Heroes season 3, episodes 8 - 10

[lathany]

Summary (mostly a list of where everyone's now got to): The Eclipse has turned up, so everyone has lost their powers. Peter and Nathan were sent after the Haitian, Nathan was caught by the Haitian's brother's forces. Sylar has been told he has empathic skills like Peter's (like he needed more!) and has gained Elle's power from her without his usual head-opening routine. It turns out Elle was sent to Sylar at the start to investigate his powers and she liked him; now they've met again they are romantically involved. Daphne is no longer a double agent for Arthur Petrelli and it is shown that she used to be disabled before her ability appeared. Matt is with Hiro and Ando at Daphne's house. Well, actually, Ando and Hiro are in a nearby comic store with Oz from Buffy to buy the next comic in the 9th Wonders sequence. Oh, and Hiro now thinks he's 10 because Arthur got to him in Africa. The pre-cog in Africa has been killed by Arthur. Tracey has done a deal with Arthur to support Nathan and make him the public face of Arthur. Claire was being trained by Bennet when Elle and Sylar showed up. She got shot - and is badly hurt. Her father is about to shoot Elle/Sylar. Mohinder has recovered due to the eclipse and is now being held by Arthur (he tried to go after Maya). Angela has recovered from her coma and is rounding up allies to fight Arthur.

General comments: The plot pace is continuing to be strong and I'm liking the set-up far better now than before. In particular, many of the characters are closer to their original personalities than they have been in a while. However, Sylar is starting to rack up a ridiculous number of abilities and has a large badge saying "GM's pet NPC" (aka the writers' favourite character). Still not big on the continuity errors though. I'm not sure what I think about the eclipse being an anti-power thing at this point.

Continuity errors: If the Company knew about Sylar's apartment six months before Mohinder arrived, why did it take Mohinder's arrival (and Eden seeing it) for them to suddenly take everything? Meredith's work with the Company doesn't really fit with her conversation with Claire when they first met back in season one. The 9th Wonder comic with Hiro on the front is the one from episode two of season one and has the trip to Vegas in it and is not about current events. Whilst I'm on the subject, Isaac's last drawings of Hiro were for the end of season one and therefore 9th Wonder should be useless now.

Note: these two lists could possibly swap names, but...

Angela's Heroes
- Nathan
- Peter
- Matt
- Daphne
- Hiro
- Ando
- Claire
- Noah Bennet
- The Haitian
(and possibly Meredith)

Arthur's Villains
- Sylar
- Elle
- Tracey
- Fear guy
- Flame guy
(and an unwilling Mohinder)

Good/OK things:
- Arthur Petrelli as chief bad guy.
- The growing line-up on both sides.
- The return of the Haitian.
- That Peter had reverted to his original personality (and is making smarter calls - although I wish I didn't have suspicions that the two things are connected!).
- That Mohinder has stopped being the evil nest-making thing.
- Nathan's plot and where it's going.
- The one thing I liked from the episode Villains is that Linderman was the lesser bad which makes some sense.

Bad/less OK things:
- The episode "Villains" because it added very little to the general background knowledge and twitched between a year earlier (ie. the time of Six Months Ago) and six months ago (ie. the time of Genesis - the pilot episode).
- Elle of Elle/Gabriel (in the past) seems more mature than from Elle/Peter in season two, which supposedly occurred about eight months later.
- Sylar apparently having every power under the sun - I was particularly annoyed that he'd got empathy.
- Matt, Ando and Hiro appear to have stalled (again).



I reckon the season is still improving.