Well, Heroes ends as it began — with an eclipse. Hiro’s lost in time and Peter’s blown up.

But Peter could easily come back in season two since he’s got Claire’s regenerating power. And if Nathan dropped his brother and zipped away at top speed, it’s possible he’s still alive, too. But I’m willing to wait for next season to find out.

In truth, this episode was a little bit anticlimatic, but I think that was almost inevitable, given how much has happened throughout the season. The resolutions were all sastisfying, if a bit…sedate.

See you next season, Heroes. I’ll be waiting.

I don’t even know what to say. This show just continues to knock my socks off, even without massive, expensive set pieces (of the sort I suspect we’ll see next week).

HRG once again proves why he’s the most ass-kickingest human being on the face of the planet, despite his lack of super-powers. (Unless you count Awesome Coolness as a super-power.) Linderman and Ted getting iced — TOTALLY didn’t see that coming, and in both cases, I winced. Linderman in particular died BAD. As he should have.

Even a formerly irredeemable character like Candace gets a shot at being a little bit human in this episode, with her confession that she’s “huge” underneath her illusions. Most show’s wouldn’t bother to take the time to invest an evil henchwoman with a little bit of humanity like that, but Heroes did and that’s why this show shines.

But, uh, Daddy Hiro and Hero Hiro taking ALL THAT TIME to practice swordplay while the world could blow up at any moment? Um, maybe not. I’m just going to wave my hands and pretend that Hiro slowed time so that their interminable workout session only took about five minutes of real time. No, no, don’t argue with me — waving my hands, see?

Next week: The end. Has this show REALLY only been on for one season? It feels like it’s ALWAYS been on…

Still not entirely convinced that the writers can pull off a satisfying ending with only two episodes left, but I am incredibly willing to be proven wrong. In fact, I’m in favor of being proven wrong in this instance. I am damn near eager to be proven wrong, and when it happens, I will eat my serving of crow and happily wash it down with the milk of truth. Or something like that.

Mohinder’s curing of little Molly was a little too convenient and quick — if it was only going to take a few minutes in a single episode, why bother having her be sick in the first place? Why not just have her have trouble finding Sylar for some reason (maybe his multiple powers confuse her tracking sense) and let it go at that?

Most shows hurtling headlong towards a finale wouldn’t slow down for a character-based episode like this one. Claire’s concern; Sylar’s trip to see Mom (shades of Norman Bates!), Hiro’s soul-searching… This is the sort of stuff you expect to see earlier, not near the climax, but it still worked.

And while Hiro’s reticence to kill Sylar seemed — at first — to be mere convenient stalling on the part of the writers, I did enjoy his debate with Ando, especially when Ando pointed out that killing Sylar was really saving Ando’s life. Pre-emptive self-defense. Not bad, karmically speaking.

The tidbit about Candice’s power was interesting. She’s not a chameleon after all. Instead, she warps perceptions.

Claire’s reunion with her dad was touching…as touching as her line about not wanting to shoot Peter (“It can’t be my destiny to shoot you. The universe isn’t that lame.”) was funny, almost Buffy-worthy.

Two more episodes to go. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’s all going to pay off. Don’t let me down, Heroes.

Oh, Heroes, Heroes, Heroes, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

No, on second thought, forget that. I don’t have time to count the ways. It would take too damn long.

So. Hiro and Ando go to the future. And we get awesome glimpses of the crew, portents of danger to come, and the slightly sinking feeling that there ain’t no way the writing crew can pull this off in three more episodes.

But that’s OK. I have faith. I believe in them. They haven’t steered me wrong yet, after all.

My favorite bit of the evening? Probably the reveal of Nathan’s true nature, which just blew. Me. Away.

Bennet now acting as a mole in his own department? Awesome. The transformation of Matt Parkman? Amazing. Peter so at home and at ease with his powers? (Especially during his showdown with Sylar… Ooh, goosebumps!)

Of course, this is a time travel story, so there are some glitches. For example, this future is, apparently, the one in which everything went wrong. The one in which Peter et al did not ”save the cheerleader” and, hence, the world. Consequently, shouldn’t Claire-bear be, oh, slightly dead?

And since Future Hiro got capped at the end of the episode, that means he never gets the chance to travel back to the subway and tell Peter to “save the cheerleader, save the world” in the first place. Which means that we’re now caught in a time loop. Paradox. None of this can/should be happening.

But…

Such is my love for Heroes (you look beautiful in this light, dear, and no — that dress doesn’t make you look fat; it just accentuates your curves) that I will justify all of this.

Ahem.

So, time is like a river, right? The changes wrought by saving the cheerleader just haven’t “caught up” to the future yet. It’s like tossing a stone in the water — the ripples take time to fan out. The dystopia we saw last night is still extant because 1) the ripples haven’t fanned to there yet, and 2) other events have conspired to make it possible. Much like poor Desmond on Lost, we’ve learned that the universe course-corrects. Claire dying was an important component of the dystopia, but not a critical one, it seems. Originally, it appeared that Sylar was the exploding man who destroyed New York, with Claire’s powers in tow. Now it was Peter, without Claire’s powers. Same events, different people involved.

As to Future Hiro: Well, I guess it’s possible that he didn’t actually die from Matt’s bullets last night. Suresh could have patched him up a little bit after he passed out and maybe FH survived long enough to recover, and then time-travel back to his meeting with Peter.

Then again, maybe it’s just more of the ripple effect. Now that Original Formula Hiro has successfully traveled in time, he may be immune to those ripples. So before the ripples from the future catch up with the present, he still has time to go back to a world in which FH warned Peter. As long as he acts quickly, he’ll be able to avoid the Peter/Sylar apocalypse and, hopefully, prevent the dystopia and FH from ever coming into being in the first place.

Now my head hurts. Just slightly.

Oh, and what was up with Suresh’s on-again, off-again beard? In some scenes, it looked like heavy stubble and in others it was a full beard. Have we found his mutant power at last?