The Hard Part
| Season 1 | Episode 21 | Aired on 2007.05.07
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Hiro and Ando are back in the past, and they decide to go see Mystery Sock to figure out what they're supposed to do. Peter begs Claire not to go to Paris because she's supposed to save the world. He tells her that he's going to explode and that she's somehow a part of all this and if she leaves, maybe some bad stuff will happen. Parkman, Bennet, and Sprague are still traveling together across the country, heading for New York.
Sylar paints himself stealing Ted's power and realizes that this makes him the exploding man. He decides to call his mother and then go pay her a visit. Hiro and Ando show up and almost get caught by Sylar, but they teleport out just in time. Sylar heads off to see his mom, and Hiro and Ando follow him so that Hiro can bust out the Sword of Destiny and finally off the psychopath. Thompson hooks up with Mohinder and invites him to meet little Molly Walker, a child with the ability to find anyone, anywhere, but who also happens to be very ill with the same disease that killed Mohinder's sister. Thompson wants Mo to cure her because she's the only person on the planet who can find Sylar. Mohinder does find a cure for her, and a new friendship is born.
D.L. and Jessica are having all sorts of issues with each other, so they decide to phase into Linderman's office in search of clues as to Micah's whereabouts. They find out that Linderman basically orchestrated their entire lives and that they're one big science experiment, with Micah the ultimate conclusion. Peter learns that Claire knows an exploding man of her own, Ted Sprague, and they ask Nathan to track him down just in case Ted's the bomb instead of Peter. Nathan agrees, but as soon as Peter and Claire leave, he totally reaches out and touches Linderman. Later on, Claire and Peter go to visit Nathan's office and see that he's talking to Thompson. Claire decides then and there to get the hell out of town, regardless of what Peter wants her to do.
Sylar visits his mother, and she's just about as batshit as he is. He wants to stay with her so that he can avoid killing millions of people, but after he shares his special powers with her, she freaks the hell out and tries to stab him with some scissors. Unfortunately, she winds up stabbing herself. Hiro shows up to kill Sylar, but somehow Sylar can resist the time freeze, and he scares the bejesus out of Hiro when he grabs the sword in one hand and orders Hiro to kill him. Hiro chickens out, of course, and Ando shows up to distract Sylar so that Hiro can teleport them out of there. Hiro's sword is broken in half, however, so it looks like killing Sylar will be harder than they thought.
Peter tries to convince Claire that she should stick around so that she can shoot him in the head in case he starts to explode. Claire's not fond of this idea. Ma Petrelli visits Nathan and pretty much gets him to agree to follow through on the Linderman plan. Peter and Claire go to a spot that Peter saw in his visions so that they can possibly meet up with Sprague. Sure enough, Bennet, Sprague, and Parkman show up, and Claire and her father have a mini-reunion. Too bad that Peter starts absorbing Ted's power and can't control it. The show ends on a "Will he or won't he?" note that's really silly because, hi, we all watched the previews, NBC! We know he doesn't explode THEN.