Review:

This is a finale which was awesome in so many ways, but which never managed to be as awesome as we hoped.

Was it a great episode? Yes.

Was it a satisfying conclusion to the season? For the most part, yes.

Was it everything we expected from a show which consistently thwarts our expectations? No. And that's what drags it down. Nothing here was particularly surprising, and nothing here was particularly unexpected.

It might be that our expectations were too high. We were waiting for a twist which no one could have predicted; or a jaw-dropping revelation which no one saw coming, but which made total sense in the context of the story and which made us say, "Damn, why didn't we think of that?"

In a way, the fact that we're reacting that way is a testament to Heroes' success, because the quality over the previous 22 episodes has raised our expectations to a level where anything less than a phenomenal 23rd episode was going to be a let-down.

In places, the finale was phenomenal. There are scenes which are heartfelt, hilarious, and profound. And if it weren't for a few scenes towards the end, this would have been one of the season's highlights. The problem is, those scenes towards the end were supposed to be the thematic and emotional high points of the season. That they ended up so contrived is what drags the episode down, and ultimately what makes the finale a disappointment.

Not a huge disappointment. Just not the masterpiece a lot of us were hoping for.

The Previously was a reminder of how outstanding the show has been at times. V.O.-Mohinder delivers the monologue he gave in the premiere, accompanied by some of the most memorable images of the past 22 episodes: Peter on a rooftop, Claire jumping seventy feet, Hiro teleporting to Times Square, Nathan flying ... As a recap of the season, as a preview of the turning points in the plot, as a way to bring the story full circle, there was no better way to begin the finale.

We get a replay of last week's events at Company Central: Jessica hands the reins over to Niki, Linderman puts a bullet in D.L., and D.L. brain-phases Linderman.

It's so grotesquely cool that you don't mind seeing it again, but it's also eating into a finale which should have used every second to resolve a season's worth of questions and story arcs. The show apparently picked up two million extra viewers since last week (guys, seriously, what were you doing last week that was more important than this?), so I guess it helps to explain what's going on. But fans who were watching since the start are paying for that, because this episode lost a good five or six minutes establishing what we already knew.

D.L. phases himself and Niki through a wall. A bunch of guards finally stop pounding at Linderman's door and bust through it. You can imagine Linderman in the demon afterlife shouting, "Great job, guys! Couple of minutes sooner and my brain matter might not be all over someone's fist. Oh, and you idiots are SO fired!"

More recap: Thompson spots Matt and Daddy Bennet in the corridor, and ends up with a bullet in his head.

Only one bullet this time? Maybe the show wanted to speed things up, or maybe it wanted to emphasize the "self-defense" angle. Which would suck, because Daddy Bennet totally got a kick out of putting two bullets through Thompson's head. And even though we shouldn't have, because murder = teh bad, we sort of enjoyed it too.

Mohinder pwns Matt, and there's a repeat of the standoff with Daddy Bennet. Molly shows her baby teeth to Matt when he wakes up. It's partly "Awww!", partly "Gah! Annoying!", partly, "Oh, for crying out loud, can we just GET ON WITH THE STORY!", because this was such a predictable part of the plot, and it was the slowest-moving part of the episode this week.

And still more recap: outside the Samurai Workshop, Hiro tells Papa Sulu that Ando "took a sword and went after Sylar." Papa Sulu's gracious enough not to point out that he was standing there when Hiro found out last week. Hiro fears that Ando's going to die, and Papa Sulu avoids pointing out that he said the exact same thing last week.

Papa Sulu starts off on the whole "Cut out your heart, focus on your mission, let your friends die" riff, and Hiro's all, "What you saying, Pa? He my friend!" And Papa Sulu tells Hiro to get everything in perspective, because "the world is at stake."

"But Papa, it's not the world! It's New York! And screw that! I'm not going to forget about my friend!"

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

"That was Spock's line! And you just sat on the bridge while he gave himself radiation poisoning!"

"Yes, but I sabotaged the Excelsior to save him!"

"Only in the third movie! Papa, you've been disappointed in me my whole life, but ..."

...

"... Feel free to disagree with that, Papa ..."

