasons for her to stick around. I’m not going to commit yet, I’m going to think about it but if you don’t see me mention Maya again beyond her being present in episode 1, just assume that Angela also put her up in some nice apartment in New York with the funds to keep going until she shows up again. She is not going to be relegated to Mohinder’s weirdly victimised love interest because 1. Mohinder is now canonically gay and 2. we did that with her and Sylar last season and I’m not cheap. I think I might be able to get her into Pinehearst New York and in Arthur vicinity somehow. Watch this space on Maya.

For the Primatech Texas plot, it’ll wrap up with everyone coming back together, Nathan and Peter fully ready to drop the bombshell that abilities are about to become common knowledge, but when the SWAT team shows back up, they are cool with Peter. They’re cool with everything. In fact, they are acting as if they were called out for a bomb threat or an active shooter and now they’ve swept the area and can confirm everything’s alright, false threat, everyone can go back to work. The building is cleared and Matt shows up with a terrible headache. Inference is probably reasonable rather than him explaining out loud that he mindwiped those guys. It took it out of him, and Mohinder is quick to get them both sorted to return to New York (leaving the Petrellis behind to sort out their own issues).

Is brainwashing the SWAT team to forget about abilities a bit of a cop out? Yes. Is it much cleaner than “Future Peter attempts to assassinate Nathan then takes real Peter’s place to keep an eye out in order to prevent a bad future in which abilities are sold to people because that’s bad even though in said future everything seems to be fine except Peter is a terrorist and Claire dyed her hair also maybe the work will split in half someone graffitied it on a wall it must be true”?

Yes.

Much cleaner.

But for every happy ending we must have some mess. Some horror.

Claire and West arrive back in California and have their own little heartfelt goodbye moment. The relationship hasn’t worked out but they both kind of imply that maybe they ought to try again when they’re a little older, more mature, less embroiled in country-wide supernatural conspiracy. Is West disappearing from the season altogether? Much like Maya, I haven’t decided. Keeping him around feels a little less justifiable. Like her, though, I’ll think on it. If not, this serves as his goodbye.

Claire gets home, calls Sandra to let her know everything’s sorted, that’s where she is. She potters about the house, goes to make a sandwich, sniffs milk in the fridge but its off, tears up looking at family pictures with Noah in them.

And the whole time, Sylar is there. You barely notice him at first, but then he starts becoming more and more obvious, stalking Claire through the house.

Retcon number 2! Sylar did not reacquire telekinesis after curing himself of the virus. He was either going to get all acquired abilities back or none, anything else is bullshit, so all he regained was his original ability, Intuitive Aptitude. So for this entire sequence the person stalking Claire is barely a supervillain. He’s just a terrifyingly smart and determined human being.

Claire goes to get a bread knife at one point, and the knife rack is complete. When she returns it, there’s a big knife missing. Like a meat-cleaver level knife. She doesn’t notice. She doesn’t notice until he’s right behind her. THEN she turns. He doesn’t say a fucking word but she knows who this is and she runs for her life.

See, the thing about the sequence in the real episode is that once it gets going its fucking great, its scary, its well directed, and even the start where Claire just opens her door and he’s just in the doorway is frightening but then its undercut because he just… starts… talking? Like he knows her. And I joke about Sylar loving the sound of his own voice but I genuinely think the writers forgot that he DOESN’T KNOW HER. He BARELY knows Peter. He’s had more face-to-face interactions featuring talking with HIRO and the only other main character he ever set up a rapport with in season 1 was Mohinder. This is the grand total of interaction Sylar has had with Claire until now:

• Murdered Jackie in front of her, threw her against a wall when she ran to defend Jackie. Entirely hidden in shadow, wearing baseball cap.
• Figure in silhouette stalking Claire and Peter from distance across the school, again, face hidden by baseball cap the entire time. Claire was gone by the time he got close.
• Body lying on Kirby Plaza. Claire arrived after Hiro stabbed Sylar. She was too occupied to look at him and I doubt she went to prod at or examine the supposedly dead body after everything was over.

The most she’s probably seen of his face was his eye in a beam of light when he killed Jackie and then turned to see Claire healing. And yet he’s chattering to her about having an awful last few weeks like they’re old mates. This is not the tone we’re going for. We want Season 1, Horror Movie villain Sylar and I’m going to give it to you.

Claire runs. But the door is locked. She hides but when she thinks she’s safe and can come out, that’s when he decides the chase is over and grabs her and he’s got the knife in his hand. Cut away to the sound of screaming and we end the episode there. For a week, or however long it is between release of episodes it is utterly ambiguous whether Claire is alive or dead.

That’s how you open a season.

Do we see Hiro and Ando in this episode… Maybe? No formula bullshit. Hours have passed since Hiro stopped Adam, so its more like Hiro caught Ando up off screen and now they’re wondering what to do now, and Hiro possibly has a dream of a bad future that can be pretty similar to the one from the show. Ando with powers using them against a future Hiro and some kind of big disaster. Maybe not a natural disaster but lots of people with abilities fighting and causing collateral damage, like a more realistic version of what the big superpower battles in movies would be like for the regular people caught in the crossfire. But not like a big heroes vs. villains brawl, more like a bar fight that got out of hand. The result of people given abilities, becoming addicted to them like drugs and body-horroring into monsters as a result of the overload. The car thrown towards Hiro is thrown by a person with super strength.

