Heroes: Finale

Heroes Drops Some Dead Weight

by Natalie Finn from E! News
Mon, 3 Dec 2007 11:12:44 PM PST

(SPOILER ALERT: This article recaps the winter season finale of Heroes.)

Hayden Panetierre as Claire-bear

As a politician, Nathan Petrelli really should have known you never precede a major revelation by announcing you're about to announce a major revelation.

By having Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) shot before he could expose the Company's misdeeds to the world, the late congressman's mother and her shady cohorts simultaneously opened Pandora's box and capped off the final episode of Heroes in 2007, and perhaps the 2007-08 television season.

As creator Tim Kring promised E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos on Nov. 20 after marching down Hollywood Boulevard with his fellow Writers Guild of America members, Monday's episode was "very much like a finale"—as it kinda had to be.

Although a winter hiatus was in the cards regardless, the upcoming break from Heroes is of an undetermined length thanks to the writers' strike currently plaguing the TV and film industries.

In addition to halting production on a bunch of movies and most of the TV series worth watching, the walkout put the kibosh on NBC's plans for the six-episode midseason offering Heroes: Origins.

So while "Volume One" lasted the length of Heroes' first season, during which it became a breakout hit for NBC, "Volume Two" ended tonight, boasting multiple "season finale" elements:

• Resolution: Nathan and Parkman (Greg Grunberg) knocked some sense into the power-mooching Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) just in time for him to employ his object-control and radiation abilities to nuke a vial of the Shanti virus with his bare hands.
• Open-ended resolutions: Sylar (Zachary Quinto) got his powers back, Claire (Hayden Panettiere) knows dad (Jack Coleman) isn't dead, Claire's blood is the new Red Bull and—how'd he do it?!—Hiro (Masi Oka) buried Adam (David Anders) alive in what looks to be the cemetery where Sulu, er, Hiro's father (George Takei) was laid to rest. (Well, obviously Hiro bridged the time-space continuum.)
• Deaths: Angela Petrelli (Cristine Rose) pulled a Livia Soprano and planned the offing of her firstborn son. Niki, Jessica and Lisa (all Ali Larter) won't be missed but got kind of a lousy, albeit fiery, sendoff, especially since Monica (Dana Davis) isn't exactly the most endearing character to date yet.
• Change of heart: Elle (Kristen Bell) felt good about saving people for a change, now that she knows her dad is no Claire-Bear-loving Noah Bennet type. Maya (Dania Ramirez) knows Sylar killed Alejandro (Shalim Ortiz), so maybe her weird Niki-esque power will serve a purpose next season.
• Unintentionally hilarious moment: The looks on Peter and Parkman's faces during their brief mind-control fight.
• (emzadii's note: also noteworthy hilarity were the looks on Nathan and Parkman's faces after their 'flight'.)
  
• Completely unresolved: Um, Caitlin? Where are ye?

Whether the handful of answers and the excessive bloodletting was enough to appease the Emmy-nominated drama's increasingly disgruntled fans remains to be seen.

The backlash over season two's frailties, from the ridiculous amount of time spent following Hiro in medieval Japan to the unfulfilling romantic connection between Claire and West (Nicholas D'Agosto) to the pointlessness that is Peter's dialogue, actually had Kring publicly apologizing earlier this month to Heroes' remaining fans (viewership is down 15 percent from last year).

He may not have apologized for that last one, but someone should.

''We assumed the audience wanted season one—a buildup of intrigue about these characters and the discovery of their powers," Kring told Entertainment Weekly on the first day of what is now a nearly monthlong strike. "We taught [them] to expect a certain kind of storytelling. They wanted adrenaline. We made a mistake.''

Luckily, the Nov. 5 episode showed there was life on the Heroes' constantly threatened Earth—which, prior to how it looked at first glance, was threatened this time by a deadly virus, not the same old nuclear disaster that threatened Cheerleader & Co. last season (although the New York-in-ruins set looked eerily familiar).

As for Hiro's misadventures in Japan—necessary, because they turned the rogue Takezo Kensei into the regenerative mass murderer he is now—Kring admitted that they took up too much screen time.

"It should have [lasted] three episodes," he said. "We didn't give the audience enough story to justify the time we allotted it."

Overall, "the message is that we've heard the complaints—and we're doing something about it.''

While the question of whether Heroes is back on track is still debatable, it unfortunately looks as if the sci-fi drama's brain trust is going to have a lot of time on its hands to plan its next move.