...

"No? Then I'll take Kensei's sword -- which Claremont magically re-welded when we weren't watching -- and be off."

And Papa Sulu's totally cool with Hiro teleporting away. Which, in itself, is also very cool.

At the Apartment of Clairvoyance, the story begins moving forward. Sylar gets the glazed-over eyes and watches watery images appear across the canvas. Neat detail, because it suggests that anyone with Isaac's ability only needs a blank canvas to see images of the future. More importantly, neat concept. Would have been useful when, say, Peter wanted to figure out where Sylar was. But I guess he didn't have a canvas in the trunk of the Nissan Sentra.

Petrelli HQ. Angela telling Nathan about Linderman's death was subtly played by Cristine and Adrian. There's a hint of grief in the way Cristine plays it, and there's a hint of feigned grief from Pasdar, even though we know Nathan's secretly delighted that the power's all his now. I think what makes it ambiguous -- and in some ways what undermines it a little -- is the fact that we don't know the extent of the backstory between Angela and Linderman; we don't know how genuine she is when she calls his death "a terrible tragedy." It'll probably be confirmed next season, but based on the way her secret preference for Peter is this week blatantly refuted, I'm not inclined to believe anything she says anymore. The way Cristine acts it out, though, it looks like she's genuinely upset.

Pasdar, on the other hand, plays the scene so cryptically that I can't tell if Nathan's thinking, "Yay! Blonde bombshell and her beau came through for me!", or, "Oh *%@#, does that mean I won't become president?"

Nathan recites how the city and America and the world is going to need him after New York's a wasteland. Angela totally buys into it, like, "My boy, you're every bit as insane as we wanted you to be!", and kisses him on the forehead. Which should be moving, but when it's the Ice Queen kissing the son who just agreed to eliminate .07% of the population, it's kind of disturbing.

At Company Central, D.L. collapses in a corridor and tells Niki to search for Micah without him. Niki instructs D.L. to remain exactly where he is. I guess he won't be needing this.

A few floors higher, at Company Medical, Mohinder and Daddy Bennet dump Thompson's body in a hazardous waste unit. Daddy Bennet tells Mohinder to start trusting him. Mohinder snarks that it's worked out so well for him in the past. I'm not sure if that's a reference to the last time he and Daddy Bennet met, or a jibe at The Company in general. Either way, it seemed unfounded, because Daddy Bennet tried to establish a working relationship with Mohinder as well as Papa Suresh, and Thompson pretty much just gave Mohinder a lab and unrestricted access to a valuable super in the hope that he could cure her.

Daddy Bennet's line about how The Company "once stood for something" was telling. It's a neat throwback to the idealism we saw when he was first recruited, but also a hint at what we'll hopefully see when the show establishes how The Company was founded, and what it's initial ethos was before it was "corrupted." My guess is Papa Sulu and Papa Deveaux were in it for research and medical purposes.

Claire calls Daddy Bennet to let him know RadioTed's scalping scuppered the escape from New York. Suddenly, the plan changes: Daddy Bennet's not going to put a bullet in the tracking system, he's going to use it to find the murderous fiend who escaped from his lab, broke into his home, attacked his wife, and tried to scalp his daughter. You can imagine how Bennet must be thanking his lucky stars that the tracking system turned out to be an adorable kid instead of someone he'd gladly put a bullet through. Someone, for example, like this.

Peter and Claire drive into an empty parking garage and meet Nathan. Claire decries Nathan as scum and Peter confesses he's afraid. Claire's distrust towards Nathan just about flies, although it feels a little contrived, given that it stems from one conversation she witnessed between Nathan and Thompson, and for all Claire knows, it involved Thompson asking Nathan to hand Claire over, and Nathan telling Thompson to go to hell.

Peter points out that Nathan has "never let [him] down," which is sort of an "awww" moment, and half-true, because as much of a jerk as he's been over the season, he's the one who came to Peter's rescue in the premiere, just as he does in the finale. Which is weirdly symmetrical, and in a way affirms that Nathan's attachment to his brother never changed.

A counter-argument to that would be the occasions this season when Nathan ridiculed, doubted or humiliated Peter. And the opportunistic steps he took to ensure his personal gain at the expense of people around him. And that he was considering nuking New York if it meant becoming president.

Beneath that, though, is an affection for Peter which I don't think ever changed. I think it's that, in conjunction with the spark of compassion which Claire finds in Nathan, that supports the show's decision to make Nathan the hero.

Peter reads Nathan's thoughts and realizes his brother's pretty laid back about the explosion and the mass casualties. In Nathan's defense, that could just be a pessimistic outlook. Peter interprets it as a sign that Nathan's evil incarnate, and we get a moment of realization when Peter's inching away from Nathan in horror. As with Claire's reaction to Nathan, it feels like an extreme reaction to something which isn't necessarily vilifying.

At Company Medical, Matt's vying with Mohinder for a role as Molly's pseudo-paternal figure. Was I the only one who found these scenes at the lab so ponderous? I guess it's important to establish what the New New SuperTrio are doing to find Sylar, but when Sylar shows up at the Superhero Square anyway, you wonder what the point in all this was. I mean, besides the "awww!" factor.

The Season Two Big Bad! Of course!

Worse than the boogeyman! He looks back! Dun-dun-DUN!

It's kind of hilarious how Mohinder and Matt are totally engrossed by the horror story Molly spins, and how Bennet's standing behind them, like, "OK, that was a lotta fun, can we get back to finding THIS SEASON'S big bad?"

Molly pins the boogeyman's location at the Apartment of Clairvoyance. Mohinder immediately recalls the time he and Peter were on the subway, which is a nice nod to continuity, and a tie to the fact that Isaac was one of the names which Sylar picked up while masquerading as Zane.

Upon discovering that the boogeyman's gone to a super's residence, no one seems too concerned about the super living there. Shouldn't they be worried that Isaac's moments away from being, you know, scalped?

At Company Medical, Matt's suddenly gung-ho about going after the boogeyman alone. Given the casualties he knows Sylar caused, and given the fact that Matt's hunt for Sylar indirectly cost him his career, it's sort of justified. But apparently, there's an even better justification for Matt:

"I traveled 3,000 miles! My wife's pregnant! He's a bad guy and I'm a cop! Why NOT rush in?"

"Dude, you're gonna get SCALPED!"

"Bah, let 'im try! I got a gun!"

"But he can deflect bullets!"

"Pshaw! Me Matt! Me strong! Me hero!"

[Deleted scene: Matt psyches himself up for battle.]

*Ding!*

And this week's Dumb As Mohinder Award goes to ...

Meanwhile, in an alley outside the Petrelli Vortex to Hell, Peter rematerializes, panics about losing the girl Daddy Bennet charged him with looking after, and gets the glowing hands. This freaks him out so intensely that he decides he'll take advantage of the fact that he's in a deserted and immaculate alley and go to sleep.

It's the Past-Rooftop of Pigeonly Delight!

Oh, Simone. They brought you back.

Surprisingly, nothing about Simone in this scene bothered me too much; not to the extent that I'd want to rip the scene apart the way I did the scenes she was in when she was alive. She comes across as emotionally detached, but that's probably more about watching her father deteriorate than adhering to the caricature she became during the season's first 16 episodes.

The fact that Simone didn't bug me here the way I expected her to tells me the Peter/Isaac entanglement killed the character; she became infuriating when the love triangle started, which was sometime near the end of the first episode. If she hadn't, and if it had been a straightforward romance between her and Peter, my guess is her scenes would have played out as bearably as this one did.

Peter and Simone meet; Peter tries to console Simone by telling her that "death connects us all"; Simone is bowled over by Peter's eloquence, and their romance begins. As with the Previously, it brings the story full circle, and it draws attention to Peter's caring and empathic sides. Problem is, I'm not sure what it accomplished. It's a neat way to compare the two Peters, and to set up the Papa Deveaux backstory, but did it need to be here? The Angela/Papa Deveaux backstory is intriguing, but amid the million other chapters of the backstory, is it any more interesting or relevant?

