“Villains make the best Heroes.”  It’s a phrase I’ve heard from a friend over and over.  Marvel has made many heroes from this principle–Hawkeye, Black Widow, Rogue and periodically Magneto.  Well, Heroes is about to do the same with Sylar, only like Magneto, it shouldn’t work.

When we left Sylar, Matt Parkman had trapped him inside his own mind. His body was dead to the world, but inside his mind, he lived.  In other words, he was living inside his worse nightmare–a world where he is the only living person.  That is, he was alone until someone joined him.

Peter wanted to rescue Sylar so that killer could rescue Emma.  Well, that’s the plan, but things didn’t work out well.  They both were stuck inside Sylar’s dream world.  Now like a real dream, time passed much faster inside the nightmare than in the real world.  For “years” the two men tried to escape and in that time, Sylar “reformed,” or “repented.”  Now he is determined to be a hero, but until Peter accepted this, they couldn’t escape.

The other storyline of the night was about Noah and Claire.  We finally learn the origin of Noah.  It turned out that he had an earlier wife who was killed by a special.  Revenge sent him on a course that lead him to the Corperation and then to Claire.  But despite how much she learned about her father, even his recent scheming with Gretchen, the daughter stood by her father and for that, Samuel buried them both alive.

After buring them, Samuel takes the Carnival to Central Park where he plans to hurt people to find respect for himself. 

Tonight is the next to last episode.  The stage is set and final confrontation between Heroes and Villains begins.  The weird thing is Sylar will be siding with the heroes.

Like I said, “Villains make the best heroes.”  We like stories of redemption, whether it is Darth Vader turning against the Emperor to save his son, or its the classic tale of Scrooge.  We even see it on the small screen from Teal’c on Stargate: SG1 turning against Aphosis in the first episode or in this year’s Sanctuary when Kate Freelander turns from her old bosses to Magnus’ side.  There is something satisfying about villains changing their course.

But not all villains are equal; not all crimes are the same.  A thief is not equal to a murderer and Sylar is a murderer a hundred times over.  Even though he did spend years in “solitary confinement” I’m not sure that qualifies as payment for being a serial killer.

That said, it will be interesting to see where this will go. The commercials have hinted that everything will change, but will it change for everyone?  will he return to his evil ways?  Will the end before we know.

This could be interesting;  the irony (if that’s the right word) is that the consequences of this season might be more interesting than the season itself.

Just one more week.