How to Stop an Exploding Man

"How to Stop an Exploding Man"

"How to Stop an Exploding Man" is the twenty-third episode of the first season of the NBC science fiction drama series Heroes. It is the conclusion of the three-part finale for season one.

The episode started filming March 26. It aired May 21, 2007.

Plot

Template:Spoiler The main characters come together in New York, but not all of the heroes will survive.

Hiro tells his father he must save Ando and stop Sylar. He teleports to Isaac Mendez's loft, where Ando has been pinned against the wall by Sylar, who says Ando is not worth bothering to kill. Hiro arrives to face Sylar, and Sylar challenges Hiro to move more quickly than he can. To Sylar's surprise, Hiro transports across the room to Ando and they both disappear before Sylar can do anything more.

Nathan seems to have finally accepted his responsibility as congressman and future president. Nathan's mother informs him that Linderman is indeed dead, and yet he is unsure if that is a good thing. He seems convinced that his brother Peter will indeed explode, and also that he has no plans to try and prevent the impending disaster. Molly appears to have been injured and Suresh is treating her. As this happens, Mr. Bennet contacts Peter and informs him of Sylar's new power gained from killing Ted Sprague. Bennet confides in him to stop Sylar before disaster strikes, and begs him to look after Claire. Peter visits Nathan and tries to recruit him in taking on Sylar who has also acquired the ability to go nuclear. Peter then realizes that Claire was right about not trusting Nathan, and turns to see that she has fled. He tries to locate her in an empty street, but his new "nuclear" powers start to take over and he collapses.

Nathan's true intentions remain unknown, but it appears he has no desire to help. Matt Parkman learns of Molly's amazing ability, but she is distraught to admit that she cannot find "everyone": there is one person she claims to be unable to find, someone "far worse" than Sylar, and that when she looks for him, he can "see" her; this theme is not developed further in the episode. When Suresh, Parkman, and Bennet ask Molly to find Sylar, she says, "he's already here", and they head to the plaza for the final confrontation. Peter is in a flashback of when he started caring for Charles Deveaux and sees his mother speaking to Charles about the bomb. Peter believes nobody can see him until his mother leaves and Charles confronts him. Charles tells Peter that he is the only one with enough heart to save the world. (How Peter experiences this "flashback" is not explained.)

In the plaza, Mr Bennet's name is finally revealed when he tells Peter "Call me Noah."

In the climax, Peter, Bennet, and Parkman confront Sylar in the plaza. Parkman shoots at Sylar, who stops the bullets and turns them back at Parkman, who is hit. Niki steps in and uses her strength to distract Sylar and save Peter. Then, Hiro teleports from Japan, after leaving Ando behind, and distracts Sylar from Peter. Before Sylar can do anything, Hiro stabs Sylar with a sword, apparently fatally wounding him. However, before Hiro can do anything about Peter's request that he kill him, Sylar's last act is to telekinetically throw Hiro into the air; he teleports before he can strike a nearby building. After this, a gray film covers Sylars eyes(similar to when either him, Isaac Mendez, or Peter drew a precognitive drawing). As Peter's hands continue to glow, Claire arrives and takes Bennet's gun. Before she is able to gather herself to shoot Peter, Nathan drops from the sky unexpectedly and says the future isn't written in stone after all; which Claire Bennet had stated earlier in the episode. He grabs Peter and flies off into the sky, where Peter explodes. Matt Parkman is shown being loaded into an ambulance, alive. At the end of this scene the camera shows a trail of blood leading from where Sylar's body was to an open sewer with a cockroach crawling out, and the words "End of Volume One" appear on the screen.

Volume Two: Generations

After a fadeout, we are shown the opening of "Volume Two: Generations." Hiro falls from the sky, and awakens in a grassy meadow. As he raises himself from the ground, he spots a group of samurai archers raising their bows towards him--but it is in fact the hero Kensei, poised behind Hiro, that they are about to attack. Kensei is played by George Takei. The titles then note that Hiro is outside Kyoto, Japan, in the year 1672. Before anyone can act, though, the entire landscape is darkened by a solar eclipse, which creates the logo seen at the beginning of each episode.

Notes

• At the beginning, Mohinder is heard, reciting a near exact copy of the original starting speech to the first episode "Genesis." He completes the whole speech (more than that from "Genesis"), as flashbacks of all the main heroes are shown.
• The cockroach crawling into the sewer could be a reference to Mohinder's episode one lecture to his class in which he postulates that the cockroach is perhaps the highest evolved species.
• "How to stop an exploding man" is a phrase previously used in past episodes. In a past episode, Hiro asks the question "How do we stop an exploding man?"
• The solar eclipse in 1671 took place on October 11 and lasted 43 seconds making it the shortest Total eclipse in the past 1280 years according to the Saros Series 7 - NASA.

Reception

While many viewers found the season 1 finale gripping, many felt as though the episode did not answer all of the questions that had been brought up in the previous episodes. One of the most common source of criticism is the fact that Peter Petrelli had to rely on his brother Nathan Petrelli to fly him out of harms way before exploding, when he could have just flown away on his own. This would suggest that Peter can only use one power at a time, an idea that not only has not been clarified or suggested before, but would also explain why Peter would not be able to use his regenerative powers if killed before exploding. Another problem many viewers had with the episode was the manner in which Sylar dies. While Sylar shows the reflexes and ability to stop Matt Parkman's bullets, Sylar is unable to stop Hiro's sword from impaling him through the chest. The cliffhanger of the disappearance of Sylar's body down a manhole did not sit well with all of the audience either. Other complaints included Sylar's lack of using his molecular disruption power, Matt Parkman's suicidal rush, along with Peter's regenerative abilities being ignored when he asks to be killed. However, the overall acceptance was overwhelmingly positive and the new season "Generations" is highly anticipated.