Watching the Eclipse
by Russell Burlingame
At the start of the episode, both Sylar and Peter are stuck in the empty-city fantasy world that Peter found himself in at the end of the last episode; Peter tells Sylar that he's come to rescue him, but Sylar seems mostly confused, thinking that everyone was dead. He says he's been there for three years; when Peter tells him that it's only been three hours, Sylar accuses him of being a hallucination, part of Sylar's punishment, and he threatens to kill him if Peter keeps following him. Peter does so anyway, explaining to Sylar that he's needed to come save Emma before she kills thousands of people. In spite of some initial misgivings, Sylar concedes to allowing Peter to try, but when Peter tries to use Parkman's borrowed power to get them out, he can't.
At the Carnival, Samuel goes to the trailer where Claire is being kept hostage by Eli; she demands to see her father and Samuel continues the fake narrative that it was Noah who shot into the crowd last episode. Ultimately he brings Claire to the Hall of Mirrors where he and Damien (the crazy rasta mirror-room guy) have Noah tied to a chair, and keep threatening him that they're going to show Claire "the truth about him." Ultimately they project Noah's life circa 1985 on the mirrors-he was a used car salesman, not very good at it because he was too nice to his customers-and had another wife; she was pregnant. Briefly, Claire interrupts to verify with her father that what she's just seen is true. He confirms it, apologizing for not having told her, but she says it doesn't matter, and tells Samuel to let Noah go. Instead, Samuel leaves Claire and Damien together with Noah, and they re-enter his psyche, where his first wife was murdered during a robbery by a telekinetic man posing as the Chinese food delivery man while Noah was pinned to the wall, helpless.
Back in the Empty City, Sylar and Peter are sitting on top of a building. Sylar tries to convince Peter, who he says hasn't spoken to him in a month, to open up a little by bringing him a comic book. The pair eventually walk down from the roof and onto the streets arguing, with Sylar claiming they can' t be in his unconscious because he couldn't possibly fill the pages of books that he's never read, and Peter saying that he doesn't know how it's worked, but he knows this world is imaginary. When the two finally agree to work together to escape the Empty City, a massive brick wall appears, obstructing their way. Peter identifies it as the wall from Parkman's basement and tells Sylar that it's their way out.
Lauren, meanwhile, makes her way through the Carnival, shot and looking pretty shabby. She breaks into the medical tent to steal some supplies, but is caught by Emma as she tries to make her way out. Emma stops to clean and dress the wound, and Lauren tells her that Samuel isn't what he appears to be, and the Noah never fired his gun. She hides when she hears Samuel coming, but it's to no avail as Emma gives her up to the badguys almost immediately.
Noah, meanwhile, is crying about his twenty-five-years-ago loss to Claire in the Hall of Mirrors. Now, with the girl who can't be hurt and the superspy in the same room, it's something of a wonder that they keep watching the First Heroes Picture Show instead of beating the crap out of the single, random rasta guy...but they do. Another flashback shows the descent into obsession that made Noah into HRG in the first place, as he creates a map of metahuman activity in his living room and eventually tracks the identity of his wife's killer down. Unable to find the man, he does locate another person with powers and, assuming that "specials" would know each other, shows up at the man's job with a gun, and demands to know where his wife's murderer is. When the guy says he doesn't know, Noah doesn't believe it. The man blasts Noah with some kind of TK ball or something, causing him to fall, and then sets upon him. Noah fires the gun, killing his attacker, and then wipes off the prints and runs away. Claire is mortified, of course, which is only slightly strange considering that her father was being attacked by the man. I mean, yeah, maybe Noah brought the gun...but it's not like he fired first, and it's not like the guy blasted him and then ran away. Anyway, Claire asks to see what happened next, finally switching allegiances from her father to Damien. Back in 1986, Noah has 
undergone the symbolic change necessary for viewers to know he's Not A Nice Guy Anymore, having changed from his grey suit to a black ensemble. He's being rude and mean to a young couple in order to sell a car, and when he's done with that, Eric Thompson (Eric Roberts from the first season) is there to offer him a job with the Company, promising that they'll help him find his wife's killer if he helps round up "the rest of them."