The scene seemed like an attempt to distinguish Peter as the one with the "heart" and Nathan the one with the "strength." Whether that was a conscious effort to surprise us when Nathan later turns out to be the one with the "heart," or whether Papa Deveaux's praise for Peter hints at how Peter will eventually embody the compassion and hope -- and the strength and resolve -- which will bring the world together, is the part which is never explained.

But then, that's partly why this episode didn't make sense: it ends with Nathan saving the city out of love; for Peter, for Claire, and for the city's population. So whether the emphasis here on Peter's warmth and Nathan's resolve was to throw us off, or whether it's to anticipate how Peter will himself eventually demonstrate a capacity to save the world, is the part which feels confused.

Ando shows up at the Apartment of Clairvoyance. The pool of red liquid later turns out to be paint dripping from a canvas, but it sparked off a huge online debate about whether it explained Sylar's disappearing act in previous episodes. I think Claude will be scalped much more dramatically, but this highlighed how a puddle of crimson-red paint can launch a lot of speculation, to a point where it detracts from the focus of the scene. I don't think that was the intention, and I think we can all agree this was unnecessarily misleading, and forced us to speculate at a moment when we should have been absorbed in the suspense.

Sylar appears behind Ando, the sword gets TK'd out of his hands, and Ando gets throttled. Sylar interrupts the TK death choke to check out the part of 9th Wonders which involves him getting stabbed. "This is how Isaac thought I'd die? Stabbed by a silly little man?" Well, it seemed absurd to us, too. And at this point, we didn't even know just how silly it would turn out.

Ando: "Hiro is NOT silly!"

Aww. But he is little!

Ando can't tell Sylar where Peter is, so Sylar starts TK-slicing his throat. Why? Who knows? Maybe he's gotten past the notion that killing non-supers is senseless. Or maybe he's just wantonly vicious out of dramatic necessity.

But then, if rumors be true that the show's going to try to redeem Sylar next season ...

Hiro teleports into the apartment. I didn't think I'd have to resort to multiple choice in the finale, but Hiro picks up his sword and actually needs to decide whether to

(a) behead Sylar,

(b) slow down time and behead Sylar,

(c) freeze time, grab something to eat, check out Isaac's gallery for clues to forthcoming events, re-read the final copy of 9th Wonders, THEN behead Sylar, or

(d) stand in the middle of the apartment, let Sylar know he's there by asking him to let Ando go, and do nothing to save his friend.

And for the benefit of anyone who hasn't yet seen the episode, I kid you not: Hiro chooses (d).

No, I'm not joking.

*Ding!*

This week's SECOND Dumb As Mohinder Award goes to Hiro!

Ando: "Just stab him!"

(^ ^ Actual dialogue -- not paraphrased!)

Hiro lowers his sword.

Sylar stands there.

Much time passes.

Hiro and Sylar continue to stand there.

More time passes.

Oh, what the heck. *Ding!* Sylar wins this week's THIRD Dumb As Mohinder Award for not scalping Ando and then TK'ing Hiro across the room and scalping him too.

About a million eons later, Hiro teleports past Sylar, grabs hold of Ando, and teleports them both out of the apartment. Great effect, but in a scene which was so badly set up and executed, it falls on its face.

At Company Central, Niki's running from door to door, trying every doorknob to see whether one will magically open and reveal her son. I guess there wasn't a better approach, short of b**ch-slapping D.L. and ordering him to phase through one room after another until they stumbled on Micah. Wouldn't this have been an opportune moment for Jessica to wake up and kick the doors down?

Candice leaves the door to the Casa d'Illusion ajar, morphs into Jessica, creates an illusion of Micah lying on the ground, and confuses Niki enough to surprise her with a beating.

I can't figure out whether Candice is doing this for the fun of it, or whether she knew about Linderman's murder and wanted revenge. If Linderman didn't know Niki and D.L. were in the building until they showed up in his office, Candice probably doesn't know. So as near as I can tell, Candice is whooping Niki's ass out of pure, malicious pleasure.