Last note is going to be a little foreshadowing for Arthur, so as Matt, Mohinder, the Petrellis and Maya leave the building someone in a car nearby is watching, on the phone, talking to an unknown person about what she’s witnessing and this is our introduction to Tracy, and Daphne is with her. One of us, one of them (because Tracy doesn’t know yet). Tracy can ask Daphne which of them she wants to tackle and which Tracy will go after, and Daphne picks Mohinder and Matt. Tracy’s happy with that outcome because her eyes are set on Nathan.

And this got long, so that’s Vol. 3 episode 1. Clean up and a little set up. Things really get going from here. Premieres and finales are always going to take up a bulk of wordcount because if they deviate from the real episodes they cover a lot. Episodes in between can be more sum-up. And that’ll be next time – the rest of the first arc of this Volume. I don’t think I gave myself an episode count. The original Volume is 13 out of a 25 episode season, I think I’m going to do a 13 – 13 split and call the Volumes separate seasons to account for a time jump between the two. So season 1 was the longest and all subsequent seasons are 13 episodes. Happy? Good. See you next time!

Chapter Text

Episode two of this volume is going to begin with the thing I couldn’t fit into episode one. Angela’s dream. The biggest not-fulfilled promise of the original volume. It’ll remain pretty much the same as the original dream except it is going to start with her walking into her home, the mansion in New York, and coming across Peter and Nathan’s bodies first, then the hallways morph into the Primatech corridors and its clear she’s dreaming – just a little bait and switch, since we left the Petrellis in episode one heading home to New York. The collection of villains she sees at the end will include Adam, Tracy, Knox, Flint, Doyle, Elle and Daphne, before Sylar shows up behind her and she wakes up on the private jet for her sons to check in on her and a phone call comes through that causes them to detour to California.

Sandra and Lyle return home and find Claire, alive and going about general day-to-day activities, maybe cooking something on the stovetop, but distant. Sandra also finds a patch of dried blood. Its only when she notices that Claire’s being burned by the stove, which Claire hasn’t even noticed now she can’t feel pain, that Claire breaks down and – offscreen, unheard – tells Sandra what happened.

Sylar, in possession of a bunch of Company files, finds the home of some poor guy, and gets into the house by pretending to work for maintenance or something. When the guy twigs that he’s here with bad intentions and uses telekinesis to try to fight him off, Sylar heals and the next time we see Sylar, he has telekinesis back.

I want more scenes in the California Pinehearst building between Noah and Bob, Noah and Elle and Elle and Bob before Sylar breaks back in and kills Bob, and to establish Level Five and the villains effectively. Bob will offer Noah back his job after he helped the kids fight off Sylar beforehand, and Noah knows a lot of these villains and how to contain them. I always found it weird how Noah’s arc in season one was about breaking away from the Company, and season 2 was about him trying to destroy it, then in season 3 he was right back to working for them as if nothing had changed except a leadership switch and it wasn’t ever really addressed. Nothing about him only doing this to put the escaped villains back in check. So we’ll address it and have it as a kind of Bob offering grudging respect and a shady “you don’t have to be a prisoner if you are helping out” sort of deal which Elle encourages him to take because, well, if Noah isn’t helping then he’s just a burden on the Company to keep here, and if everyone already thinks he’s dead… Elle’s assassinated people on her father’s orders for less.

Not that it matters much to Bob because Sylar’s gonna get back in and kill him anyway, then head down to Level Five for a power-up feast where he finds and tells Noah he got to Claire and Elle fights him off (maybe a tad more acknowledgement of their previous relationship than in the show proper) and causes an electrical outburst allowing the villains to escape. Elle is amongst them. She doesn’t get fired by Angela, after she wakes up from her outburst she’s out of there. Maybe Noah allows her to escape in the chaos.

After that I want at least one scene where Claire’s two families actually spend time in the same room. Sandra, Lyle and Claire in their house with Nathan, Peter and Angela, all comforting Claire after she was attacked by Sylar and she comes to terms with what this means for her now. Angela even offers her a job with the Company. Then Noah comes back, bringing Meredith with him, so there’s just a whole bunch of emotional reunions all at once. Sandra meets Meredith, Nathan and Meredith reunite and she meets Angela, the Bennets learn Noah is still alive. It’ll probably take up good chunks of episodes two and three for these characters, and will end with Noah telling Angela how the villains (including Sylar) all escaped and Noah being quite adamant that Claire shouldn’t get involved, which will lead to Meredith giving her some training and the two of them going all vigilante together. Moving away from the episodic into general character arcs for the first half of the season, this will culminate in one failed mission (the black hole creating guy) but once she accepts to herself that her actual goal was just to get Sylar back and that should just be one more step on a path to helping others, Claire turns in Doyle on her own terms. She then accepts the offer Angela gave, joining the Company to Noah’s begrudging acceptance. There will be hints throughout to a darker side of Claire brought about by her anger, and her arc this season is learning to channel her anger productively and that her empathy is actually what’s most helpful.

Over in New York, Mohinder’s obsession with researching abilities continues and I think he’ll persuade Matt and Maya to donate blood to try to get to the bottom of what grants abilities. To make this a much more natural character progression from the previous season this will begin as him kind of feeling that the Company had a point in trying to create an ability neutraliser and wondering its possible to do that without using the Shanti virus and risking a world-ending pandemic. But over the first few episodes, his jealousy over not having abilities (accentuated by Matt being able to read his mind at all times and Matt’s ability expanding to mind control as well) starts taking over.

He’ll only pivot to ability creation after Daphne has successfully recruited him (yes, she’s recruiting Mohinder not Matt, what use does Matt even have for Arthur anyway? A mind reader/controller is a risk to him, not an asset) to come over and assist in her bosses research. Matt picks up bad vibes but Mohinder is being jealous and not thinking so after one or two episodes of deliberation he reaches breaking point and accepts. He meets Tracy – who has nothing to do with politics in this version, she works for Arthur Petrelli from the jump – who reassures him that sure, her company is based in the same old Pinehearst building he once worked at as Molly Walker’s doctor, but that company is no longer based here. Her company is called Intelligent Design. Working for them, he starts putting the formula together. Tracy will also recruit Maya to work as a nurse, first for test subjects and then for ‘the boss’.

Tracy will still be hounded by press, but it’s about her company’s ethics and mob ties (foreshadowing who is really in charge), and she’ll unlock her ability and have a crisis which Nathan, who she is also trying to recruit by saying Intelligent Design will fund and support him as he’s offered a senator position (that’s just something that’s happening in Nathan’s subplot without outside interference considering I don’t think it actually had a reason to happen for the Vol. 3 plot, it just helped set up Vol. 4). He will sleep with her once but feel a lot of guilt about it afterwards and the relationship remains kind of one-sided on Tracy’s part after that. Her outright villainy and dedication to Arthur will be a factor in pushing his “abilities bad” agenda for the next Volume.

I struggled a little while with Matt, Hiro and Ando, who felt like they were hanging in the wind. I wouldn’t mind them having a little bit of a backseat this season since they had more prominent roles in the previous, but what makes most sense to me is that they all end up on the track of the escaped villains. Matt in his capacity as a detective and Hiro and Ando thanks to their heroes-for-hire set up. Maybe its even Daphne who recruits them, for the purpose of getting them to lead her to them so she can recruit them for Arthur’s plans. They end up being brought together trying to find the location of a “villain bar”. Maybe with Peter’s help, maybe without, they are led to the conclusion that they are only getting in with an introduction and the only person who can provide it (as Peter is very much not welcome at the bar in Montreal) is Adam Monroe. So Matt joins Hiro and Ando in getting Adam out of the box and despite Adam being immune to mind control, Matt can still read his mind and let Hiro know if Adam’s cooking up any schemes – which Hiro can easily travel back in time to prevent and put him right back in the box. And Adam will be staying with the gang. No running away, no capture, no premature and badly written death. We are getting the reluctant buddying up between former friends-turned-enemies, all the sniping between Adam and Ando over who knows Hiro best, Hiro treating Ando kind of like shit because of what he saw in the future and Adam manipulating the hell out of that, and Matt just in the corner trying to keep his cool. And yes, the villains bar is the bar in Montreal where Adam and then Peter hid out. Caitlin can cameo! It’ll be wonderful. It’ll be joyous. Daphne will tag in briefly to start getting a taste of what friendship looks like, but she isn’t ready to turn yet. After some villains are tracked down, Adam finally catches her detouring them from returning to Level 5 and demands she tell him what’s going down, and they ditch the heroic trio, since Daphne can outrun Hiro’s time stopping.

How about Sylar? So far, same trajectory. He ends episode 2 in the same place as in the episode proper, locked up in Level 5. And honestly, I think his plotline can stay pretty much in the same ballpark. A reluctant, forced team-up with Noah to stop a bank heist (though we’ll have it be a heist perpetrated by only one escaped villain, not all of them) and then going after the same black-hole creating villain as Claire does on her own and Noah trying to convince the guy to kill Sylar. That dynamic was fun in the show, some of the best Vol. 3 scenes. What I struggled over was whether to keep the lie Angela tells him – that he’s a secret third Petrelli brother. Whilst ‘adopted Sylar’ is ultimately kind of innocuous, it’s a cliché for his character type and it being innocuous ultimately makes it meaningless. Worse, it lessens the impact of an episode like The Hard Part and that relationship between Sylar and his mother. But even though “secret Petrelli lie” might have been the original sin for this plotline, because it did turn out to be a lie everything might have worked out fine if they hadn’t doubled down the following Volume and said “no, actually, he isn’t a Petrelli but he was adopted”. For no real reason I can see other than to keep Sylar in the first half of that volume doing his own completely unrelated subplot before they could write him into the main plot. Because even-numbered Heroes seasons were addicted to making Sylar go on roadtrips with new characters which would be the weakest subplot of that Volume.

