Heroes: You Can Stop Running

After twenty-five hours of TV, some good, some horrible, never quite great, Heroes Season 3 is no more. The final hour of Fugitives, the season’s second quasi-self contained story arc, played out in a style similar to most of the episodes preceding it: thoughtful, a little bland, not quite enough action, enough plot momentum to give it a pulse, but lots of frustration and definitely not enough of anything for the hour to truly shine. A few audacious last minute twists lay some interesting cards on the table for Volume 5 (for the record, classifying the seasons by on screen volume number and episode title is about as necessary as Mohinder’s claw-out-my-eardrums-annoying voiceovers) but I just can’t see myself getting even a little bit excited for season 4. To say that I’ve been burned too many times before would be both cliché and understatement.

In the first of many acts of senselessness, Danko’s attempt to kill Sylar proves moot since he apparently used his shapeshifting (and maybe a bit of his clockwork knowhow) to move the location of his internal weak spot . A brain stem is a brain stem, people! WTF?!? But Sy cleverly gets retribution by jumping into Danko’s skin, capping a few agents, and morphing once more to arrest Danko himself.

On the road to DC, Noah sacrificially places himself into federal hands so that Claire and Angela might escape. Angela sets out to find Matt who, according to her dreams, is the key to Nathan’s survival; but Claire waltzes straight into Sylar’s arms when he impersonates Nathan and sells the ruse with his power to recall the history of objects and people that Angela so conveniently fed to him sometime last fall. When Claire finally catches on, we get something of a bookend to the creep-nasty faceoff she and Sylar had in the premiere when he forces her to muse on a life of immortality and how their sharing of that power must mean they’re fated to be together. Yikes. Nathan and Peter arrive on scene to break up the love in, but just when the high flying multi-powered showdown is due to begin, we’re forced to use our imaginations as the fight transpires behind closed doors. Chrissakes, if you don’t have the budget to stage a proper fight scene, then don’t tease one at all. Insult to injury.

Hiro fights through the newfound pain of using his powers to put the freeze on Building 26 and cleverly swaps the prisoners with their captors, but there’s no time for rejoicing before Mohinder lays down the law and tells Hiro that if he uses his powers any more, he’s punching his own ticket to the afterlife. Hiro and Ando’s path seems to be leading them back home to Japan where they started the year, to which I again ask why? You know they’ll be needed again stateside, so why not sidestep an upcoming story contrivance by just letting them settle down over here?

After winning the fight that wasn’t, Sylar aims his slicey finger of doom a bit lower than usual on Nathan, cutting open his neck and killing him. You read that right, kids, Nathan Petrelli is no more. Ish. Death kinda comes and kinda doesn’t for both Nathan and his ultimate rival when Peter tricks Sylar with a dose of his own shifty medicine, taking the President’s form and juicing Sy with elephant tranq right at the moment he was assuming would be his greatest victory. Angela and Matt arrive to find Nathan dead, Sylar unconscious, and Noah schemey. He reasons that the only way to bring down Building 26 and any future agencies like it is with Nathan’s help, so Matt attempts to wipe the entire contents of Sylar’s brain and replace them with Nate’s. Very Dollhouse. The entire cast gather to hold hands and sing Kumbaya around a bonfire of what most of them believe to be Sylar’s corpse, but this being a season finale and all, you know there’s no such thing as a happy ending. Six weeks later, we witness the foreshadowed reemergence of Tracy, now able to completely transform into water and murdering former B26 agents with glee. The image we’re left to ponder over the summer (or forever, if you’re among the justified masses who’ve stopped caring) is one of Sythan at work. He just can’t seem to help noticing that the clock in his office is running a bit fast. Tick. Tick. Tick…

Season 3, Episode 25: An Invisible Thread (originally aired April 27, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Inisia Lewis‘ review here.

For more on Heroes, click here.

Mondays at 9/8C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Trae Patton