The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for "Dual," the thirteenth episode of the third season of "Heroes."

"Dual," the final chapter of the "Villains" arc of "Heroes," continues with the theme of duality and the fine line between being a hero and being a monster, with a voiceover narration by Sylar, who tells us "Good. Evil. Right or wrong. What we choose is not what we really need."


Arthur Petrelli (Robert Forster) is dead, and Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) plans to seize that moment to destroy the formula and save the world. The problem is Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) has gone to the dark side, and tries to stop Peter. Peter is almost tempted to kill his brother to stop him, but knocks him out instead.

In the lab Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) is preparing to inject himself with the new formula in hopes that it will cure him of his creeping monsterhood. Before he can inject himself, Daphne (Brea Grant) passes by in a blur and steals hi syringe. As Peter approaches Mohinder, Flint (Blake Shields) and Knox (Jamie Hector), no longer under the control or scrutiny of Arthur, back him up. Flint gets even with Mohinder for his recent bludgeoning as Knox and Peter destroy the lab and the vials of formula.

As Flint and Peter trash the lab, Knox seeks out Nathan. As Scott the super soldier (Chad Faust) revives Nathan, Knox enters and snaps the soldier's neck. Nathan tells Knox he is choosing the wrong side, but Knox goes after him. Suddenly Knox is transformed to ice and falls apart, as Tracy (Ali Larter) comes to Nathan's rescue.

Tracy's suggests she and Nathan put distance between themselves and Pinehearst for political reasons, but Nathan, who is becoming more and more like his father, fires Tracy her instead. Tracy's day is made complete when she tries to take the formula, and it disappears in a Daphne blur.

As this is going on, the destruction of the lab continues. A vat full of the highly combustible formula is dumped on the floor by Peter and Flint. Mohinder, who is badly injured and on the floor, is doused by the flood of formula, which heals him and transforms him back to his pretty self. Nathan enters the lab to stop the destruction, as Flint moves to set it on fire. Peter stops him to protect Nathan, but then Nathan attacks Flint and then Peter, with a steel bar. Flint sets the lab on fire. Desperate to get Nathan (and maybe himself) out of that situation, Peter injects himself with a intact, grabs Nathan and flies out of Pinehearst as it burns down.

Safely outside of Pinehearst, an agitated Nathan asks Peter "Why'd you save me? Why'd you do it?"
Peter replies "Because you?re my brother and I love you."

Nathan continues digging deeper into the dark side, saying "It?s not what I would have done."
Hiro (Masi Oka) is still stuck 16 years in the past with no powers, dangling on a flagpole near the Deveaux rooftop. He actually manages to save himself and climb back onto the rooftop. Then he finds himself -- his real ten-year-old self, and persuades him to show him the formula. Hiro believes if he destroys the formula in the past, it will change all of the events of the future.

In the present, desperate to help his friend, Ando (James Kyson Lee) wants to obtain the formula to become a time traveler. Daphne runs off to Pinehearst to steal a syringe with the formula from Mohinder. When she returns, Ando injects himself and faints. When he awakens (to a glass of cold water on the face), he finds that rather than being a "master of time and space," he is an amplifier for other people's abilities. Using red electric energy, he makes Parkman (Greg Grunberg) hear thousands of people's thoughts at once, and makes Daphne run fast enough to break the time barrier. They soon figure out that Ando and Daphne together can travel through time, and they use it to rescue Hiro and bring him back to the present.

On a side note, Ando?s really built! Did you see how muscular those arms are? I don't know why I didn't notice in the past, but he's been working out!

In the past, Hiro finds the formula in a safe, but Kaito (George Takei) catches him in the act. Kaito will not listen to Hiro's attempts to explain what he's doing, so he tries tear up the formula. Unfortunately, Daphne and Ando blast grab Hiro, leaving the formula torn in two behind. To try to remedy the problem, Hiro and Daphne speed over to Pinehearst, where Hiro decks Tracy for calling him Pikachu, and runs off with the formula.

Meanwhile, Sylar (Zachary Quinto) locks in Claire (Hayden Panettiere), Angela (Cristine Rose), HRG (Jack Coleman), and Meredith (Jessalyn Gilsig) in Primatech. ?I?m going to prove to you, one by one, that you?re all monsters like me.?Claire is forced to choose which of her relatives survives. Noah, releases the Level 5 prisoners, ordering them to "bring me Sylar's head," but he intends for them to be bait to lure Sylar out of hiding.


The puppetmaster (David H. Lawrence XVII), for his own perverse reasons, rescues Meredith from Sylar, and tries to control Sylar with his mad puppet skills. Sylar basically makes his brain explode in his head. Sylar injects Meredith with adrenaline and locks her in a cell with Noah. The adrenaline makes Meredith burst into uncontrollable flames, which will soon burn HRG or kill her.