But Sylar secretly but not really being a Petrelli was the seed, not the tree, and we can nip that growth in the bud for Vol. 4. For now, it stays. Sylar wants to believe he’s special so “you’re not the child of a watchmaker, you’re the secret middle child of a rich, superpowered dynasty who was given away aka. The most comic book backstory you’ve ever heard” is exactly the kind of thing he wants to hear and believe about himself. He wants to believe he was born rich, and powerful, and special and the world took that away from him. Plus, being at his supposed mother’s beck and call is the only way to keep him in line as a semi-official Company agent. Now he and Noah are on a similar page. Prisoners technically only working for their captor due to family ties. Rene hangs around as well when necessary to ensure Sylar doesn’t just massacre his way off the leash.

I’ll finish with Peter because the mid-point of the season will revolve around him. He’s the character who’s probably the least where he was at the start of the season proper. No future replacement, no being stuck in the mind of a random villain. But I would like him to go to the future. Let’s stick to a similar structure as our Vol. 2 – 13 episodes, one flashback episode and (absent from our Vol. 2 but present in our Vol.1) a flash forward episode completely dedicated to the future instead of going back and forth from present to future. Peter will spend the first episode wrapping up Vol. 2, the second episode on the plane with Nathan and Angela, and the third primarily in the Bennet household. He’ll find out about the villain breakout and be keen to help. Then Hiro on his own mission will come across him. Hiro finds out about the bar in Montreal and Adam’s connection to it through Peter, and though Peter doesn’t think he’d be welcomed there, the group is prepared to use Peter as their “in”. But after Hiro confides to Peter about seeing a bad future, one little but of worry from Peter and he’s accidentally transported himself to the future and he remains stuck there for the episode’s full run. Its just like what Hiro saw – on the surface a perfectly normal city just with lots of superpowers on full display in everyday life… but violence breaking out which Peter attempts to stop. He comes across Claire who is an agent of the Primatech Force – basically superhero cops – with Matt, Daphne (not a couple), but none of the escaped villains, so no Knox. Claire is perplexed, asks Peter what happened to his scar (because Peter always gaining and unhealable scar in the future is a fun trope) and says she has to take him in because he supposedly died in a terrorist attack on Intelligent Design, one he initiated with a bunch of the escaped villains. Peter gets away, goes to Intelligent Design to see Mohinder who is a mutant monster locked in his own laboratory and warns about power-overuse and his “formula” to unlock the dormant ability gene in all humans not working as intended. He tells Peter to find Noah, not Sylar, but when Peter heads to what he assumes to be Noah’s address he finds the reformed Gabriel Gray and his son Noah (and Noah’s mother Elle. She doesn’t even need to be in the house but there can be photos of her and she can be mentioned by name, I’d just like it if she were around and confirmed as Noah’s mother) instead. Peter doesn’t fix a watch to gain Intuitive Aptitude, he gets it just from standing near Gabriel, who warns him that his ability is like an addition, he feels an overwhelming need to understand anything and everything even if it means taking apart something he can’t fix, like a human brain.

I literally just thought of this right now – what if the way Gabriel overcame his need to kill was by becoming a surgeon? He can compare it to watchmaking! He worked for Intelligent Design for a while. Elle even ended up on his operating table and he saved her life after her electricity started overloading her, gaining her ability in the process. Then the cops show up, baby Noah gets accidentally killed and Gabriel goes nuclear, with Peter able to survive because he nabs Daphne’s ability. Maybe he escapes with Elle, but she’s devastated too.

Through all this, we’ve also been cutting back and forth to Nathan communicating with Claire, Nathan is the President and married to Tracy who is the Director of Intelligent Design and they keep being protested. There’s people like “look what the formula has done” to people who have turned violent or completely mutated, people who just don’t have the innate gene to unlock who feel ostracised, and people objecting on various bigoted grounds. Peter finally goes to meet up with Nathan and discovers the connection to Intelligent Design and that there’s someone in the organisation working over Tracy. They are in an Intelligent Design office somewhere. Adam is there, he’s Nathan’s bodyguard. Then Elle walks in and overloads herself, exploding the entire place. Peter teleports back to the present day.

I think this take really sets up the whole ‘villains’ idea more succinctly. This season is, to some extent, ‘villains vs. villains’ and it is ‘who is a villain’? In the future, Claire, Nathan, and the rest of the world believe Peter is a villain because he teamed up with ‘villains’ to try and destroy Intelligent Design. But were they in the right, regardless of what those ‘villains’ did before? Who runs Intelligent Design? Villains do. Is the issue with Intelligent Design the fact that it is turning previously powerless people into supervillains, now able to act on all of their previous negative and destructive thoughts because they now have the power to? If a ‘villain’ like Sylar can be ‘redeemed’ what does that mean?

Peter heads to Intelligent Design, just like in the season proper. Storms in and confronts Tracy, who talks him down from potential rampage and says she’ll take him to the boss. She brings him to the medical room where Arthur is waiting, attended by Maya. Peter is shocked to see his father alive, though comatose, but through mind reading they can communicate. Arthur’s voice in Peter’s mind says he’s so glad to see his son, that he’ll explain everything, come give your father a hug. He even manages to move his hand enough to make a ‘please hold my hand’ gesture. Peter, overcome by emotion, having always looked up to his father, being protected by Angela and Nathan from the truth about him, goes to him, takes his hand. And Arthur takes his powers, including healing, and recovers from his coma, leaving Peter powerless and betrayed.

LIKE THE SHOW SHOULD HAVE DONE.

So, we have our set up. Formula creation in motion. Villain team coming together. Claire a fully-fledged Company agent, but finding that Sylar is in the same position. Conflict building. And an eclipse on the way…

Chapter Text

Gosh, life has been busy lately. And I will admit, this section of the reimagining might be the trickiest of the entire project because Villains part 2: the Eclipse saga is the messiest the Heroes every got. So, as we reorganise, let’s begin by reminding ourselves where our players are at.

Angela, Noah, Claire and Sylar are all working for the Company in California, all somewhat grudgingly. Sandra, Meredith and Lyle have just discovered Elle – power-overloading – in the Bennet home.

Hiro, Ando and Matt were in Montreal having just lost Daphne and Adam, and will likely head back to New York to regroup because Matt has an apartment they can chill in and Matt will want to check in with Mohinder – who still has not yet injected himself with the formula yet.

In New York, Tracy is working to bring Nathan into Team Intelligent Design by funding his political ascension. Mohinder and Maya are working for Intelligent Design in formula research and development, and as a nurse for Arthur Petrelli respectively. Peter just showed up and had his abilities stolen by Arthur, which heals him from his coma.

A neat divide here for the California squad – Angela learns where Peter has gone (maybe from a concerned Nathan whom Peter might have called to tell him where he was going), so she sends Sylar and Noah to Intelligent Design whilst Claire is called by Meredith or Sandra and goes to deal with the Elle situation. Elle was expecting Noah – he allowed her escape Level 5 during episode 2, so he saved her life. She and Claire have more of a connection than in the series proper because they will have met and spoken during Claire’s time at Pinehearst in season 2, rather than them just having one tense confrontation, so though they aren’t happy to see each other, they are able to bond over their trip to Intelligent Design (Elle has a business card as in the show proper, having been told she can find help there), and they aren’t aware that’s where Sylar and Noah have headed, too. I also think Meredith ought to go with them or be tailing them, lining her up to meet Nathan and Tracy.

Inside Intelligent Design, we have de-powered Peter who has been unexpectedly reunited with Adam, so there’s fun to be had there. Adam is working essentially as a bodyguard for Arthur now. Not that Arthur needs a bodyguard, but appearances are important and Adam is a useful ally. Adam can tell Peter he should be grateful because now he won’t ever suffer overload. In just a few scenes we ought to learn enough information to understand Athur’s goals, which are:

1. Perfect formula and take it himself, so he never risks power-overload
2. Get Nathan into office to cement his legacy
3. Market formula to military
4. Sell formula to highest bidders
5. Profit and live forever as the immortal Godfather of the superpower distribution mafia

What we know will happen if he succeeds is:

1. Class-divide between those with genetic powers, those with formula-given powers and those without powers, causing immense social and political unrest
2. Risk of Petrelli dictatorship (Peter jumps about 8 years forward, Nathan on verge of a third-term election?)
3. Black market trade in dangerous knock-off formula
4. Super-powered criminals and terrorists
5. Power-overload an ever-increasing risk especially for people taking the knock-off formulas, leading to disasters like the one Hiro witnessed when he jumped into the future
6. Cold War between America and rest of the world – America has superpowered military which could crush any other military, but other countries could unite against America and drop all the nukes, so worldwide stalemate in action with tensions constantly rising
7. Some countries implementing horrific human rights injustices against anyone who develops genetic superpowers, ala. Five Years Gone

Peter warns about this, and Adam can laugh and say that if his plan had gone as he wanted, none of this would have happened and the future isn’t set in stone, and Peter can respond something “yeah, because I’m gonna stop it.” Peter should also let slip about Sylar being a Petrelli, because Arthur needs to find that out somehow so when Sylar shows up, he can use that to his advantage. I’d also like Daphne and Peter to talk. Daphne has only known kindness from Arthur but Peter tells her what he’s really like – how he too was blind to his father’s flaws until he started to realise what he was capable of, what he did to other people without Peter seeing, planting the seeds of doubt. Then Peter is wheeled off to be injected with Mohinder’s first attempt at the formula.

That’s when Sylar and Noah show up. Adam will go confront Noah and though Noah is able to keep him at a distance with bullets so Adam can’t slice him apart (he has Godsend – it was buried with him and he brought it when he was dug up), Noah can’t get inside, but Sylar does and makes it to Peter. When Mohinder tries to stop them from escaping, there’s a scuffle and Mohinder is accidentally injected. Peter and Sylar’s narrative can play out as it did, with fighting and making it up to Arthur but Arthur talking Sylar into hearing him out and Sylar throwing Peter out of the window but ensuring his fall isn’t deadly, and Claire and Noah can then find Peter but Elle goes into the building.

Daphne can find Mohinder, who can urge her to tell Matt he can’t come home. When Arthur refuses to take the formula powers away from Mohinder, wanting to see what will happen, Daphne second guesses even more, so when she finds Matt, with Hiro and Ando, she’s making her turn to good.

