Heroes – “Dying of the Light” (S3E6) airdate 10/20/08

It’s a replay of the "Hiro kills Ando" scene: but Hiro stops time long enough to get novelty swords and blood from a joke shop – sneaky! Thinking him a murderer, Daphne is furious with Hiro but accepts his application to be a bad ass. She gives him his assignment: go to Africa and catch the precog that had been helping Parkman.

In Costa Verde, Claire dashes off to help rescue Meredith from the puppetmaster; Sandra insists that she’s coming too, “one of us, one of them.” The puppetmaster’s name is Eric and he is very smitten with Meredith. She is frustrated and scared, particularly as he makes her stab herself in the neck with a broken wineglass. He plans to make her love him.

Knox has brought Adam to Pinehurst to see Arthur Petrelli. Petrelli thinks something at Adam that makes him very afraid, which in turn amps Knox up enough to be able to hold Adam still in front of Petrelli’s bed. Adam is shrieking – no! I can be of use to you! – but Petrelli clamps down on his hand and quickly sucks the youth and vitality out of him. Before our eyes, Adam withers and crumbles into dust, while Petrelli is now able to sit up in bed and breathe on his own. So much for any more recurrences with David Anders.

Daphne is waiting at JFK for Parkman. She tosses the files into the trash and Lindeman immediately appears, threatening her if she doesn’t stick with the program. Oh goody, there's Parkman and he’s brought his turtle with him. Parkman sees Daphne at the base of the escalator. He greets her by name, which surprises her, but then she asks if they can go somewhere and talk. Seeing her working on her assignment, Parkman’s dad slinks away around the corner and out of sight. Parkman tells Daphne about their future vision – marriage, baby, happiness – and she is suitably wigged out. She says she has a bunch of stuff to do but asks him to wait for her. She’ll be back.

A suspicious Mohinder lets Tracy and Nathan into his lab. He thinks she’s Niki but they set him straight. They tell him about Zimmerman’s work, altering their genes. Tracy asks if he can remove her power; Mohinder creepily says that they can be of use to each other. He injects each of them with “genetic tags” ostensibly to track their mutated DNA … but since he’s Evil now, what he’s given them knocks them out.

Sylar is sitting in his cell when Daphne shows up to spring him. He doesn’t want to go, saying he isn’t a killer anymore. Daphne tells him that the man she works for doesn’t want to change him like the Company does. Slipping a Pinehurst card into his hand, she grabs another Level 5er (the fire handed guy?) and zooms away. Sylar goes into Peter’s cell and swipes the tube from his nose. He says he needs Peter’s help – their mother is in trouble.

Hiro and Ando teleport into the African precog’s home. Ando is reluctant to kidnap an innocent man, but Hiro says they’re just borrowing him so they can get in good with the villains, and steal Hiro’s father’s formula back. Trouble with precogs is that they’re hard to sneak up on: the African bops Hiro on the head with a shovel.

At Eric the puppetmaster’s, he is making Meredith waltz with him as Claire and Sandra bust in. Sandra’s cover story is that she’s looking to book some puppets for her son’s birthday; Claire is sneaking in around back. Unfortunately, Claire is a klutz and knocks something over. Eric seizes control of Sandra’s body and walks her into the back room, easily taking control of Claire’s body too. Well, that worked smashingly, ladies.

Next, Daphne pays a visit to Mohinder (after checking in to see if Parkman is still waiting for her – and he is). She hears a noise when she’s handing over her little card and zips behind the curtain, finding Nathan and Tracy moaning and barely conscious, not to mention the wall of cocooned bodies. Indignant and skeeved out, she turns to Mohinder, sneering that he’s just as bad as the rest before zipping out of there. Now his little secret is not so much secret.

Eric has the three women seated around a little table, a pistol with one bullet resting upon it. Eric tells Claire that she has to choose and shoot one of the older women, not knowing that Meredith is really Claire's mother. Eric forces Claire pull the trigger on Meredith: empty chamber. Now it’s Sandra’s turn to shoot – at Claire. Luckily, we know something Eric doesn’t know. Sandra fires twice, the bullet firing on the second trigger pull and knocking Claire to the floor. Eric chuckles, “that was fun,” but unkillable Claire rises up behind him and whacks him on the head with something. She’s done playing around.

Angela Petrelli lies on a hospital bed, trapped inside her own body. Peter takes a look inside his mother’s head to find out what’s wrong but all he sees is the helix … from the Pinehurst card. Peter is all for storming the castle but Sylar thinks that’s a bad idea. He tries to stop him but Peter administers a first class beat-down onto his newly found brother.

Mr. Bennet arrives to wrap up Eric. Meredith tells him that Claire was the one who ended up incapacitating the bad guy; he is impressed but Claire snits off. When Sandra runs after her, Bennet enlists Meredith to help him in tracking down more escaped baddies.

At Mohinder’s lab, Tracy tries to talk her way out of Mohinder’s clutches, offering empathy. A conflicted Mohinder takes her hand, and she starts to put the freeze on him. Screaming, he flings himself away. Tracy gets out of her restraints and frees Nathan. Mohinder throws a table at them, snarling that their business is not yet finished.

It’s late at night, and poor Parkman is still waiting for Daphne. She finally shows up, saying that she’s supposed to recruit him for Pinehurst but he wouldn’t fit in since he seems like a really sweet guy. He tells her that he came here to save her, that he can tell that she doesn’t fit in at Pinehurst either. She’s tempted to trust him, but whatever Pinehurst is holding over her head is too big, and she tells him goodbye, and runs away.

Finally, after many abortive attempts to catch the African seer, Hiro and Ando come face to face with him. He shows them a painting of four villains – Knox, Firestarter, possibly Arthur Petrelli and one I don’t recognize – and tells Hiro that he can either deliver his assignment to the baddies, or find his own path.

Meanwhile, Peter has found his way to Pinehurst. Petrelli has called a meeting with his team of bad guys and Peter bursts in uninvited. Petrelli is unfazed but Peter is wigging a little bit. His dad is supposed to be dead, after all. Petrelli opens his arms and pulls his son into a hug. “I’m sorry it’s come to this,” he says, and then Peter screams and collapses to the floor. He flings up one hand, intending to electrocute his father. But the elder Petrelli just shakes his head and wiggles his fingers, sparks dancing on his fingertips: he’s just sucked all of his son’s powers into himself.

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes