Heroes: Lockdown

Oh happy day, the Primatech paper company is no more!  Of all the shockingly wise decisions made by the writers in creating this week’s extremely fun finale of the Villains story arc, none were more satisfying than seeing the omnipresent Company going up in flames along with Pinehearst, its ill-intentioned brother company.  Nothing represented the creative failures of the show’s past more than these overused institutions of hero control and I can’t wait to see where the story goes without their influence.

Each of the three blessedly consolidated and streamlined plot threads comprising the finale were well crafted, innovative celebrations of what this show does best.  Every character had a moment to shine, memorable faces from the past returned, and every major storyline received its due resolution while providing ample titillation of things to come.  Also, lots of people got punched in the face.

At Primatech HQ, Sylar kills his way through the security staff, assumes menacing control of the PA system, and triggers a massive lockdown, trapping Claire, Noah, Meredith, and fake mommy Angela in a sadistic Jigsaw meets The Joker game of proving that anyone can be as evil as him under the right circumstances.  He calls up Claire offering freedom if she’ll kill her grandmother while taunting her recent attempts to become more strong willed and heroic.  Claire flatly refuses and delivers a shotgun blast to the phone just for fun.

Noah makes a genius move by releasing the remaining level 5 prisoners as Sylar bait.  Puppet master Doyle is among them and he makes one last play for Meredith’s heart when he tries to beat Sylar at his own telekinetic games, but the sheer force of Sy’s power proves too much for the dark side Geppetto’s brain to handle.  Sylar pumps Mer full of adrenaline, rendering her pyro powers increasingly uncontrollable, then locks her in a cell with Noah and gives him a gun with one bullet and another fatal choice: kill your daughter’s biological mom and live or let her survive and bake in your own skin.  Claire shows up to do what she can, so Noah has Meredith heat up the bulletproof glass, uses his one bullet to put just enough of a crack in it, and lets his indestructible daughter play human wrecking ball.

With all other assorted heroes and villains out of his way, Sylar finally confronts Angela to make her pay for her manipulative ways.  She makes the surprising and irrefutably true revelation that while the Petrellis may not be his real parents, neither were the couple who raised him.  Claire ends the distracted psycho’s reign of terror with a shard of glass to the brain stem (lord knows she learned that particular tip for taking down a regenerator the hard way).  The survivors barely escape, leaving Meredith’s fate in question as they watch the oh so beautiful sight of Primatech becoming no more.

Matt, Daphne, and Ando focus on the small matter of Hiro being trapped in the past by juicing Ando with Pinehearst’s perfected formula in hopes that he too will gain mastery of time and space.  16 years prior, Hiro recruits himself in a heist operation to steal and destroy his father’s formula once and for all.  Dearly departed dad catches him in the act and in yet another one of this show’s many love letters to Star Trek fans, George Takei gets to wield a sword.  An inspired twist back in the present gives Ando the ability to vastly amplify the powers of another, rendering him the ultimate sidekick.  His touch gives Matt a sudden insight into the thoughts of every warm body in Manhattan, and gives Daphne a boost to such dizzying speeds that she (questionable but cool physics alert) triggers the theory of relativity and slips into the past.  Hiro’s problem solved, just in time to rescue him from a son-icidal vivisection.  Hiro then gets to make up for his foolish mistake of unleashing the formula in the first place when, with a little help from Daphne, he swings through Pinehearst long enough to re-steal the formula and give Tracy a well deserved fist to the nose.

Over in the ongoing saga of the brothers Petrelli, Nathan takes dad’s death surprisingly well and tells Peter that it’s time to choose a side in this whole “everyone deserves powers” debate.  Pete feigns concession long enough to distract big bro into a smack in the jaw of his own.  Little bro is relieved to discover that Tracy’s marines have yet to receive the formula so, with a little help from Knox and Flint, he tears a path of destruction through Mohinder’s lab destroying all formula in sight.  This understandably bothers Mo, who had been considering the formula his last chance at a life free of freaky lizard skin, but he lucks out when a barrel of the stuff washes over him seemingly restoring his former health and well being.  Nathan makes a final pitch to Knox to stick with Pinehearst, but the fear junkie won’t hear of it so Tracy pulls a sneaky freeze n’ shatter.  Flint ignites the conveniently combustible formula and in a desperate effort to save his brother, Peter somewhat hypocritically injects the final intact dose of super juice into himself, apparently restoring his entire bag of tricks and allowing him to rescue Nathan literally on the fly.  Nathan makes the dark and incredibly jerky assertion that he would have let Peter die if the situation was reversed.  Somewhere far away, the dejected duo of Mohinder and Tracy team up for lord knows what schemes in the future.

3 weeks later, Nathan sets the stage for the upcoming “Fugitives” story arc when he takes the drastically self hating step of turning over names & dossiers of his fellow heroes to the president, declaring them to be a danger to society.  Bastard.

Season 3, Episode 13: Dual (originally aired December 15, 2008)

For another take on this episode, check out A Test of Patience by Inisia Lewis.

For more on Heroes, click here.

Mondays at 9/8C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC