Am I alone in thinking this premiere was kickass? I feel like they upped the comedy factor and threw us some crazy new developments. It was thrilling and gruesome and surprising and funny. . . My faith in Heroes is fully restored. I'm not sure I needed both this episode and the one that came after it; I forgot how much they pack into each episode. After two of them my brain was starting to overload. So, here we can discuss the first of the two episodes, "The Second Coming," in which I think the best part was at the end (see: the end of this post after the jump). A post about "The Butterfly Effect" will follow this one.

After the jump you'll find spoilers, so now that you're warned, read more.

Because the two-hour premiere was so full of craziness, I'm trying to keep it all straight. Here is my attempt to identify some of the key points from this episode. . .

  1. So, a future Peter shot his brother, Nathan. The Peter of today is inhabiting the body of another man, trapped on Level Five (where HRG is still being kept!).
  2. Peter transports Matt Parkman to the desert, where he wakes up with a scorpion on his face.
  3. Nathan dies from the bullet wounds — but is then revived (and totally made me jump when he suddenly sat up in bed) by Linderman, who is. . . also not dead.
  4. Joining the list of not-dead people is Niki — er, now called Tracy — who did not, in fact, die in a blazing building.
  5. Hiro discovers (from a DVD he was not supposed to watch) that his deceased father (hooray, Kaito Nakamura!) designated Hiro to be the "sentinel of a dangerous secret." Hiro then finds the secret (in a safe he was not supposed to open), and it's half of a formula, on which, apparently, the fate of the world depends. Kaito explains that if this secret gets out, there's only one hope, "a chosen one among you who carries the purity of blood, the 'light' to safeguard against the darkness."
  6. Hiro promptly loses this half-formula to a brand-new hero: a "speedster" who grabs the formula from Hiro and then punches him in the face. Dismayed, Hiro teleports to the future, where the city is in alarm mode as what appears to be the apocalypse descends. Future Hiro and future Ando are arguing about the formula when Ando electrifies Hiro! You guys, Ando gets a power (in a theoretical future unless Hiro stops him)!

  7. The scenes with Claire and Sylar are, in my opinion, just the right combination of campy horror/thriller and comedy (not unlike a real horror movie). Claire walking backwards into the kitchen holding a knife? Come on! Anyway, Sylar finds a file folder of special people, "a whole shopping list of abilities," before he manages to carve off the top part of Claire's skull (OMG ew) to access her. . . special abilities lobe? I dunno.
  8. Best line of the night goes to Sylar, in response to Claire's question about eating brains: "Eat your brain? Claire, that's disgusting." Sylar then imparts some intriguing information, "You're different, you're special, and I could never kill you, even if I wanted to. You can never die. . . And now, I guess, neither can I." Yipes!
  9. Nathan has had a kind of spiritual awakening, now spouting things about God's message ("we are all connected"), and other platitudes like, "Only together can we be the stewards of our own destiny," and "We could be angels, all here to do God's bidding." Finally, we have a new little mantra, evolving away from cheerleaders: "Save ourselves, save the world."
  10. Linderman is only too eager to agree with Nathan, gently telling him, "It seems you and I are meant for great things, Nathan. Great things, indeed."
  11. Mohinder determines from Maya that the abilities "are produced by adrenaline." He then manages to isolate whatever this is into a serum that can actually give someone powers (this seemed remarkably easy, but I'm cool with that). Thus, Mohinder injects himself! Mohinder has powers! I love this new development. The person studying superheroes. . . becomes one of them. He's like the good alternative to Sylar, in some ways.

And then there's the ending when they set the words to William Butler Yeats's poem, "The Second Coming," to a montage of images wrapping up the episode: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . .Surely some revelation is at hand;/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand./ The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out/ When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi/ Troubles my sight. . ."

I thought that was pretty freakin' cool.

Photos courtesy of NBC

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