NBC aired the last new Heroes episode of the year last night, leaving a handful of cliffhangers for fans to ponder and agonize over before the hit serialized drama returns in January. Is Peter Petrelli destined to erupt into a mushroom cloud on the streets of Manhattan? Will Hiro Nakamura find his sword and vanquish that dragon-y thing in Isaac’s painting? Does the spray of blood on glass mean that Eden McCain really shot herself? And did Sylar escape with Eden’s powers of persuasion? (For a typically superb recap, see Television Without Pity.)
Well, you don’t have to wait until January to find out about the last two. Thanks to the serialized graphic novel that the show’s creators have been posting at NBC.com, fans can learn that Eden is indeed dead (the New York Post confirmed it today, as well) and that Sylar, it seems, is still in the custody of Horn-Rimmed Glasses (aka Mr. Bennett) and the Haitian.
With 11 installments so far, the graphic novel fills in back-stories and picks up where the TV episodes leave off. But the latest chapter may have gone a bit too far ahead. In “Fathers and Daughters,” HRG visits Eden’s estranged father to give him the news of her death. When the father dismisses her as “nothing but a cheap whore,” an enraged HRG slams him against the wall and tells him how Eden “gave her life to keep a depraved and dangerous man from gaining her gift.”
The panel illustrations show HRG and the Haitian as they discover an unidentified man—presumably Sylar—standing over Eden’s limp body. HRG then plugs him full of tranquilizer needles and knocks him out.
I have to wonder: did they really mean to retire that cliffhanger so quickly?
By Joel Topcik