Sylar also challenges Claire to leave Angela to save HRG and her mother. Trying to provoke the monster in her, Sylar reminds her of how each of the adults she is with has deceived, used, or abandoned her n the past. Instead Claire tries to rescue them all. HRG has Meredith heat up the glass window on the cell to weaken it, and tries to break it with a bullet, but they fail to shatter the window. Claire's uses her inability to be hurt to throw herself through the window and shatter it. She rescues HRG, but Meredith is out of control, and refuses to go with them.

In the meantime, Sylar gets ahold of Angela and grills her about lying to him. Angela confesses that she is not his mother, and that she just want him to work as a killer for the Company, and especially to kill Arthur. Outraged, he is about to kill Angela when she tells him that she knows his real parents, who are not the watchmaker and snow globe collector, but if he kills her, he will never know who they are. Claire sneaks up on him in his distracted state and stabs Sylar in the back of his head with a shard of glass - making her daddy proud of her. She, Angela and Noah try to retrieve Meredith, but her flames are so out of control, that they end up having to leave Meredith behind as Primatech goes up in flames.

All the characters complete their arcs as new ones begin to form. Hiro, Ando, Matt, and Daphne come off as true heroes, saving each other and the world. Somehow, Usutu shows up, or appears to Matt in New York. I have no idea where that's going, but clearly there's some 'splainin' to do.

Mohinder and Tracy somehow join forces in their flight from burning Pinehearst.
Sylar is down, but I'm thinking more incapacitated than dead.

Claire is a twinkle in her father's lenses.

Pinehearst and Primatech have been destroyed in flames. Nathan, whose plan to create an army of super soldiers to control the evil that super-powered mad men can yield, was thwarted by Peter and the destruction of the formula. In response, goes to the President of the United States to start a witch hunt of people with special abilities, including Peter, Hiro, Claire, Daphne, Matt, little Micah, and all the other good guys.

Nathan is now Arthur's successor in the power-has-gone-to-your-head category. Could it be that Arthur somehow transferred his personality into Nathan, or did he just get there on his own? Nathan has always tread the line between good and evil, but now he's scary.

Are we also seeing the beginning of the ominous future predicted in "Five Years Gone," where the government uses some super-powered people to imprison or execute people with special abilities, and people like Hiro Nakamura are deemed as terrorists?

We'll see how it goes in "Fugitives," the fourth volume of "Heroes."

What Worked

How cool is it that Michael Dorn is the president of the United States? This was the most exciting reveal of the episode for me. I really hope we get more of him in the next volume!

Zachary Quinto owned this episode! His performance was mesmerizing! Every moment he was on screen was intense, dynamic, and totally engrossing!

The scenes with Ando, Matt and Daphne were the most fun of the episode.

Ando: ?Do I have abilities?? Daphne: ?So far, all we know is you can pass you really well.? After failed, but comic, attempts to travel through time, a frustrate Ando pounds his fist on a counter and red sparks fly. Ando: ?What was that?? Matt: ?Uh, I don't know. That sure wasn't time travel.?

The actors had to have had fun with this scene. Also, James Kyson Lee is amazing! Will powerless Hiro now be Ando?s sidekick?

Peter is empowered again, and seems to be more like the empathetic, ethical Peter of Season One. That was the Peter I liked, and I hope he?s here to stay.

What Didn?t Work

I kind of knew Nathan was heading in the direction of no good at the beginning of "Villains," but I think the near channeling of Arthur happened too drastically. It?s a believable transition given some of his tendencies to straddle the fence in the past, but not as it was done so suddenly in the last two episodes. It feels like it needs another step or two to get him to the point of being so ruthless about his goals that he would not have saved his brother.

If a speeding bullet couldn?t break the window in the Primatech cell, how is it that someone as slow and squishy as Claire could break through? Sure, she wouldn?t get hurt, but would her body have the force and density to break through the window? Also, how can a window as thin as it turned out to be, be so bullet-proof?

Claire really needs to stop growling. I think Hayden Panettiere is amazing, and has become a stunning young woman, and a competent actor. She just doesn?t handle snarling tough-guy growls and grunts very well. It could be the cliched lines she?s given to growl tainting the moments, but that demeanor can get irksome at times.

"Because you?re my brother and I love you." Lines said too often get to be a bit tedious, especially when they aren?t very clever and you know no real person would ever say this. Nobody?s brother ever needs to be reminded of his brotherhood. I think by the time he is approaching forty, the knows this kind of thing.

Overall, though, I felt this was the strongest end to a volume yet on "Heroes." It was definitely engrossing and enjoyable, and makes me wish we could just bypass the holidays and the Super Bowl and get on with Volume IV.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

"Dual" was written by Jeph Loeb, and directed by Greg Beeman. "Heroes" airs on NBC, Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.

Robin Brownfield is a staff writer for Airlock Alpha, working out of New Jersey. She can be reached at rbrownfield@airlockalpha.com.

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