NBC Photo: Paul Drinkwater
So the good news: Linderman, now the head cheese at Primatech, wants to heal the world. The bad news: to accomplish that, I and a few million of my fellow New Yorkers need to be blown up. “.07 Percent,” the title of the episode, refers to the portion of the human population who need to die to achieve his goal: remaking the world, led by future President Nathan Petrelli.
“I said people needed hope, but they trust fear,” Linderman tells Nathan, revealing an ironic healing power in the process. “Out of the ashes, humanity will find a common goal.” The idea being that, after a terrible tragedy, one political leader could seize on it to rocket to immense publicity and influence. Which is, like, so implausible.
A solid enough episode in all–the show knows how to hit the ground running after a layoff–but I wish we had seen Hiro sooner, or HRG later. The show’s two best characters were at either end of a big everybody-else sandwich, and Heroes can get awfully somber and stuffy when they’re out of the picture. (Speaking of which: Bye, Isaac, and thanks for the comics.) That, and a lot of time wasted on Peter’s “death,” which I assume nobody out there believed for a second was permanent, since with him out of the picture we could pack up and go home, and I and the rest of the .07 percent would get our reprieve early.
Still, the image of Hiro encountering the timeline in five-years-from-now New York–and more important, meeting Future Hiro–was worth it. Does this mean Future Hiro teams up with his past self to change the course of history, and thus possibly alter his own existence?
I’ll leave it to the superfans to theorize that out. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a bit of backstage news: a producer of Heroes confirms that the de-gayification and sudden departure of Zach came when Thomas Dekker’s manager freaked out about the gay storyline. (Link via Defamer.)
But who knows? Maybe we could meet Zach, older and recast, in the five-years-from-now future. Maybe he’ll have met a nice guy by then.