But Micah AND his parents were important to Linderman up until about an hour ago. The fact that Candice starts beating on Niki in this scene seems to imply she's hella-p**sed with Niki, but why exactly is anyone's guess, and how she thinks she'll get away with it when Linderman clearly wanted Niki and Jessica alive until they turned on him is equally vague. It makes about as much sense as Sylar slicing up a non-super. It's purely for the sake of vilifying the character.

And that makes it doubly weird, because Candice's line last week about her appearance seemed like a concerted effort to humanize the character, even though the aim before then had been to make her fundamentally unlikable. So why the show decided to turn her into the antagonist who'd kick the crap out of Niki and lock Micah in a closet seems inconsistent.

Maybe it just seemed like a fitting context to unite Niki and Jessica. The implication is that, from now on, Niki's the dominant personality, and Jessica's going to chime in to offer guidance. A shared interest in saving Micah was as plausible a way as any to bring the two halves together, but after a season spent establishing that Niki and Jessica are polar opposites, you have to wonder why Jessica submerges herself beneath Niki so willingly. The show's trying to convey that Niki's the "stronger" one because of her heart (which parallels Peter's story), but when Jessica was instrumental to finding and saving Micah, I can't help finding this a limp resolution to the conflict between the two personalities. There should have been more to it. There should have been more to the explanation about how Jessica came to be in the first place. Half a season after "Six Months Ago," it hasn't materialized.

Petrelli HQ. Claire protests about the plan to blow up New York. Angela plays the "inevitable" card, and Claire's all, "That's INSAAAAANE! The future is NOT written in stone!"

Tell that to Charlie.

Tell that to Isaac.

But you don't have to tell that to Ando!

Angela points out that Peter's going to survive the explosion because of Claire's insta-heal. I can't help wondering if she knew about that ability when she was weeping over his dead body. It seemed like real grief at the time, but I'm starting to question every sentiment the character ever expressed. She probably knew there was something stuck in his head and preventing him from regenerating. She was probably just so INSAAAAANE that she decided to play along.

Nathan again seems to be convincing himself that everything's for the best. When he tells Claire that it's "all gonna make sense very soon," there's an uncertainty which Claire latches onto. This, apparently, is the moment when Nathan's willingness to go along with the plan is broken. And though it seems more like guilt than an innate sense of self-sacrifice which changes his mind, the implication is that it's Claire who prompts Nathan to become the hero. Which is cool from a "child-redeeming-the-parent" angle, but also a little muted by the fact that he's ostensibly ditching the original plan and saving the day just so he can live with himself. Not a hole in the plot so much as a confused message about why the hero would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Angela works the whole "join the Dark Side" vibe so disturbingly that I'm seriously thinking she'll turn out to be the next season's Big Bad. Molly said it was a "he," but if Uluru was going to take human form, he'd probably choose the civilized mom of two handsome boys instead of some towering, unstoppable, super-strong demon spawn.

Claire senses the danger she's in and decides to take her chances by jumping out of the office window and plummeting a dozen stories. It's a not-so-subtle echo of the time Claude threw Peter off the Rooftop of Pigeonly Delight, but also an awesome effect, and one of the few moments this week which was totally unpredictable.

Hiro teleporting Ando back to Yamagato? Equally awesome.

Ando's surprisingly pleased to be back in his cubicle. I always got the impression he didn't mind escaping it, even if he wasn't as dissatisfied with his job as Hiro had been. But after a season of translating and chauffeuring, it also seemed like Ando deserved more than to be dropped back into his old life and expected to forget that Hiro was teleporting into danger.

In any case, this scene was a defining moment for Hiro. When Ando attaches Hiro's name alongside Star Wars, Star Trek, Superman and Kensei, it's like the show's unintentionally placing its most iconic character within science-fiction and superhero lore. My guess is it wasn't a conscious effort on the show's part. But if there's one character who'll be remembered from this show, I'd say it's Hiro. He's the memorable one, even more so than Bennet or Peter. He's the immediately recognizable one. He's this show's Spock and Yoda -- the character people will attribute to Heroes and pay tribute to in subsequent shows.

At the Past-Rooftop of Pigeonly Delight, Papa Deveaux tells Peter he came here because he "needed to hear the truth before [he] could save the world," and that he's "had the power all along -- [he] just needed to learn how to use it."