Two years later, Noah and Thompson are having a dinner where they're discussing Bennett's then-partner, Claude the Invisible Man. He makes a series of comments about the "specials" that sound just like something a redneck cop would say about gays, blacks, pick your hated group metaphor-and then Thompson orders him to get married and start a family so that he can "keep his life in balance" and stop "accidentally" killing his marks instead of bringing them in. Thompson goes so far as to instruct him that the waitress who just brought their sandwiches would work nicely-and of course the camera pans out to reveal the future Mrs. Bennett.
After a little indignation on the part of Claire, Noah tells her that the memories she's seeing are nothing but memories-and that the past is in the past. Then the mirrors spark back to life and shows him talking to Gretchen on Thanksgiving weekend. He had apparently gone to see them when Claire was at the Carnival the first time, and chastised Gretchen for leaving her there unprotected. With the Haitian at his side, he threatened her with a mindwipe if she didn't do what he asked of her. Seeing this, Claire storms out.
Back in the Empty City, Peter is slamming a sledgehammer against the wall. Apparently they've been at it for days, to no avail. Sylar starts having some of Nathan's memories, which freaks Peter out; Sylar apologizes for killing Nathan, and the pair end up in a screaming match which ends with Sylar hefting a sledgehammer and saying he can't take being stuck there with Peter anymore.
After a couple of minutes of his Magneto-like rambling, Samuel leaves Lauren in the medical tent, telling Eli that he's going to announce major plans for his "family." He leaves Lauren to Eli's care.
In the Empty City, Sylar declares that he's going to "end this," and charges past Peter, slamming his sledgehammer into the wall. The pair join together to swing their hammers at the unmoving wall.
At the Carnival, Samuel approaches Claire, who mocks him and challenges him that even with everything else she's seen, why didn't he show her the memory of her father shooting Lydia last night? Samuel tells Claire that he can't send she and Noah home, because the Carnival is going to New York City for their "biggest show ever." She takes off to go find her father, and Eli arrives to tell Samuel that Lauren got away. Claire goes to the Souvenir Trailer to rescue her father, and as she's untying him from a pole, Samuel uses his shaking-stuff powers to bring down power lines on top of the trailer and sink it into the ground. He tells Eli to tie up some loose ends in the form of potential interlopers.
Back in the Empty City, Sylar is sitting in the dark, staring at the wall, when Peter brings him a copy of "The Pilars of the Earth," a book that Sylar has apparently worn out. Sylar keeps begging Peter for forgiveness, but Peter says that he can't, because he feels like if he lets go of his anger, he'll lose Nathan forever. With the realization that Sylar's not the man he was anymore, Peter swings the hammer and starts to finally chip away at the wall. Moments later, the two of them have broken through and Peter wakes up in Parkman's basement, presumably not long after he fell asleep (since, you know, he's still sitting there unmoved and unmolested, and hasn't been locked up inside of there or released or anything). He listens to the brick wall that Sylar is behind but before he can move to do anything, it explodes outward, knocking him down. The pair decide that the fact the last couple of years was all in their head, doesn't change the reality of it, and that they're going to go save Emma; Eli arrives to tell them he can't let that happen.
Beneath the Carnival, locked inside the trailer, Noah and Claire shout, hoping to be rescued before they run out of air.
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Russell Burlingame (russell@comicrelated.com) / Columnist, Reviewer and Contributor
Russell is a journalist and columnist living and working in New York City. In high school, Russell interviewed Elliot S. Maggin for a review of the Kingdom Come novelization, and since then has worked consistently in and around the comics industry. He interned for Wizard magazine, and has freelanced for Wizard and Newsarama, in addition to a number of non-comics publications, Russell is currently working on a graphic novel based on Cap'n Internet, the comic strip that ran in his college newspaper; and a graphic biography of folk singer Phil Ochs with artist Marion Vitus.
Currently, in addition to his freelance work and his comics projects, Russell writes a number of columns for ComicRelated, including Conscientious Sequentials, The Gold Exchange, What's Perhappenin', Closing Statements, Reflecting 'Pool and To See or Not To See.
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