Nathan has also zeroed in on Intelligent Design with Meredith, but chose to go inside with Tracy instead of following Meredith and Claire to Peter. Arthur will spend an episode or two balancing his eldest sons (or eldest son and the man he’s lying to about being his second eldest) to bring them both onto his side. Then we can get Nathan and Sylar interacting for the first time – Sylar being fully team Arthur and Nathan being very torn because, well, Arthur tried to have him killed. Sylar and Adam can meet, too! This season is called Villains so we should take the chance for the villains to meet, to talk and spend time together just as much as the groups of heroes do.

Barely anything needs to change about the episode Villains – not even the weakest of the three subplots, with Meredith, Flint and Thompson. You don’t fix what’s not broken and even that subplot isn’t broken, its just not as good as the other two. The only things to be cut are the scene between Noah and Elle meant to line up to the Pilot at the end of the Elle/Gabriel subplot - which didn’t gel with the Gabirle-to-Sylar timeline established in Six Months Ago - and the framing device of Hiro going on a drug trip. I mean, does it even need a framing device? The S1 and 2 flashback episodes didn’t. Yeah, Hiro had gone back in time in Six Months Ago but he didn’t interfere with any other subplots. So, yeah, there’s really no need for framing at all but if we must, maybe its Angela dreaming and at the end of the flashbacks Arthur attacks her in her dreams and puts her into the coma. If there’s going to be any present-day scenes, a single minute at the end to show that Sylar and Elle are about to be reunited is the only full on addition I’d suggest.

The following episode continues the best subplot of the season – Sylar and Elle – with the amazing scenes of Elle going absolutely off at him in a shipping container. No notes, no changes there either except that Elle isn’t fixed and Sylar doesn’t gain her power immediately. Once she’s in more control and Sylar gets close, he knocks her out with an apology because Arthur’s lesson for Sylar is a bit different to the show proper. Not just “you can gain powers without killing” but “you can study brains to understand powers without having to kill.” Claire survived her attack because Sular put her scalp back on her head and she healed. There’s a way to do that with others, too. Surgery. We’re tying this plot into what’s come before and into the flash forward by showing the moment that Gabriel learned he could get everything he wanted by adapting his watchmaking skills to surgery. He operates on Elle’s brain, fixing the issue that was causing her overloading and learning her ability in the process. And Arthur can promise a donation of Adam’s blood if things go wrong, showing that Arthur has Adam on a leash.

Its not needed, though, and Elle wakes up, and she and Sylar admit their feelings for each other and kiss whilst Arthur creepily watches on the CCTV.

Also immediately following the episode Villains we’ll have Daphne sent out by Mohinder to tell Matt what happened to him, whilst being blackmailed by Arthur to assassinate Hiro (and maybe Matt as well whilst she’s at it), so she’ll come together with that group again, let slip what Arthur’s done to Angela and Hiro will teleport them all back to Angela’s location so Matt can attempt to free her from the coma. Whilst that’s going on, its Hiro and Ando who will continue driving Daphne towards the side of good, but facing that inner conflict she bolts rather than choose a side and Hiro wanting to follow her threatens to drive another wedge between Hiro and Ando. Matt mind-read Daphne’s intentions so is able to give Hiro a vague location and Hiro teleports after her without Ando.

Claire picks up Peter after his fall from the window, and they run into Noah as well once they’ve lost Elle to Intelligent Design, so they are making their way to the Petrelli mansion to regroup when Flint, Knox and several other Level 5 escapees confront them. They aren’t after Claire in this version – there’s no formula catalyst nonsense to make her the chosen one (as much as I like the flashbacks where Hiro meets his family again and then he becomes the catalyst, unfortunately its undercut by Arthur time travelling out of nowhere to take it from Hiro in the villain equivalent of a deus ex machina, rendering the entire subplot pointless, so its all gotta go, at least in its original form), They are after Noah for revenge. Peter bluffs still having abilities for long enough to let Claire and Noah get away, and once he’s been thoroughly beaten up, the villains lose interest until Peter tells them about the formula and says he wants to hear them out. Claire and Noah regroup with Meredith, but Meredith goes after Peter when she hears that Flint is with the villain group.

I know I want the Level 5 villains to play a more active role and have more agency than it just ended up as Knox and Flint as Arthur Petrelli’s mercenaries (a role that Sylar and Elle will take on with much more effect and character arcs built-in), so after spending the first half of the season as pop-up villains of the week for (mostly) Claire to face – Doyle, the black-hole guy and I think Flint as well mainly for Meredith and she lets him get away, whilst Knox can have an episode pitted against Hiro’s crew whilst Adam is with them – then come together as another villain team bent on vengeance against the company. So you end up with several factions of good and bad going into the Eclipse Two=Parter.

This is where everyone’s at before the Eclipse arrives:

New York – at Intelligent Design we have Arthur Petrelli, Adam Monroe, Sylar and Elle, Nathan and Tracy, and Mohinder and Maya.

• Mohinder is working on the formula with Maya’s assistance as he starts getting more ‘The Fly’ by the minute thanks to the accidental injection. Maya can make an attempt to heal him with her powers, but the formula isn’t a disease or an infection so she can’t.
• Sylar and Elle are playing with Sylar’s new electricity powers and are about to be sent out on a mercenary mission (they aren’t after Claire as the catalyst now but they have to end up in Claire and Noah’s proximity for the best Eclipse subplots to take place, so I’ll think on that one)
• Arthur and Tracy are going their best gaslighting, gatekeeping and girlbossing to try and get Nathan on their side. Adam is also in the room and probably being the most persuasive person in there because Adam is the king of gasligfhting, gatekeeping and girlbossing. He is probably relishing the opportunity to say he manipulated not one but two entire Petrelli brothers into joining in on his schemes.

