Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > "Heroes" Series 1 (US and Torrents edition)

Just saw this last night and spent most of the rest of the time wondering whether Claire had died, whether as was said up thread, Hiro had mistakenly attacked Peter morphed as Sylar and whether it is possible to change time.

One alternatve view of the strings connecting is not that they are the key points, but that they represent Hiro's knowledge of events. I think it is perhaps significant that Suresh moves the strings around when explaining to Sylar-Petrelli. Using the waitress as an example, I don't think her death was inevitable - if Hiro had perfect knowledge of say Linderman's powers and means to force him to heal the waitress then her death would have been avoided. However I suppose then the web of consequences would be unpredictable, hence Future Hiro's string. It also fits in with Linderman's ideas - that he needs to see all of Isaac's paintings to accurately predict the future - and even then they weren't the whole answer.

I was toying with the idea that the future was slowly changing. Hence Future Hiro through Peter had saved the cheerleader but the weight of history still chose the explosion and Sylar still survives. It will take something else to totally change history. But that gets quite fan wanky and probably a bit hard to explain in a show that has been deliberately obtuse about the hows and whys of causality and powers. However the argument that Peter somehow switched to look like Sylar and then was stabbed by Hiro is neater. Also might explain why there has been no appearance by Future Future Hiro, as he dies in 5 years time.

I did notice that last week Isaac gave the draft of the comic to the messenger presumably for printing but in the future it was sitting on his desk and then taken into the past by Hiro. Not sure how significant this is, but we know that Future Hiro had clearly not made the trip into the future as shown in the episode so presumably was unaware of the comic. Also having the answer be in a comic is quite apt. Perhaps the lesson for Hiro is to learn to slice rather than stab with his sword and behead Sylar, or indeed Peter.

As to the Matrix style stuff and the peter/Sylar battle happening off screen, given that its a show about Comic Heroes I think its perfectly acceptable for Future Hiro and Peter to dress in black to demonstrate their inner angst and anger. And a super powered fight is always difficult to portray without looking cheesy even with millions of dollars of special effects. This series is either light on those sort of costs or is deliberately eschewing them in favour of a more 'realistic' style and trying to do effects well when they happen - as has been said Nathan's flying is great as is Claire's healing. As such I'm happy that the action happened off screen because it might have looked quite crap otherwise.