selenak

Firstly, kudos to

cadesama and everyone who figured out by the trailer alone that Future!Nathan was actually Sylar. (C. pointed out to me that the "I'm the most special person there is" attitude as shown in the trailer was a giveaway last week, and of course so was the planned genocide itself - this has been Sylar's M.O. all along, eliminating the competition. I went to and thro on the theory, but the scene where "Nathan" does the shoulder grabbing move with Mohinder settled it to me. Because the older Petrelli only ever does that with Peter, whereas Sylar clearly is all about the Mohinder.

(BTW, Mohinder, despite coming through at the end? Still pretty and incredibly dumb and a villain magnet of the first order. Though he could be forgiven for not figuring out it was his old psychopathic stalker of doom if Matt never bothered to read the President's thoughts.)

Okay, more serious now: that was an awesome and very dark future episode, as advertised. Future!Hiro was tragic and heartbreaking in his guilt and determination, and oh, his grief for Ando. And yes, losing Ando would be the thing to rob him of his innocence and joy. Oh, Hiro. (Also: wonderful Hiro and Ando scenes in that one.)

Niki has integrated/lost Jessica in the future, as I speculated, and her and Peter as guilt-stricken grieving survivors coming together made sense to me.

Greatest twist, other than the Sylar-as-Nathan reveal: the way they played us regarding the exploding man. Future!Hiro saying it had been Sylar was believable in that Sylar has probably (in the current timeline) far more powers than Peter by now and could just as well explode. In theory. In practice, he never showed any signs of leaking, as opposed to Peter's coma. And of course Nathan would lie and blame the explosion on Sylar to protect Peter, thereby incidentally settling his own and everyone else's doom as Sylar was free to move around as a consequence. (Not the only thing Nathan is responsible for in this time line, obviously, but we'll get to that.) And you know what the most awful thing is? Present!Hiro still thinks it's Sylar. (Unless Future!Peter has told Ando the truth, but I doubt it. Telling Niki did look too much like the first time he confessed this.) So he still won't be able to stop this from happening even if he manages to kill Sylar; well, he'll be able to prevent Sylar from posing as Nathan and committing genocide, but not the initial New York explosion, nor the initial hunt for "dangerous" mutants. In this timeline, Nathan obviously did go through with following Linderman's advice, and he went through with the first outlawing of the specials as terrorists as well (as Sylar aquired his illusionist gift from Candice, and Candice was listed as a refuge in the Bennet-Hiro conversation; we don't know, of course, when Sylar killed Candice).

Speculation: so we'll have two plot threads culminating in the finale - the hunt for Sylar on the one hand, carried out by Hiro, and the Peter exploding-or-not thread on the other, which will be focused on the Petrellis.

Of the characters still around, Matt has fallen the deepest in the future, and wow, Greg Grunberg brings on the bitter-and-hard.

Future!Claire: reunited with Mr. Bennet even in disguise, which is sweet, but otherwise we did not, alas, see much of her; she was mainly used for the great climactic Sylar reveal, and a great scene it was, too. But otoh, we did get to see integrated Niki, so I'm not having gender issues.

Future!Peter: knowing himself to be the cause of the explosion apparantly both avoided his brother and spent the years in guilt-ridden brooding. Is, however, far quicker on the uptake than Mohinder, as he immediately realizes the implication of "Nathan" using DL's power. But is not, as opposed to what people speculated based upon the promo, the leader of a rebel army; hanging out with Hiro he might have been, but there is no sign he was involved in any underground activities before this episode. At the end, he and Sylar looked as if they were both about to use Ted's power, which would result in another nuclear blast through NY, so, cause of the apocalypse twice over. And oh, Petrelli priorities. "You'll pay what you did to Nathan! What you did in his name!" (You know, you'd think the other way around would be more - but I really love them for it, the dysfunctional duo.) And then Sylar gets the last verbal blow with "he had already turned on his own kind" which Future!Peter doesn't want to believe. Again, speculation that in the present timeline and with or without the comic Hiro has now with him, Present!Peter will realize that Nathan is capable of going that dark (not genocidal dark, but homeland security act outlawing mutants dark), and Present!Nathan will have the chance to make another choice by the resulting confrontation.

Lastly: was that dream of Peter's in Fallout wherein Nathan turns into Sylar genius foreshadowing or what?