The Wall (Heroes)

Plot

Lauren Gilmore enters the carnival in order to find some medical supplies to clean her bullet wound when she is confronted by Emma Coolidge who begins to tend to her wound. She reveals that she came with the intent to stop Samuel Sullivan whom she tells Emma has done very bad things and has manipulated the people of the carnival like the guru of a cult. When Samuel approaches to visit Emma, Lauren hides, only to have Emma tell Samuel she is there. When Samuel confronts her, he gets Eli to deal with her, but she escapes.

Samuel still wishes for Claire Bennet to join his carnival family, so in one final move, he brings Claire to her father who is being held in the House of Mirrors. He then asks Damien to reveal to Claire Noah Bennet's past memories in hopes that by seeing these particular memories, she will lose all respect for her father and join him. As is revealed to her, back in 1985, Noah had another wife before Sandra named Kate. She was killed by a special with telekinesis and Noah was driven into a spiral of rage, causing him to spend the next year hunting the man and ends up killing another special. This catches the attention of The Company and leads him to join. Before some time with them, he develops some overly aggressive habits of psychotic depression and paranoia. In spite of all these things, Claire seems willing to forgive him until she is shown a recent memory of Noah confronting Gretchen Berg to persuade her under threat of memory erasure from the Haitian that she help push Claire into staying away from Samuel and in school to have a normal life. This prompts Claire to storm out of the House of Mirrors and confront Samuel. He is highly disappointed when in spite of all that she saw, she is still loyal to her father and decisively refuses to ever join the carnival family so long as he is in charge. As Samuel finally reunites her with her father again in the souvenir trailer, he uses his ability to trap them many feet underground as the carnival packs up to head to Central Park where he plans to reveal their abilities to the world and make them tremble in fear as they kill thousands of innocent people. As they are preparing to leave, Samuel sends Eli on a mission as he tells him that before she died, Lydia revealed to him the identity of two people who intend to interfere and thus must be stopped.

Upon entering the mental prison Matt Parkman trapped Sylar in, Peter Petrelli yells out in the hope that Sylar will answer and he will be able to find him. Sylar meanwhile is toiling over some old broken watches just as he used to do before he became a killer. He then hears a noise from somewhere, so he shifts himself to street level where he finally confronts Peter who found a metal post to bang against the pavement in order to get his attention. Peter reveals to Sylar that he intends to free him from this nightmare of his which Sylar believes he has been trapped in for three years. At first, Sylar thinks this is only his mind playing tricks on him until Peter reveals what he saw in his precognitive dream about Sylar saving Emma from killing thousands of innocent people. While reluctantly accepting what Peter tells him, Sylar dares him to free them, only to have Peter fail in his attempt. Peter then proceeds to simply avoid Sylar, with months seeming to go by. When they finally start talking again, Sylar reveals he does not really want to escape for he feels he deserves this punishment, but Peter knows if both of them are to escape, he needs to get Sylar on the same page as him. Just then, a brick wall manifests in front of them which they realize they must break through in order to escape. Peter sledges away at it for years, while Sylar attempts to apologize for killing his brother. Eventually, Peter learns to let go of his anger, forgive Sylar and accept that he is truly a changed man, thus allowing them to break through the wall and escape the mental prison. When they both wake up, they discover that only about half a day has gone by. As they prepare to leave they are stopped by Eli.

Critical Reception

Steve Heisler of The A.V. Club rated this episode a C-.

Robert Canning of IGN gave the episode 7.5 out of 10.