Review: Heroes 3×01, “The Second Coming”

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I’m not a huge watcher of television, but the few shows I do watch fall well within the focus of this blog. NBC’s Heroes , now in its third season, tells the stories of a ever-growing cast of ordinary people who discover that they have extraordinary powers. Think a more emotionally mature version of X-Men. Of course, not all people who find they have superpowers intend to use them to plant trees and save puppies. A classic conflict between good and evil ensues.

This third chapter of the series, dubbed Villains, promises to explore that conflict not only between characters but also within their own personae. I wont give away too many plot spoilers, as I do encourage people to watch the show and I don’t ruin all their fun. But I’ll give some general impressions.

Overall, the first episode of the season, “The Second Coming,” is a hodge-podge. The episode wastes no time in answering the question posed by the season two cliffhanger, but then embarks on a series of new adventures for all our old favorites. The Japanese time-traveling businessman Hiro Nakamura, the regenerating Claire Bennett, the mind-reading Matt Parker, and the multitalented empath Peter Petrelli all face brand new challenges. The ability-stealing Sylar, newly repossessed of his powers, so far still looms as the show’s arch-villain. Given the title of this story arc, though, and the hints of the show’s producers, I expect that’s going to change soon.

Anyhow, all the new storylines introduced promise exciting adventure and thought-provoking mysteris to come. Right now, though, it’s unclear exactly where it’s all leading. My sense is that, due to a lot of the criticism that the show’s second season received, the creators are trying to return to the formula that made Season One so successful: an impending world disaster, an enigmatic Sylar, and the antics of Hiro Nakamura and his sidekick Ando.

Of particular interest to me are the larger questions this series raises. Where do these superpowers come from? What is their biological, social, and spiritual impact? How much about oneself does one disclose to one’s fellows? This episode formulates some of these questions to some extent, and promises further exploration of these themes throughout the season. One of the characters, for instance, turns to God, specifically the Christian God, as a way of explaining to the world some of the things that have happened to him. Whether he himself believes this or whether he’s merely taking this tack as a ploy to appease the public–he is a politician after all–is yet to be clarified. I bring this up because it’s these moral and spiritual implications that form the underpinnings of my interest in fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction of all sorts and in all media.

It’s clear that the pendulum in the television world has swung back to the mode of long, sweeping story-arcs rather than the bite-sized self-contained episodes that predominated in the late ’90s. There’s no way that anyone who hasn’t seen the previous seasons of Heroes would derive much emotional enjoyment from watching this single episode beyond a brief surge or twinge at key moments. I have enough faith in Tim Kring and the show’s writers, however, that the half-baked ideas presented here will rise into a moist and delicious confection.

I hope to watch the followup episode, “The Butterfly Effect,” within the next day or two and post my impressions.