Heroes - "Truth and Consequences"

It's definitely all coming down to the wire now. All the plot lines in Heroes are drawing together ever tighter. While it's been obvious for a little while now what the finale will be all about next week, I've really been enjoying the ride, and tonight was no different. And, as usual, it was cliff-hangeriffic. And on with the spoilers.... It was very interesting to see the origins of the Shanti virus from Adam's perspective, then see the truth as only Hiro can witness it. Adam tells Peter the truth up to a point, that the company had a program to weaponize the Shanti virus and a strain that could kill every human on earth was developed. He left out the little part where on November 22, 1977 (oddly enough, the same day the first three nodes of ARPAnet were connected, forming the beginnings of our modern Internet), he tried to release Strain 138 himself. His rationale was that the only way to save the world was to kill everyone on it. Unfortunately, the easily manipulated Peter completely believes Adam. Granted, Victoria shooting him in the chest with a shotgun kind of destroyed her credibility. But he really ought to quit acting like Matt and go ahead and take a peek in Adam's head. Even if the plot demands Peter not find out anything that way, they could at least have him listen in only to find that Adam thinks in Japanese and Peter can't understand his thoughts. I did, however, think it was pretty smooth how he twisted the situation so he was forced to kill Victoria, which was what he wanted to do all along. The other storyline I enjoyed was watching Sylar play Maya and Alejandro. I have to wonder if the clockwork sound effect they're giving us means he's using his ability to see how to fix things to manipulate them or if he's just naturally that good. He definitely drove a nice wedge between them, to the point that Maya sided with him when Alejandro got online and found out about his mother. He, of course, took that opportunity to use the truth to play her, just as effective as his lies. In the end, he goaded Alejandro into attacking him and killed him, then put the moves on Maya before her brother's body was even cold. The rest of the episode was mostly set-up for the finale next week. They really hammered home the fact that Mohinder has completely changed sides and is 100% working for the company. He's still demanding that all strains of the Shanti virus be destroyed, of course, but it's pretty obvious that Alchemical Bob agrees but has no intention of following through. He pretty much owns Mohinder now. The bits with Claire, and Elle's incompetence, set us up for her declaration that she's going to go public with everything. Similarly, Hiro's screen time was primarily to set up his hunt for Adam. Of course, that gave us the biggest cliff-hanger yet, the big Hiro versus Peter showdown! As good as Hiro is, I really don't think he has much chance against Peter. His single greatest advantage is completely neutralized; Peter is immune to Hiro stopping time. Hiro's only hope will be to teleport in for the kill, but Peter can teleport and heal as well, not to mentioned his powerful ranged attacks. I say Peter wins that hands down. Next week is the finale, and it's going to be awesome. They've promised us blood in the previews, telling us that two heroes will fall. I'm betting they'll be relatively minor characters, like Maya or Monica, but I've got my fingers crossed that Matt goes. I seriously doubt it's going to be Hiro or Peter or any of the big ones. They're also setting us up for another season of Sylar, as he's now got all the leverage he needs over Mohinder to get his cure.