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The deaths of less than 1 percent of the world’s population – acceptable collateral damage for the greater good, according to Linderman and his associates – weigh heavily on the heroes’ nemesis.  It’s surprising, really, to see some humanity creep into the evil stare of a man intent on being unique by absorbing the powers of others, then killing them.

Sylar calls Mohinder and asks for help. But Mo ain’t buying. Sylar hears the good doctor dialing 911 and hangs up. He then calls Mommy, a mousy woman in Queens who constantly badgers him to be better. He brings her a snow globe from Texas – she collects them. She can’t accept the fact that he is a simple watchmaker; she tells him he could be president (uh-oh). It makes him angry. He desperately wants her approval of him as a man – the Sylar he is – well, was before he started murdering people in his greedy search for the supernatural. Finally, he shows her his powers, but in a juggling act with snow and flying snow globes, she gets hurt and locks herself in her room. She is terrified. He is angry with himself. All he wanted was for her approval. It’s all tied up in Sylar’s mind with her love.

She finally leaves the room, but she won’t have anything to do with him. She tells him he’s possessed and she wants nothing to do with him. He tries to comfort her. She grabs some scissors. They struggle. The scissors plunge into his mother’s shoulder.

Hiro and Ando have tracked Sylar to his mother’s. They had a near miss with him at Isaac’s apartment, where they went to get information from Isaac only to discover the paint dead, head cut open in the malicious attack by Sylar. Hiro – getting a little too wimpy and whiney for a hero – doesn’t want to kill Sylar. Before Sylar accidentally kills his mother, Hiro sees a man asking for forgiveness. He wants to give him a chance. Ando then tells Hiro that if he does not kill the killer, Ando will die at Sylar’s hands.

Hiro stops time and enters the apartment just as Sylar’s mother – covered in blood - is falling to the floor. He is scared, but pulls back the sword to kill Sylar. But Sylar unstops time and grabs the sword. He wants Hiro to kill him. Then Sylar sees the weakness in Hiro. It angers him. He decides that Hiro is not worthy of his powers and should die. Ando breaks into the apartment and the distraction is enough for Hiro to teleport them away. You can almost hear Sylar saying in his mind, Man, I have got to have that one!

Sylar sits in the apartment, demented, crazed, painting an explosion in his mother’s blood on the floor – a painting similar to that on the floor of Isaac’s apartment. He is going to be famous now – just as she always wanted.

In other Heroes news:

• Claire waffles between going to France as Mama Petrelli, the family matriarch, says, or staying in NYC. She doesn’t see how she can stop the bomb. Peter convinces her to stay. He gives her a gun to shoot him in the head if he starts to explode – just like the glass in his head that “killed” him. She recognizes Sprague from a drawing Peter made of the explosion. She thinks Sprague will explode. They tell Nathan, who calls Linderman.
• Nathan confronts Thompson about the loss of lives. His mother comes to him and tells him he needs to step it up and accept his destiny. Mama Petrelli is intelligently crazy like Linderman. Makes you wonder why they want a hero in office so badly. It seems Nathan will accept it, but there is still some good in this power-hungry flying hero.
• Parkman, Sprague and Bennett are in NYC and run into Claire and Peter. Peter begins to absorb Sprague powers almost instantly and has to learn to control the fire within or kill everyone a few days before the bomb is to go off.
• Micah figures out that the woman who took him to see Linderman is not his mother. He tries to escape, but Candace the shapeshifter has a few tricks up her sleeves that keep him there. She threatens him if he doesn’t behave.
• D.L. and Jessica hit Linderman’s lair in the hopes of finding Micah. They discover Linderman had been tracking them since they were children and finely manipulated their lives.
• Mohinder cuts a deal with Thompson. They are going to work together to find all the heroes. Mohinder is to help one named Molly Walker. She is the only known survivor of Sylar’s wrath. Molly has a degenerative virus that prevents her from using her powers. She’s a psychic that can picture a person, think about them and find them instantly. That’s why Thompson knows she can help kill Sylar. She is the only one who can find the chameleon no matter his shape. Mohinder believes he has found a cure.

Several threads were packed tightly in one of the final three episodes leading up to the culmination of a series with incredible stamina and creativity. Heroes never fails to produce. Even episodes that could be called slow for the series are fast compared to other primetime wannabe hits.

This was a great show because it showed us a side to Sylar that you would not have dreamed existed. Just when you think all humanity within is lost, we see he still has some goodness left. (Anybody else think of Darth Vader’s struggle here?) He doesn’t want to murder innocents who have nothing to do with “natural selection” of the heroes species. He also doesn’t want his mother to be one of the dead. All his life, he strived to win her approval, but he was never good enough. Already living on the edge of insanity and evil, it doesn’t take much of Mommy’s special brand of nagging to push him over the edge.

He is ready to embrace his destiny – and become President of the United States.

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