Spoiler:How to Stop an Exploding Man

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. THIS COULD INCLUDE UNCONFIRMED MATERIAL FROM UNAIRED EPISODES OR PREVIEWS. For more spoilers about Heroes and Heroes Reborn, see here.

How to Stop an Exploding Man
Season:	One
Episode number:	123
Planned airdate:	May 21, 2007
Previous spoiler:	Landslide

This article contains spoilers about How to Stop an Exploding Man. For general spoilers about upcoming episodes, see Spoiler:Heroes.

NBC Blurb

Heroes rise and fall in the shocking season finales written by executive producer/creator Tim Kring and directed by executive producer Allan Arkush -- With Isaac's horrible predictions all unfolding before them, the everyday people with extraordinary abilities face moments of pain and peril in Kirby Plaza with unflinching heroism, as "Heroes" first volume comes to a close -- and the next surprisingly begins.

Published Spoilers

• 4/17 - Charles Deveaux (Richard Roundtree) and Simone Deveaux (Tawny Cypress) appear in this episode. (NBC description)
• 4/10 - Watch with Kristin reports that Simone just won't stay dead. Simone and her father will mysteriously reappear in the season finale as evolved humans. Her source adds "There are people on the positive and negative side. And Simone is on the negative side... [They] may have some ties to some other characters that we had no idea about before." Watch with Kristin, Spoilers Section
• 03/19 - The climax to season one will be built in a small arc consisting of the last three episodes of the year. These episodes will bring together all of the characters in New York City. Each character will play a unique role, a vital puzzle piece in the season one story. Kring says: "Even though some may feel like they're less significant to the final event, when you analyze it, each one had to play that role in order for the final event to be solved, and so there really was a kind of destiny quality to them coming together and having each one fulfilling thing and one specific role." Heads will roll in these closing episodes, but Kring warns "on a show like Heroes, you may not always stay dead. And with our ability to go back and forth in time, you may be dead, but you may show up on the show a few more times." (Sci Fi Wire)
• 3/12 -- Tim Kring says the show will eventually bring all of the main hero characters together before the season is out. (Sci Fi Wire)
• "Entertainment Weekly went to the set during the shooting of the final three episodes. Their article reveals: Here's Hayden Panettiere, waving away offers of a stunt double as she runs and vaults through a fake window — the front end of a stunt that will send her indestructible cheerleader Claire out of a skyscraper and leave her splattered on the sidewalk. Here are Ali Larter (the schizoid superwoman Niki/Jessica) and Leonard Roberts (the walk-through-walls ex-con D.L.) flooded with emotion over being repeatedly manipulated by an underworld puppet master, Mr. Linderman (Malcolm McDowell). And here's the behind-the-scenes ringleader of this fantastic flying circus, Heroes creator Tim Kring, sauntering onto the set just minutes after writing the final sentence of the season's final episode, in which the show's sprawling, far-flung cast of next-gen X-Men will finally come together Super Friends-style in an attempt to save New York from being torched by a human A-bomb. [...] The finale — right down to its eye-popping last scene — sets the stage for a second season designed to expand the show's creative horizons and commercial potential even further. [...] "I thought I was signing up for a show called Heroes," says Adrian Pasdar, whose morally shaky politico Nathan Petrelli will make a choice in the finale that will affect the destinies of every character on the show. "I didn't know I was going to wind up on Survivor." [...] Kring admits he and his staff "struggled" with Larter's story line but insists "we're going to earn back a lot of goodwill when you see how she's connected to everything." Lessons have been learned, adjustments are being made. Next season, instead of one epic yarn stretched across an entire year, there are likely to be two tighter sagas, or "volumes" in the Heroes parlance. There will be more episodes that burrow deep into a single character — outings like "Company Man." [...] This is the present — a subterranean parking garage, where the Heroes gang is shooting some walk-and-talk that will address a key point in the final episode: Will Claire get sucked into the crazy-corrupt whirlpool that is her newly discovered kin, the Petrelli clan? "I get the sense there will be a lot of objects flying around," hints Quinto [about the finale], who won't comment on rumors that his breakout bad guy will indeed return next season. However, Sylar's Freudian-fraught fight with his mother does ignite the finale's apocalyptic endgame and puts him on the presidential path suggested by April 30's noodle-cooking "possible future" episode. "It's a bad day for the world," says Quinto. "I'm not going back to the watch shop anytime soon." The May 21 season capper will set up two big ideas for the second volume of Heroes, to be titled "Generations."" (SpoilerFix)

Fan Theories

• Most people know that Sylar will be in season 2 from spoilers but that doesn't mean he survives the season finale. Hiro will stab and kill Sylar just as the comic book predicts. Future Sylar will defeat future Peter in their battle from 5 Years Gone and take all of his powers which includes Hiro's power. The Sylar in season 2 will be the one from the future timeline who has traveled back in time.