New York – Petrelli Mansion: Peter and Meredith have gathered the Level 5 villains and are ready to negotiate with them.

New York – on their way out: Claire and Noah driving out, and after that last encounter with the villains Claire is tired of being covered for and wants Noah to teach her how to be a real Company agent, so she can have that training arc from the Eclipse Two Parter.

California – Pinehearst facility: Angela in a coma, Matt and Ando. Matt goes back into Angela’s mind palace just as the Eclipse comes over and gets trapped in there with her, unable to get out, so Ando’s alone in a spooky facility with basically comatose people. Rene is also around but I’d like Ando not to know that right now.

A cornfield in, Kansas was it? – Hiro has teleported, not really knowing where he is, only that he must be in proximity of Daphne, calling out for her, not knowing she’s in a nearby house.

So, we’ve cut Petrelli brother side quest – they’ve had a chance inside Intelligent Design to have their heart-to-heart, Sylar as honorary third got a look-in as well, and Arthur and Tracy get more time to persuade Nathan so his turns don’t feel so much out of nowhere. This is, to be fair, a less Nathan-centric season, he’s getting his spotlight in Fugitives, he’ll be fine. And we’ve cut Hiro losing his memories for no real reason. Everything he learned in the Eclipse Two Parter he can still learn without regressing back to 10 years old, he’ll be fine.

The Eclipse rewrite is going to be rather extensive, so we’ll give it its own chapter. Plus, it’s been a while so this set-up will hopefully tide you over in the meantime! Next chapter will come sooner, I promise!

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So, the next chapter didn’t come sooner, and I apologise. Once again, to some extent, my busy life (by which I mean my busy job, what’s a work-life balance again?), but I am going to put an equal amount of blame upon this arc being a nightmare. And I’m gonna say it, what I’ve come up with so far just isn’t working. Every time I sit down trying to plot the Eclipse arc, I just cannot make it work and there isn’t an easy fix. It just needs more setting up.

I’m not going to delete the last two chapters of Volume 3 content, but I am going to rework them. I realised that something is missing from Volume 3, that all other Volumes have, and that its absence is actually more significant than I had thought.

Its missing a time jump. Every other season has a reset point that allows the characters to move around, find a new status quo to be disrupted. Think about how Vol. 3 begins, as previously mentioned, with a weird sense that no one set of characters are working to the same time scale. Nathan, Peter and Matt are in the immediacy of the Vol. 2 cliffhanger, Claire can’t be far behind because she’s reacting to the breaking news but then Sylar shows up in her vicinity having travelled from New York to California - healed every cut and wound and changed his hairstyle and outfit along the way – so quickly he might as well have teleported. Meanwhile, Hiro and Ando and Mohinder and Maya’s subplots are playing out as if days, weeks or (in Hiro and Ando’s case) a standard jump of months has occurred, and they are reset into new plots with Vol. 2 far behind them. I mean, where even is Molly in episode 1? No wonder the rest of the volume was a mess when it feels like the first episode was created by five writers who couldn’t agree on a starting period.

Having left Volume 2 on a cliffhanger, I do still have to take an episode, or even 2, to clean up. This isn’t like the Vol. 1-2 jump where the aftermath of the finale can be covered in a flashback episode, because Vol. 1 didn’t end on a cliffhanger of immediacy the way I left Vol. 2 on. Plus, we already have a flashback episode set aside for Vol. 3 – Villains – and I am not scrapping Villains, not in any universe.

So my episode 1 is retained as previously described, with Nathan, Peter, Matt and Angela cleaning out after the Primatech quarantine, and Sylar taking Claire’s powers (without an egregiously impossible travel time between states because they are both in the same area at the end of Vol. 2). Hiro, Ando and Kimiko are emotionally processing after Kaito’s funeral and Hiro dreams about the future where people doped up on formula are causing destruction. The Pinehearst kids confront Bob before heading off, and Elle bonds with Noah, and Tracy and Daphne are introduced picking up Maya after she leaves Primatech, a bit of Arthur foreshadowing.

Episode 2 picks up immediately with Sandra and Lyle finding Claire and Sylar taking an innocent person’s telekinesis before going back to Pinehearst and killing Bob. Both Noah and Sandra call the Petrelli’s within minutes of each other (Noah calls Angela, Sandra calls Peter using Claire’s phone) about the emergencies, and it seems as if Peter will go to the Bennet house and Nathan will go with Angela to Pinehearst, but when the doorbell rings at the Bennet house, its Nathan at the door, and Peter arrives at Pinehearst just in time to get caught in Elle’s blast. When Angela gets into the hall, Sylar is unconscious, the Level 5 villains have broken out, Noah let Elle go and Peter is nowhere to be seen.

When it cuts to Peter, he’s alone in Primatech and leaves the building to emerge in a dystopian future with an eclipse overhead.