The impression I got here was that Peter was the one who'd "save the world." He was the one with "the power," and he was the one who, according to Papa Deveaux, was in need of a dream-like vision of the past.

It later turns out that Nathan's the one who saves the world. Which sort of makes you wonder whether Papa Deveaux was pulling this stuff out of his butt, or whether he was cryptically alluding to the chain of events which led to the world being saved. You could argue that it was Peter who first saved Claire, that it was Claire who persuaded Nathan to abandon Angela's plan, and that it was Nathan who saved the day out of love for his brother, his daughter, and apparently everyone in New York. In that sense, it starts out with Peter.

But this struck me as a set-up for Peter saving the world. Which isn't how it turned out, and which is part of the reason why the conclusion to the season felt so confused. More than any other scene all season, this set Peter up as the hero. A few scenes later, it turns out he's just the radioactive brother, and Nathan's the hero. Which is a triumphant resolution to Nathan's character arc, but somehow a disappointing resolution to Peter's.

Peter wakes up in the alley no wiser than the rest of us. Daddy Bennet tells Peter he's staying with him, graciously opting not to give Peter a ferocious whooping for misplacing his daughter.

Then what's pretty much the most shocking surprise of the episode. Which says either something about the quality of the episode, or something about the charisma which Coleman brought to Daddy Bennet, to the point where discovering his name was a crowning moment for the season finale.

And it just occurred to me that I might never need to type the words "Daddy" and "Bennet" next to one another again.

"Thank you, Mr. Bennet."

"Call me Noah."

Awww.

And WHAT THE *%@#!?!

They named him! Holy *%@#, they just gave him a first name! And it's Noah!

Noah Bennet!

Biblical connotations aside, I just ... NOAH BENNET!

And get this:

Noah. Bennet. Claire.

Noah. Bennet. Company.

NBC.

Subliminal network messaging goes hand in hand with religious undertones.

Mohinder and Molly descend through Company Central, coming across an unconscious D.L. and meeting up with Niki and Micah. Micah technopaths the elevator back into operation. Molly is very impressed. Micah is very pleased that Molly is impressed.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

Molly and Micah?

MOLLY AND MICAH?!

And people think I'm weird for 'shipping Paire? That's worse than a budding romance between two 8 year olds?

So here we are. The Problem Scene. The one which you hated because it didn't have enough action. Or because it involved the death of the Petrelli brothers (or not, as may be the case). Or because it didn't involve the death of Sylar and Matt (or it did, as may be the case). Or because it just didn't make any sense.

Some people loved it. Some people thought it was heartfelt, that it was a fitting ending to the season, and that it was a redemption for Nathan which was well earned.

I wish I could say I loved the scene. I wish it hadn't bothered me as much as it did. But on a number of levels, this scene failed for me, and more than any other scene in the episode, it's what prevented the finale from being the masterpiece I wished it could have been.

Peter and Noah (hah!) show up at Superhero Square. Sylar appears out of nowhere and TK's Noah across the square. Sylar and Peter exchange appropriately confrontational words about the last time Sylar killed Peter. It recalls that occasion, but also the other time Peter and Sylar had a showdown, and the time Future-Peter and Future-Sylar had a showdown.

It's great for continuity, but it sucks that we're reminded of a bunch of scenes which were about a million times more dramatic than this one.

"But Peter's not in control of his powers! He doesn't have the level of skill that Sylar does!"

"But the show's about ordinary people discovering their abilities, and it's about the characters and their journey, not visual effects and gratuitous violence!"

"But Peter was a hospice nurse two weeks ago -- he's not a martial arts expert!"

"Shut up! Stop complaining! Just enjoy the show!"

Yeah, I hear a few thousand people shouting that last one. Sorry. This stuff pulled me right out.

Sylar works the Vader death choke on Peter, then tells him he's not going to "let [Peter] ruin it all" and "take all the glory."

When did Sylar give a crap about glory? He wants to be the pinnacle of superhuman evolution -- he's never cared about glory. Gore, maybe, but not glory.

