In "Once Upon a Time in Texas,", Hiro travels back to season one to revisit the events of one of the series’ memorable episodes: "Six Months Ago." In that episode, Hiro tries to prevent the death of cute Texan waitress, Charlie (played wonderfully by Glee’s Jayma Mays), by the hands of Sylar. He also discovers that no matter what he does, she will still die because of a blood clot in her brain. Three years later, now that he is slowly dying from a tumor in his own brain, he decides he will give saving her another shot.
At this decision, I immediately think “Why?” Hasn’t he learned that messing with the past causes nothing but problems already? Actually, hasn’t he learned this lesson more than once? For instance, when he tried to save his father from being tossed off the roof by Adam Monroe, his father convinced him that he shouldn’t play God with his powers. His father accepted his destiny. So after learning such a valuable lesson, why is Hiro acting like an angry schoolboy, throwing himself on the floor, banging his fists and screaming “No no no no!”?
In any case, Hiro saves Charlie from her destined death and even uses a completely out-of-character Sylar to somehow fix the blood clot in her brain. The show tries to get us to buy that not only the primal Sylar from Season 1 would allow himself to get blackmailed; he now has the power remove blood clots through the eyes. Yes, after spending almost four seasons with this villain, we still have no idea how his power works.
We get the obligatory moment where Charlie realizes that she was destined to die, but this time, unlike with his father, he convinces her that actually living is probably better for her and their relationship. She walks out of the Burnt Toast Diner first, and Hiro waits in the diner for a moment before following her out. Perhaps he thinks it is his destiny to keep losing Charlie and he wants to give the bad guys enough chance to whisk her away.
T-Bag, er, I mean Samuel, a new Season 4 bad guy, helps Hiro out with this. When our clueless hero steps outside, he finds that Samuel arranged to have her taken and put in some other place in time. I am thinking it’s the same place that Peter’s forgotten Irish girlfriend, Caitlin, ended up. Samuel now blackmails Hiro with Charlie’s location in order to make him help him with something that happened a few weeks ago. Hiro glumly realizes he is trapped into this commitment.
Oh wait! Isn’t Hiro a time traveler?! Did he not just go back in time and then freeze time to save Charlie from an even more ruthless villain? Did we not just see that? Well tell me why Hiro cannot just go back in time to moments before Charlie gets abducted by Samuel and prevent it from happening? I talked to a few Heroes fans about this dilemma after the show aired and they gave me two excuses for this.
The first one was Hiro is now accepting again that this is destiny and he cannot change it. Why is it that this character makes up this rule and then breaks it on a whim? I think the second excuse I was given was more telling. “If you have Hiro constantly going back and fixing things, then there won’t be any tension or conflict.”
People sometimes say their problem with Superman is because he is too powerful and is practically unbeatable. Well, folks, what about a master of time and space? This is why Heroes needed to stick to its original plans and take time travel out of this show. They did a good job with neutering Peter Petrelli. I thought they were going to do the same with Hiro, using his brain tumor as a time travel stopper. Apparently, even in its fourth season, Heroes, much like Hiro, has not learned its lesson.
