Overly Positive

 Spoilers!

Heroes ended another volume yesterday, closing a chapter in which our intrepid people with amazing powers became fugitives, struggled with their pasts, and came full circle to a point that makes a Company even more powerful than ever before.

There’s a lot of criticism that has been leveled at this season’s Heroes, from stale characterization to bad writing, to contrived storylines, but to be honest, the season overall did its job in exploring how the “normal” world might deal with people with extraordinary abilities. The story seemed to falter at times and in some respects left a lot to be desired (the whole “Rebel” storyline deserved much more than to have some kid behind it), but you can’t really complain with where things seemed to end up.

Here’s some things this season of Heroes actually did right, to counteract all those negative Nancies out there:

• Peter and Hiro were “nerfed” - I’ve never had it sit well with me that taking other people’s powers and time manipulation had the potential to be the most dangerous in terms of trying to keep things within story without making it ridiculous. Unlike Sylar and Claire, whose unstable mind and lack of real physical threat respectively keep their powers in check, Peter and Hiro lacked any real drawback. By making Peter only able to absorb one power at once and making sure Hiro’s time travel has some potentially fatal consequences, the writers made sure that simply saying “why couldn’t they just do x” was as small a possibility as could be given.
• Nathan achieved a role - Nathan’s character never really went anywhere on the series as far as I could tell. With an artifically given flight ability he wasn’t “sexy” enough power-wise to really explore anything, leaving his character as a politician as the remaining saving grace (and we all know how most geeks feel about politics). If the intent was to make him a sad, tragic character this season, this did it, and you absolutely had to kill him to seal the deal. Dying without any real chance to win against Sylar was unfortunate, but totally in line with closing the book on him as a person, but the way the season ended, there’s so much more potential to explore the character and its impact. It’s too bad he has to be dead in order for it to happen.
• HRG got “real” - The problem with creating a character with some morally grey loyalties like everyone’s favorite Horn-Rimmed Glasses-wearing ex-agent is that you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Noah Bennett hadn’t had that happen until this season, when the baggage of his “normal” family was finally shed. The scenes which eventually lead to the deterioration of his marriage leave the door open for some emotionally jarring future episodes while freeing him up to pursue the grey area he’s always wanted to live in.
• Sylar’s mental roller coaster - As I said before, the thing that keeps Sylar’s immense powers in check is the troubled past and events in his life that screw with his mental mojo. This season, though it focused on it a bit too much, explored that in detail, from daddy issues, to mommy issues, to identity issues, and finally, a curious pass at Claire that exposed a loneliness issue that has yet to be dealt with. I’m glad the writers finally settled in on Sylar being “evil” – I hated having a possible hero turn happen last season vis-a-vis Elle, and the show needs an anchor in the Villain column that sadly has not been filled very well with anyone else besides Sylar. The only issue now is that I think Sylar still possesses too many powers – in fact, more than the writers know what to do with – and hope that despite his current situation masquerading/thinking he is Nathan Petrelli, that something will be done about it.