• This is theory is false because if present Sylar dies, then he is also dead in the future. If future Sylar was to come to the present and watch his own death, then he would simply vanish before your eyes.
• Not necessarily. String Theory coming into play, Future Sylar (who is now proven to be an Alternate Universe Sylar due to FS being able to phase from killing D.L., and this universe's Sylar not making it to D.L. in time before his death at the hands of Linderman) could come back and exist.

• Claire's power did not heal Sylar from Hiro's sword, Linderman's power did.
• Ando will still die, believing that Hiro has abandoned his quest and will try to kill Sylar himself.
• How the future events unfolded:

• Hiro stabbed Sylar, but Sylar regenerated because it was not Sylar who he stabbed, it was Peter, who already has the healing power.
• The reason everyone thinks that it is Sylar exploding is because Candice is casting an illusion. Candice is casting the illusion on the orders of Linderman/Nathan, both of whom want the prophecy fulfilled, but Nathan additionally wants Peter protected.
• Nathan learns of the similarity between Peter's power and Sylar's, and decides to use Sylar as a scape-goat. This puts him directly on Sylar's hit-list as an enemy.
• Sylar learns of Candice's ability from seeing himself being framed for the explosion, and moves to consume Candice's ability.
• Sylar identifies himself as an evolved humans and gets captured as a prisoner. He did so to gain access to more evolved humans. In captivity, Sylar meets Candice and D.L. From Future Hiro's conversation with Mr Bennet, we know that Candice and D.L. were also captured by homeland security. Sylar consumes both their powers.
• Once Sylar had Candice's power, he killed and consumed Nathan's power, and took Nathan's place as president.
• Peter's scar is from Nathan.
• In Peter's precognitive dreams, he sees Nathan come towards him. Peter tells him "I absorbed his powers and I cannot control it", and Nathan replies "Let me help you Peter".
• What Nathan helps Peter do is explode, so as to fulfill his 'destiny'. Nathan slashed Peter across the face with the piece of jagged glass that Claire pulled from Peter's head. Slashing Peter across the face caused Peter to lose control and explode, just as Ted lost control in the Bennet's home when he was shot by Thompson.

• How everyone survives the explosion:

• presumably all the characters lives collide in New York City.
• Peter survives the explosion because he can heal.
• Nathan survives by flying away at super-sonic speed just before the explosion.
• Sylar survives by either: telekinetically drawing up a shield of objects around him, or throwing up a bubble of ice around himself.
• Claire survives because she can regenerate
• D.L and Jessica/Niki survive by D.L. phasing them both out, with the explosion passing harmlessly through them.
• Jessica/Niki and D.L. could not get to Micah in time, who dies in the explosion.
• Hiro survives by teleporting away, but he failed to teleport Ando with him, who dies.
• Nathan grabs Candice and Mr Linderman and fly them out before the explosion.

• There is a new timeline:

• By meeting the Future Hiro, Ando learns of Hiro's true love and friendship, and with his new-found belief in what Hiro will be able to achieve, he gives Hiro the hope and confidence to time-travel them both back to the correct 'current' time.
• In (Don't Look Back) when Hiro visits Future Isaac's apartment right before the explosion, Isaac's apartment is filled with paintings of 'the symbol'. In (.07%), we see that Isaac had a very different set of paintings in this studio when he lies dead in his apartment. What Isaac was doing just before he died has changed.
• Peter Petrelli meeting Future Hiro lead to him telling Current Hiro about the sword. This became the drive behind Hiro becoming convinced that he needed the sword to regain his powers. Hiro going out of his way to get that sword led to him and Ando teleporting to the future, which is not supposed to happen. He was supposed to be in New York stabbing who he thinks is Sylar.

• What will happen in the new future?

• Nothing changes because Hiro still does not know that the exploding man is Peter, not Sylar.
• When Candice is flown away from danger, Hiro stays a little longer this time, convinced he has stopped Sylar. He stays long enough to see that he had infact stabbed Peter after Candice's illusion fades.
• Hiro continues to construct a time line, just as Future Hiro did, and tries to figure out where he went wrong. He encounters himself again through time travel, except this time, he is the 'future Hiro', and he meets the Past Hiro.
• All the events from (Five Years Gone) repeats itself, with one exception: Hiro has already been to this future. And thus in true 'Back to the Future' style, Hiro knows that Parkman will fire the fatal shot, and moves out of the way to survive.
• Parkman makes the call to Sylar/Nathan to tell him that Peter is barring the door, and Sylar flies in to confront Peter.
• This time, as Sylar and Peter battle in the corridor, Hiro comes to face the back of Sylar, and plunges his sword into the back of Sylar's head, stopping his regeneration, allowing Peter to destroy Sylar.