Heroes Season 2 Episode 1 Recap : 'Four Months Later'

Heroes is [finally] back and during the summer there was certainly concern about whether or not the second season would continue the the extraordinary precedent set by the first season. By the looks of tonight’s episode, we’re in for another great season.

The Season 2 premiere starts four months after where the freshman season left off with the following developments:

• Hiro has transported himself to the year 1671 in Ancient Japan
• Noah Bennett (HRG) and daughter Claire have relocated to Costa Verde, CA to hide from The Company
• Suresh and HRG have a plan to take down the entire company
• Nathan Petrelli is still alive and apparently withdrawn from the public eye
• Matthew Parkman has passed a NY Detective exam
• Hiro’s father, Kaito, is still looking for his son, while Ando believes he’s gone for good
• A new character Maya from Honduras is desperately seeking Suresh in hopes that he can cure her “sickness”
• Peter Petrelli and Sylar are no where to be found.

Each of the characters had interesting storylines last night. First off, Suresh and HRG seem to have a plan to take down the company that has endangered all of the Heroes. The two an operating in secret and have set bait to lure the Company’s employees into a trap.

Then you have Nathan Petrelli, who is completely distraught about the loss of his brother Peter. Peter is missing and Nathan doesn’t believe that he died in the explosion four months earlier. His mother, Angela, has apparently been marked for death: Her and Kaito receive a photograph with the Heroes emblem covering their faces, which is a sign that they will be dead in 24 hours. Kaito tells her that there are nine left in The Company and that they are all very powerful.

On the other side of town, Matthew Parkman is now taking care of Molly (they live at Suresh’s apartment). She’s been having terrible dreams and has depicted them in school drawings. The drawings are of menacing eyes with the heroes emblem, and each of them look like Sylar. 

Stuck in ancient Japan, Hiro manages to do what he does best: mess with the time/space continuum. He saves his hero, Takezo Kensei, but then realizes that his actions have disturbed the natural occurence of events as they were supposed to happen. Oh, and he also finds out that Kensei is not really Japanese (he’s English, actually). It seems as if he’ll be busy the next few episodes cleaning up his mess and making his own hero believe in himself.

Claire finds herself struggling with fitting in at school (again) and acting normal. HRG has assumed an assistant manager position at a local copy shop and is having trouble with a micro-managing boss that is reminiscent of Chet from Weird Science. Anyway, don’t expect him to stay there long, as he and Suresh will be busy working on their aforementioned plan.

Later, Kaito is seemingly killed by a masked attacker. Right before he’s pushed over a building ledge, he says “Of all of them, I never expected it would be you.”

At the very end, we discover that Peter is infact alive and has amnesia. He shows up in a cargo crate in Ireland and is discovered by some thieves.

Phew.. they certainly fit in a lot in the hour premeire. The writers did a great job of maintaining the mysterious and comedic elements of the show that made the first season so captivating and fun to watch. All in all, it was a good episode to kickstart the season. I was really worried that the show would have a difficult time achieving the magic it unfolded last year. So what did you think? Did the season premiere work for you or was it subpar?

If you missed the episode, you can catch it on NBC’s streaming site:

http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/video/episodes.shtml