Matt turns a corner and fires four bullets at Sylar, which Sylar TK's right back at Matt. It's in character, it's a well-executed effect, and if the show hadn't decided to make the fate of every injured and unaccounted-for character so ambiguous, it would have carried real gravitas. As it stands, it feels like just another close call. My guess is Matt will pull through.

Sylar TK's a parking meter out of the ground and thwacks Peter. Niki shows up, intuitively knows Sylar's the villain, wrenches the parking meter away from him, and begins thwacking him herself. Should it be so hilarious that a parking meter has become a crucial prop in overpowering the villain of the season?

Micah cries out for Niki to stop beating the life out of the villain and "help" D.L. How she'll "help" him when he's bleeding out and in need of medical care is unexplained, but it presumably seemed the best way to segue from Niki's beating up Sylar to Peter beating up Sylar.

Peter, having absorbed Niki's super-strength, starts punching Sylar.

It's not like I wanted to see this go on any longer than it needed to. It's not like a violent showdown would have made this the highlight of the season for me. But when one superhero can fly, turn invisible, slow down time, and insta-heal; when his adversary can track his invisible opponent with super-hearing, and smash the glass in every window, in every building in the vicinity, and send a million shards flying at his opponent's head; when you've got those kinds of ideas and abilities to play with, can you really tell me that one of these guys punching the other one is a worthy concept?

Can you really tell me this is how the finale to a season which has involved feature-film-quality stunts and visual effects should end?

Can you really tell me this is the showdown we were waiting for? The one between the show's two most gifted superheroes?

It didn't have to be the most expensive sequence ever. It didn't have to outdo every sequence we'd seen so far. But it needed to TRY to fulfill the expectations we'd had since the showdown in "Homecoming." This felt like the show wasn't even trying.

Punching Sylar is such a strain on Peter that it sets off his nuclear chain reaction. Sylar cheerfully taunts Peter with the notion that Peter will be the villain, and Sylar will be the hero.

So, we've gone from painting the apocalypse in Mama Gray's blood, making nuclear balls of fire in the palm of his hand, and slicing the throat of a non-super-powered individual for kicks ... to "glory" and "hero"?

Did I miss something?

Hiro teleports behind Sylar and is again courteous enough to let Sylar know he's there. He then bellows at the top of his voice and lunges towards Sylar in a way so cumbersome that Papa Deveaux could have dodged it in his wheelchair.

You're telling me the guy who can freeze bullets in mid-air, who can propel himself across terrain to cushion the impact of bullets, who THIS WEEK TK'd a sword out of the hands of his aggressor and pinned him to a wall, is going to JUST STAND THERE AND LET HIMSELF GET STABBED THROUGH THE CHEST?

SERIOUSLY?!

Hiro drives the blade through Sylar's chest, pulls the blade out again, and lets Sylar fall to his knees.

"Yatta!"

Peter, in the meantime, is starting to glow brighter.

Peter: "You can stop this!"

Hiro: "How?"

By beheading him? By teleporting him to the Nevada desert and telling him to knock himself out?

No, here's an idea: suffer the consequences of not beheading the villain when you should have, and getting TK'd across the plaza.

That's Hiro's legacy? That's what he needed to cut out his heart for? That's what the training with his father was building up to -- a botched attempt to slay the villain?

Hiro teleports out of there, and Sylar's life flashes before his eyes. Cool effect. It would carry more weight if we knew, with hindsight, that this was actually the death of the character.

Noah watches Peter flare up, but can't muster the strength to lift his gun. Mohinder? He's a good shot. Niki? She's got a dual personality in there with some experience in the shooting department.

No?

Never mind. Claire shows up to take shooting duty, but realizes she can't bring herself to put a bullet in Peter's head. And it's a moving moment, I have to admit; seeing her point the gun at the guy who saved her life, and sobbing at the thought of killing him. It's one of the few moments in this scene which works.

Peter needing Nathan to fly him away instead of flying himself away bugged a lot of people. Strangely, it's one of the few parts of this fractured conclusion which didn't bother me, mostly because I could buy into the idea that Peter wasn't going to regain control of his other abilities at this point. When Nathan lands next to him and Peter tells him, "I can't do anything," it's at least an attempt to establish, in dialogue, that Peter's a basket case. He needs Nathan to do the flying for him.

So we get an exchange between the brothers in which, to some extent, Nathan's past actions are redeemed, and in which the idea that the future is "written in stone" is refuted. The scene's drawn out for longer than it should have been, but it's moving, and it brings the focus back to the show's core principles: family, sacrifice, and nobility.

Does it make sense for Nathan to be the hero above Peter? I don't see how, especially after the whole Deveaux dream sequence, but if you take it out of context, it's a moving scene, and the moment when the rest of the characters see the explosion in the sky carries enough emotional resonance to buoy the concept behind it.

But here's the predicament: how much of that emotional resonance will be lost if it turns out that Peter and Nathan survive? I'm not saying I don't want both of the characters back next season, but if it turns out this sacrifice wasn't as sacrificial as it seemed, and if it turns out neither of the characters died when we thought they did, whatever emotional impact this scene had will vanish.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope the show comes up with a way to bring Peter and Nathan back from the dead without lessening their heroism in this finale. But it's difficult to see how it can, and honestly, I'm not even sure how effectively that heroism was set up in the first place. Nathan was so ambiguous a character that he really didn't earn his redemption, and Peter's heroism was so undermined by Nathan's role in saving the city that it's practically negated.

So we draw to a close. Ambulances arrive; Matt's carried off on a stretcher; Noah's arm is in a sling; D.L.'s last seen limping away on Niki's arm; even Sylar's managed to crawl into a sewer and disappear. And V.O.-Mohinder gets to monologue about how we find meaning and purpose in each other, and in our shared experiences.

If I could forget how the previous scene dragged this episode down, this is the finale I would have hoped for. Claire and Noah heading back to Odessa to reunite with Sandra and Lyle; the cockroach echoing Mohinder's lecture back in "Genesis"; the voice-over that, for once, had a lucid meaning which related to the show's themes.

If you can overcome the way the season's central storyline was resolved, this is the conclusion we wanted. The problem is a lot of fans couldn't, and truthfully, I can't blame them.

Volume Two: "Generations."

Hiro lands in Japan in 1671, where a dynasty of warriors are about to bury their arrows in him, and where a lone knight with the frilly 'S' on his flag and a pair of eyes resembling Papa Sulu's is about to come to Hiro's rescue. An awesome teaser for the next season? Heck, yes.

There was no way this finale was going to please everyone. Part of the audience wanted an FX bonanza; part of it wanted all of the mains killed off for the sake of a shocking conclusion; and part of it wanted a strong focus on the character arcs and emotional conflicts which make this more than another superhero show.

For me, a little of each of those would have made this a perfect finale. It wasn't that it lacked intensity, or that the feeling and shock were missing. It's that none of them were as creative as I hoped they would be, and on a show which has achieved its success based largely on its creativity and the emotional resonance of its story, that's a disappointment.

In a way, maybe that was the idea. As disappointing as this finale was in places, it's not like any of us won't be checking out the second season in September. We're left wanting more, and Volume Two will undoubtedly cover the questions unanswered at the end of this volume at the same time as raising new questions.

Despite some clunky scenes and some severely flawed moments in the plot, I'd say the finale was a success. The resolution had a lot of problems, and I've tried not to ignore them in the interests of presenting a balanced perspective. The resolution to a season-long arc ended up a disappointment, and parts of the closing scenes stretched credibility beyond its breaking point. By leaving Peter and Nathan's sacrifice open-ended, the show has written itself into a corner, and writing its way out of that corner -- in a way which doesn't smack of desperation -- is going to require an amazing twist. But in light of the way Heroes has surprised us in the past, chances are it'll succeed.

4 out of 5

And that's a wrap on HeroSite's reviews for Season One. I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to read them, and for all of the feedback everyone's sent me. None of this would have happened without your support. It's been an amazing ride, it's been a blast to review and discuss the show with you, and if you're happy for me to stick around, I'll gladly be back in September to review Season Two.

Until then, have a great summer!