This review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the second season premiere of "Heroes."

How do you go back to being "normal" after learning you have superpowers? How do you go on knowing you have saved the world while nobody else was looking? Is it possible to live an ordinary life after youve done and witnessed the extraordinary?

Those are the questions posed in "Four Months Later," the first episode of the second season of "Heroes." All the characters who survived the events at the climax of last season's final episode strive to move on with theirs lives, which proves more difficult than they imagined.

As the episode opens, we learn more about why Shanti Suresh died and Molly Walker (Adair Tischler) nearly faced the same fate. There is a virus spreading like a plague to all the people with special abilities, threatening to kill them and destroy humanity's chance to reach the next stage in evolution.

Is the virus causing people to exhibit powers while killing them at the same time? More importantly, is this a natural phenomenon, or is it a plot by someone or some organization to wipe out the people with special abilities? Other events in the story seem to point to an elaborate plot or plots, possibly by more than one source, to wipe out super-powered people.

We learn that Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) and Mohinder Suresh (Sedhil Ramamurthy) are living with and protecting Molly Walker. Parkman, whose wife divorced him, has finally passed his officer's exam after surviving four bullets to the chest.

Meanwhile, Molly is haunted by frightening nightmares about the person who can see her when she thinks about him. She is convinced he is deadly, and doesn't want Parkman to go after him for fear that he will be killed. This faceless entity is one threat the "Heroes" will clearly have to contend with.

Mohinder, who is in Cairo, is working to persuade other people in the scientific community that his father's work has been validated, but few people show interest in what he has to say. He is, however, pursued by an agent of The Company, who turns a spoon to gold and offers Suresh a job.

Another looming threat is one that apparently has been going on for a while. Someone is killing off the elder generation of super-powered beings.

Both Kaito (George Takei) and Ice Queen Mama Angela Petrelli (Christine Rose) find pieces of a torn photo, each with an image of themselves with the "Godsend" symbol drawn in red over their faces. Apparently, this calling card means they each have 24 hours to live. Each knows it, having seen Charles Deveaux, Linderman, and the Petrelli's father all die within the past year. Kaito concludes that what they face was long due "for the pain we caused."

Kaito's come-uppance for that pain comes quickly, when he is pushed off the roof of Charles Deveaux's high-rise digs by a Kamikazee-like assailant whose identity is hidden by a hoodie.

So, who else will die? Who else is being targeted? More people will have to die because the cast is getting awfully crowded!

The Bennett family, now using the last name Butler, tries to move on by moving to Southern California. They attempt to be as ordinary and inconspicuous as possible, which proves to be difficult.

For one thing, Claire (Hayden Panettiere), who is now attending a new high school, is changed. In Season 1, she tried to hide her powers. In Season 2, she seems to wish she didnt have to. She seizes upon any chance to take risks where she might be seen, putting her hand over the flame on a bunsen burner in science class, and later attempting a risky flip off a high platform after gym class has let out.

In both incidents, West (Nick D'agosto), a classmate with piercing eyes and a potential boy toy for Claire, walks in on her. It seems he has a special ability, too, though he hasn't come out to Claire about it.

Is West someone who suspects Claire might be like him and is looking to connect with her, or is he someone sent to track down Claire with less-than-honest motives?

HRG (Jack Coleman), in the meantime, takes an ordinary job working for a tyrannical boss - at a paper company. It's not so easy taking an ordinary, menial job after working for The Company and seeing what he's seen. After being constantly berated by the odious boss who is half his age with half the I.Q., HRG tells his new boss what every worker secretly wants to say to a crappy boss. He may be a paper salesman, but nobody messes with Noah Benn: er: Butler.

On the other side of the U.S., Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), drunk and bearded, has lost his family, and is haunted by the loss of Peter. The Ice Queen admonishes him for being a disappointment, convinced that he is a failure for not going through with her plan to destroy New York, and blaming him for killing her beloved son Peter (Milo Ventimiglia).

Hiro (Masi Oka) seems to be the only one who is safe at the moment, though he is facing a crisis of his own. He has teleported to 1671 Japan, where he saves the life of his childhood hero, Takeso Kensei (David Anders). Kensei turns out to be neither Japanese nor heroic. He is an English mercenary and a drunk with no sense of honor or dignity.

Unlike the icon in Hiro's beloved stories in "Trials of Takeso Kensai," this Kensei has swindled a village for all their wealth on a promise to protect them. However, instead of helping them while the village is robbed and burned down, Kensei, whose self-dubbed name means "Sword Saint," shows no remorse and offers no help to the village.

We are also introduced to Honduran twins, Maya and Alejandro (Dania Ramirez and Shalim Ortiz), who are fugitives from the law. It seems Maya, at least, is responsible for several mass deaths, though it hasn't yet been revealed how. She appears to have a very deadly power, which she can only keep under control with her brother nearby.

They pay a nasty "coyote" a large sum of money to transport them, in a truckload of other people, to the United States so they can find Chandra Suresh. They are hoping he'll have a cure for her/their "disease." The trip takes a bad turn, and the two leave behind many more dead bodies.

Finally, we see what appear to be Irish hoods heading for a storage facility in search of a shipment of iPods. Instead of iPods, they find a disoriented Peter Petrelli, chained to a wall in a storage container. When they try to approach him, he wards them off with a blast of flaming radiation. Rather than frightening the gang, he makes them more curious about figuring out who and what he is. Apparently he doesn't know.

What Worked

Claire's turnaround from last season and her desire to come out and not hide what she is in spite of what the consequences are intriguing. She realizes she isn't ordinary, and despite efforts to seem so, she clearly has lost the desire to be so.

The palpable tension that "the Butlers" are experiencing trying to pretend they are a normal family is both bittersweet and humorous. Ashley Crowe deserves a raise for letting Mr. Muggles lick her lips!

It's both painful and fun to see HRG working a menial job. It's difficult for someone who's lived in a "gray area" for nearly the past two decades to have to put up with the crap doled out by his nitwit boss. I foresee him going through Matt Parkman-like trials and tribulations in an effort to support his family.

Matt Parkman, on the other hand, is experiencing a professional windfall and bolstered confidence, in spite of losing his wife and unborn baby. It's nice to see him come to terms with what he is and seeing his ability as a gift rather than a curse.

The alliance formed by Matt, Mohinder and HRG to bring down The Company is very exciting. I can't wait to see where the show goes with this!

Hiro has the task of turning Kensei, "My Fair Lady" style, into the hero of legends in order to fix the history he "broke." It's also great to see David Anders in a humorous role.

The show still has the gift of the great cliffhanger.

What Didn't Work

For the most part, everything in this episode worked.

Final Thoughts

My fear, though, is the writers may be creating an impossible scenario. There are so many story threads with so many characters, they may be setting themselves up for a boondoggle that they will be hard-pressed to get out of; however, if they can successfully pull off tying together all the story threads, the resolution could bring "Heroes" to new, scintillating heights.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

"Four Months Later," the first episode of the second season of "Heroes," was written by Tim Kring and directed by Greg Beeman. "Heroes" airs on NBC Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.