Though the Maya&Alejandro parts dragged, seeing sylar be so incredible and manipulative and deadly with only his original Intuitive Aptitude was something I personally enjoyed.

1. This isn’t out of left field at all. In Five Years Gone, Sylar killed Claire by removing her brain, remember?

2. On the gunpowder explosion at White Beard’s camp, when Hiro gets Kensei’s helmet during the day after, we see Kensei’s body. It’s been burnt to a crisp, but appears to be completely intact. The head is definitely still there.

3. Adam was definitely lying about how the Company would kill him if they could. Even if the regeneration ability was totally unlimited (which it isn’t, as demonstrated in FYG), if they wanted to permanently get rid of him they could have easily put him in a container, filled it with cement, then taken it out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and dumped it. For whatever reason, they wanted to keep him alive.

KellyH — hah! Yeah, man, you did write off the Sylar story from the start. Well predicted.
I didn’t want to jump to a conclusion without giving the story thread a chance; I’m still hoping there’ll be a pay-off, if not next week then next volume or next season. Matt’s arc picked up this season, so perhaps Maya’s and Sylar’s will next season. There could still be a plan in place which will give the whole thing meaning.

With Sylar: do you think he could have had the same storyline WITHOUT the twins? Like, if he’d stumbled onto a desert road, killed the first person with a car that he came across, then made his way (leaving a trail of bodies in the process) to Mohinder in NY on his own? I’m not sure it would have been any less dramatic than what we got with the Tears of Death. Any thoughts?

Pete, welcome to the comments thread, and thank you for reading. Word to your point about the storylines in this volume hopefully being a set-up for the next volume/season. I hope it turns out that way. In Volume Two’s defense, it’s had some great performances from the cast, and there have been several outstanding episodes. Maybe the next volume will be more consistently outstanding.

Michael: fair point about Matt not having anyone to bring Molly to. My suggestion would have been for Matt to not leave her with anyone — he shouldn’t have gone searching for Victoria at all if it meant leaving Molly alone. He could have used his ability to persuade Det. Fuller to send cops to Victoria’s home and take her to a safe house. He could have instructed Angela to phone Victoria and warn her about Adam. If Matt had reached Victoria before Adam and Peter did and ended up getting his head blown off, Molly would have lost one of her daddies and been stuck with the babysitter until Mohinder returned home — and that’s if Mohinder returned home after Noah nearly shot him.

Kensei being immortal actually goes back a lot further than “Out of Time.” It had been a spoiler since details about the “Kane” character surfaced in the summer.

The part I don’t agree with you on is that Hiro “met” (your word) Kensei. He did, but there’s no way he could have known it. In the Heroes universe, there are a number of explanations for someone who looks the same as someone else: a shapeshifter, a clone, a descendant with an uncanny resemblance, the original character being brought forward in time (by another time-traveler) or being kept in stasis. Sky’s the limit with the number of explanations you could come up with for how Hiro “met” Kensei. YMMV, but immortality never struck me as the most obvious conclusion.

Do you think the part with Peter wanting to heal Victoria with Adam’s blood deserved dialogue? It would have made sense for a hospice nurse to consider every option after he’d watched someone die; it would also have been a subtle character moment, for Peter and for Adam, who’d now have to shut down the possibility without revealing the real reason he wanted to shut it down.

Eric — thank you.

With the bullet being the thing there’s “no coming back” from, do you think it’s that the bullet stays lodged in the brain and can’t be removed the way a tree root or a shard of glass can?

I’m not sure about Sylar. I’d say the plan is still to apply the Spike treatment from Buffy over several volumes.

With Matt’s ability, I’m thinking it’s to do with the fact that he probably never met Maury in the “FYG” timeline; he never learned that his ability could be pushed further, and consequently he never tried to push it further. Maybe?

Susan, I agree, the volume’s been great in parts, terrible in others.

I think Cristine Rose is sort of the Heroes version of Lionel on Smallville; the less you see of her, the more interesting and the more intriguing and mysterious she becomes. Perhaps, when the character’s motives are explained, part of the appeal fades?

West’s scene with Claire was really well done, I agree. The scene was heartfelt and you could sympathize with what everyone was feeling. Every scene should be like this.

JessicaSanders — no worries, I’ll always give Ali Larter a break. She rocks. If the show kills Niki off next week, it’s going to suck. It probably won’t be a huge loss to the story, but it’ll be a loss to the cast.

Doug — great points, and all valid. Thanks for all the thought that went into your post.

“I notice in a lot of your reviews, you make ridiculous leaps in logic and then criticize the writers of the show for not making the leaps.”

I do? Oh.
“You’re making the assumption that the only conversations Peter and Adam had in the four months they were imprisoned together are the ones specifically shown on screen.”

No, I draw conclusions based on what we’ve already been shown and then react to what we’re being shown. Immediately after the passage I quoted here, you offer speculation which does the writers’ job for them: you suggest explanations to details in the plot so that the plot makes sense. I’m not saying that’s wrong; I do the same thing in my reviews (which perhaps is what you find “ridiculous”?), and speculation’s a huge part of this show and what makes it so much fun. But my question to you is, “Should we have to speculate the way you do here in order for the plot to flow logically?”

“Logically, since Adam isn’t a time traveler, there must be SOME reason that he’s alive 400 years later.”

Isn’t that the same “ridiculous leap in logic” you think I’m guilty of? Why should Hiro assume Adam isn’t a time-traveler? Why should Hiro assume there isn’t someone like him in the world with the same ability to teleport people through time? Why should Hiro assume this isn’t someone who merely appears to be Kensei?

“As for Sylar killing Alejandro, if you check the Beeming Beeman blog, he explains the scene was much longer and fully fleshed out, but was cut drastically by the censors because it was also a huge gore fest.”

Thank you for pointing this out. We wouldn’t post links to Beeman’s blog on the main page of our site every week if we didn’t think it was worth checking out. If you ever check out my reviews (as it seems you do), you’ll know I’ve quoted Beeman’s blog on a number of occasions. His description of the way Alejandro’s death was abbreviated is why I refer to it in this review as “badly edited.”

I like your point about Adam convincing himself that he needs to find the virus to save the world. You point out that Peter’s efforts to read Adam’s mind wouldn’t have gotten very far; I made a similar point when I said, “Chances are Adam’s trained his mind to resist all mindreading, especially after recruiting Maury.” Hopefully we agree on this?

Steve S, I’m with tree1138 on the reason Adam’s still alive: I think Linderman would have flipped if his idol had gotten his head blown off by The Company. Now that Linderman’s out of the way, I think Bob will very likely introduce a new policy regarding the “Keep Adam Alive” rule.

It’s definitely sad that the show lost so many viewers. The vocal ones will protest about the parts they don’t like on message boards and in chatrooms, but on the strength of this volume, I think the majority just stopped watching, which is an enormous shame. Maybe the next volume will be so amazing that it’ll attract a new fanbase.