Mommy Issues

Hiro had the sword to Sylar's throat — his throat! — and he just couldn't do it. I know we all love the guy for being, well, lovable, and for being enthusiastic about his powers and genuinely wanting to make a difference. All that aside, though, he's going to need to step up if he wants to be anything more than a hero wannabe. Seriously, what's the point of having a sword, of going through all those hijinks to get said sword from the lair of a master criminal, if you're not going to use it?

Yet he wasn't the only one who had major hesitations in chapter 21. Hiro couldn't off Sylar, Sylar didn't want to off half of New York City (and neither did Nathan), Claire didn't think she could shoot Peter if worse came to worse and he started to go nuclear, and, though it hasn't happened yet, I don't think Parkman will allow his mates to kill Molly Walker once he realizes that she was the little girl he saved early on in the season. Between that and all the mother issues at play in this episode — Micah realizing that his mother might not actually be his mother or her assassin alter ego, a heartbreaking Sylar trying to get approval from his mum, and Mrs. Petrelli going super Angela Lansbury yet again on Nathan — it was a heavy one. The episodes are getting increasingly grim the closer we get to the end. The more I think about it, the less I'd be surprised if the bomb actually did go off. What direction would they take the show in if it didn't? Speaking of that, I'll tell you my new theory later.

I was surprised to feel myself gaining sympathy for Sylar, and I actually wish it could have lasted for more than one episode. After he came to the realization that he may be the one who blows up New York, a heretofore unknown good part of Sylar came to light as he experienced second thoughts. He called Mohinder and said, "I think I'm going to do something bad....I think I'm going to kill a lot more people. A lot more. I understood it before, the killing. I had a reason, to take what others didn't deserve. It was natural selection." When Mohinder asked him what he was talking about, Sylar replied, "An apocalypse, a massacre, half the city gone within an instant. They mean nothing. They're innocent. There's no gain, so why would I do it? What possible reason would I have for killing so many?"

Fair enough, though. I thought that maybe Sylar was going to repent and, in what would have been a very unforeseen development, try to stop the explosion from taking place. But then Mommy Gray came into the picture. A jittery, lonely-looking lady who collects snow globes, she apparently was one of the primary reasons that Sylar lost his mind and decided to try to collect special powers. When Sylar said, "Maybe I don't have to be special. That's okay to just be a normal watchmaker. Can't you just tell me that's enough?" she responded, "Why would I tell you that when I know you could be so much more? If you wanted, you could be president." (And oh, at least in a possible future, he will be.) So there you have it, folks: evil as the result of an overbearing mother. As Hiro said, "He's so sad," not even able to please his mother when he used his powers to basically create for her a giant snow globe in her living room. It was genuinely a beautiful moment, which made what followed — when Sylar accidentally killed her — that much more tragic. I felt bad for the guy.

So did Hiro, apparently, who punked out when confronted with Sylar's open throat (punked out so much that he couldn't even focus enough to keep time stopped, which is the only explanation I can imagine for how Sylar was able to freeze his sword). I have very little to say here other than that Hiro needs to get off this passive kick. For the entire hour, he literally just stood around and watched the man he was supposed to kill in order to prevent a great catastrophe! I think Ando should take over.

Because somebody needs to kill the "boogeyman," which is how Molly Walker refers to the man who killed her family. As she put it, "He sees into your soul, and then he eats your brain." And what a power she has, modest as she is. "It's not so amazing. They ask me where people are and I find them....I just think about them, and I know where they are." H.R.G.'s reference to the Walker method early on in the episode leads me to believe that this is how the company is now tracking people. According to H.R.G., the new method doesn't rely on isotopes. Instead, they can just find you. Little does he know that it relies on a little girl just like the one he rescued many years ago.

And is anyone else getting more and more freaked out and infuriated by Nathan and Peter's mother? The woman's as bad as Linderman but not as charming. Certainly as manipulative, however, as she seductively persuaded her son to go ahead with the bomb plot. "Your destiny, Nathan, is to set the course of history after this unspeakable act has occurred. And people will look back on what you do as the freshman congressman from New York, and they will thank you. For your strength, for your conviction, for your faith. In my day we called it being presidential....Can you be the one we need?" That last line, an echo of Future Hiro's exhortation to Peter when they first met in the frozen-time subway car, is particularly eerie, repurposed for a totally opposite reason.

So about this bomb. I was thinking after the episode last night that we may have been led to believe something that may not exactly be true. We are told from Isaac's paintings and the future visions that the bomb is a person. Everyone keeps saying that it's either Peter or Sylar. But what if it's neither one of them? Remember, Linderman and his people want this bomb to go off and they kidnapped Micah as part of their endgame. What if the bomb is simply a bomb? Micah has the ability to manipulate machinery so what if they kidnapped him to set off the bomb from far away? In the previews, they showed Micah on top of a building with his hand in the air. What if he is manipulating the bomb in another location and unknowingly causes it to explode? Could that be the shocking twist?