Cut to the series titlecard. Then to Angela’s dream, as previously described and when she wakes up, the episode title drops: SIX MONTHS LATER.

What’s happened over the last Six Months?

• CLAIRE: living in New York, in an apartment close to the Petrelli mansion. She (and Sandra and Lyle) still believes that Noah is dead. She’s working a part time job and wants to do a job that allows her to ‘catch bad guys’. Inspired by her time at Pinehearst, she’s going some soft vilgilante-ing on the side.
• NATHAN: actually being a good Dad to Claire, and furthering his political career – he has taken the senator position offscreen in the last six months. He’s concerned that he hasn’t heard from Peter and isn’t sure that Angela is telling the truth about not knowing where he is this time, but he’s looking on the bright side – Peter showed up last time, he’s out there somewhere.
• NOAH: working for the Company under duress, unable to see his family, and actively searching for the missing runaways. He’s reintroduced taking out one of the less terrible ones (like the Level 4 escapees) with Rene’s help and bringing them back. He torments Sylar as much as he can.
• SYLAR: imprisoned in Level 5. He’s conscious but drugged and taunts Noah with the knowledge that Noah can hurt him as much as he wants, he’ll always heal and Noah is forbidden from killing him by Angela, who can make Noah’s life hell if she wants.
• HIRO AND ANDO: Have set up their Heroes for Hire company, also Ando and Kimiko are dating now.
• MATT: Still a detective, specialising in cases that he suspects involve people with superpowers.
• MOHINDER: supporting Matt by doing forensics that Matt can’t take to official channels without exposing superpowers, but increasingly conflicted about the secrecy and insecure about his lack of abilities. Daphne has been consistently bothering him with her Intelligent Design job offer for at least a month, maybe two at this stage.
• MAYA: Regularly meeting with Mohinder for coffee and also pressing him about taking the job Daphne keeps offering him.
• PETER: Missing in action.

It did strike me that both Peter and Sylar are back in very similar positions to the start of Vol. 2 – Peter has been missing for months and his family are concerned about his whereabouts, and Sylar is in custody with the Company. But I hope that the framing gives each plot enough of a twist to keep it from feeling stale.

Key things in this episode – Angela gets spooked by her dream, goes to Pinehearst and tells Sylar he’s her son before ‘feeding’ the Level 4 prisoner Noah just caught to him (with the implication that the other inmates are going to become Sylar-food too). Mohinder gets Maya to donate blood so he can start his experiments. Claire messes up trying to stop a robbery, and Nathan sits her down to tell her off, but admits he knows she won’t stop so he’s brought someone in to help train her, that someone being Meredith. Daphne tries to hire Hiro and Ando’s services and notes the tension between them (which is as much from Ando’s side over his own lack of abilities as it is from Hiro’s seeing a future Ando betray him). Tracy tries to hire Nathan and kills the press guy with her ice powers. And finally, Matt is investigating a murder that looks suspiciously like a Sylar copy-cat.

Episode 3 is our Peter-focussed episode set entirely in the future, all the same as previously described. When he returns to the present, (in episode 4) he tracks down Nathan first but Nathan is busy comforting Tracy. Then he goes to Angela and finds out what’s been going on with her and Sylar. Also in episode 4, we have the Noah and Sylar buddy up to take down the bank robber, and Noah’s first failed attempt at killing Sylar out in the field (which he discovers when they return to Pinehearst was actually a whole test by Angela for Noah). Peter finds out here that Noah is alive.

Meredith trains Claire and gets her to admit she wants to kill Sylar more than anything, as in the show proper. Matt requests Hiro and Ando’s help with the copy-cat killer investigation (that’s a stretch, maybe Daphne’s involvement is the connection here…), and Maya successfully recruits Mohinder to Intelligent Design and he meets “the boss” (offscreen for the moment).

Meredith and Claire’s veer into an almost ‘villain of the week’ here, with their next target being the guy who creates black holes, at the exact same time that Noah and Sylar go after the same guy, so that’s Claire and Noah’s big reunion, discovering Noah isn’t dead. The following episode everyone splits up with Sylar being sent to get Peter from Intelligent Design and being recruited by Arthur (Mohinder getting injected with his formula by accident in the process). Claire and Noah spend a calm episode reconciling, whilst Meredith goes to tell Sandra the news but gets caught up in the Puppet-Man killings with Sandra by accident, with Claire and Noah finding and saving both of them.

Sorry but I’m cutting Elle being at the Bennet house and travelling to Intelligent Design with Claire. Ultimately, it doesn’t change the plot. She’s been imprisoned there for an indeterminant amount of time, suffering from her overloads, and was used as part of the incentive to convince Mohinder to work there, in order to help cure her.

I’m going to post this now even though I haven’t reached a natural stopping point, but this fic has been idle for a while and I want to provide more content to tide you all over whilst I carry on working this out. I’ll be back! Promise!

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Hey guys. This fic is NOT DEAD. I have got a new laptop and ended up locked out of my account. That is now fixed, but unfortunately I have also lost the word document that had the entire piece written in it, including the chapter-in-progress revising Volume 3 and The Eclipse. So I will have to start those chapters again.

Forgive me for the break. In a couple of weeks I'll have a free weekend and should be able to get back to finishing this dang volume!

All the best, readers!