Heroes: Dixie Dash

After starting things off with a bang (or more accurately, a crash) the Fugitives arc continued strong this week with an episode that found the heroes running for their lives in the backwoods of Arkansas.  The number of good guys dwindled, while the forces of evil added to their ranks.  Events kicked off with Hiro, Matt, and Mohinder honoring one of the most time honored traditions of fugitive-hood, stealing from a clothesline.  This leads to one of my favorite moments of the night, if not of the season: Hiro briefly contemplating a shirt bearing the proud slogan “Rednecks make better lovers.”  God, I wish he’d worn that shirt.  Matt’s distracted by those pesky Mendez visions, leading to the artistic foreshadowing of, among other things, Daphne taking a bullet at the crash site.

Elsewhere, Daphne teams up with Ando to track down their significant others (referring to Ando & Hiro’s bromance, of course) and quick as a wink, they too are kickin’ around south of the Mason-Dixon.  Daph snatches Claire from the hypocritical, misguided, and/or overprotective clutches of her two dads and brings her back to the gang, but before anyone has time to exchange hugs and howdys, Danko’s goons ambush the merry band and Daphne fulfills her sweetheart’s vision by dying in a hail of gunfire.  I wish I could say I’ll miss her a little more than I do, but I just never quite clicked with the character, especially as a love interest for Matt.  It’ll be fun to see Matt in mourning though, since the first step of his grieving process entailed dominating the mind of one of the shooters and forcing him to take out his own men.

Peter & Tracy spend the episode running around without too much of a lasting point as they weakly attempt to bargain with Nathan and Tracy makes an even weaker attempt to double cross Pete.  Their misadventures end with Tracy once again in government custody and Peter escaping to the skies thanks to a brief encounter with big brother and his newly limited “one power at a time” empathy skills.

Up in Sylar land, the big bad’s quest to discover his roots continues to be the highlight of the series.  This week, Sy schemes to torture an innocent mother and child as a bargaining chip to make a captured soldier spill secrets, but winds up with something he never expected: a sidekick.  It seems that would-be hostage Luke is dealing with plenty of the same emotional crap Sylar has taken, and comes bearing the highly destructive power to emit microwaves, so Sylar brings the impressionable youth under his black wing onto the next step in his journey.

The episode’s final moments deftly lay a course for what’s to come as we see Nathan turning to his mom for advice (avoid Danko’s loose cannon ways), Pete, Matt, Mohinder, Hiro, and Ando turning to each other for support (Matt’s craving some serious vengeance), and Claire turning to a mysterious texter who goes by “Rebel.”  If Rebel turns out to be Claire’s spineless ex West, as some are predicting, I’m gonna straight up smack somebody.

Season 3, Episode 15: Trust and Blood (originally aired February 9, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Heroes: Prison Break Edition by Inisia Lewis.

For more on Heroes, click here.

Mondays at 9/8C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC