Season finales on Heroes are a weird thing. They don't really feel like an ending of anything. Many things are resolved, but we're given just as many open plot threads and teasers to the point that it just feels like a break, rather than the end to anything at all. This finale was really no exception, though we did see quite a few endings; one of which is very definitive.
Things pick up right about where they left off last week. HRG saw the roadblock coming, and got Claire and Angela out of the car before driving on to the roadblock and being taken into custody.
After recovering from the knife Danko put into the back of his head, Sylar explains that he used his new shapeshifting abilities to move his "off switch". He tells Danko his master plan, Danko tells Sylar that he may as well kill him now since he won't stop trying to take Sylar down. Sylar decides to do something even better than killing Danko; he morphs into Danko, steps around the corner, shoots five agents, then morphs into his cover identity as another agent and takes Danko into custody.
HRG and Danko are somehow locked into the same cell. HRG refuses to gloat over being right about Sylar and instead offers an alliance to get out of Building 26 and take down Sylar. Just as Danko is about to shake HRG's hand and accept, time freezes.
Hiro has made another go at freezing time, against Ando's better judgment, and succeeded for now, though Ando notes that Hiro's ear is now bleeding. They're able to free all of the prisoners and put Building 26's staff in their place. Suresh notes Hiro's problems and surmises that Hiro's body is rejecting his powers and suggests that Hiro not freeze time anymore, lest it kill him.
Time unfreezed and cell door opened, HRG and Danko begin to make their way out of the Building, with a pit stop to pick up some powerful sedatives to knock Sylar out. As HRG is looking at the monitor showing all of the staff drugged on the cots instead of the prisoners, Danko begins to double-cross him by injecting him with one of the syringes of sedatives. The syringe disappears from Danko's hand and appears in his neck with Hiro holding it. Hiro's stopped time again and saved HRG, but he then faints.
Claire and Angela arrive at the Capitol, at which point Angela sends Claire to find Nathan while she finds Matt. Angela has had a dream that Matt will save Nathan's life and wants to make sure that Matt is there to make it happen.
By the time Claire makes it to Nathan's office, Sylar is wearing Nathan's face and suit. Using his ability to read an object's history, he mentions the Mexico adventure and convinces Claire that he really is Nathan. As they make their way into the hotel where the President is making a speech - after which he's supposed to meet with Nathan/Sylar - Claire begins to get suspicious when Nathan/Sylar doesn't recognize the Chief of Staff and signs in with his left hand when Nathan is right-handed. As they sit in a suite waiting for President Worf, Claire's in full on suspicion and won't answer the phone when HRG calls her to check in. Finally, the phone is answered and HRG asks Claire if Nathan's okay and if she's sure it really is Nathan. Sylar plays with him for a moment before revealing that he's impersonating Claire and hangs up the phone.
And then I think we have a plot hole. Sylar controls Claire, making her pour wine and drink with him like Eric Doyle the puppetmaster, but Doyle's still alive. Where the heck did he get those powers?
Back at Nathan's office, Nathan finally wakes up from that tranquilizer dart that Danko shot him with sometime last year just as Peter walks into the office and finds him. Forget how long it took Nathan to wake up from that tranq, what took Peter so long to get there? He took off flying five minutes after Nathan but Claire beat him there by driving and fricking walking. Did Peter get lost? Someone get that boy a GPS.
Nathan and Peter make their way to the hotel to confront Sylar, but first they have to out themselves and what's going down to the Chief of Staff and the entire Secret Service in order to get in. The Petrelli boys manage to combine badass and heartwarming by following up a discussion of how they'll "cut this son of a bitch in half" with an exchange of "I love you's."
Sylar is ready for the Petrelli's, though, and tosses Claire through the door just as Nathan and Peter approach. They rush in and the door slams shut and locks so that Claire can't get back in. When she does get in, the suite is trashed and Peter is pulling himself to his feet. Nathan and Sylar flew into a different suite and Peter can't follow since he stole one of Sylar's power, losing the flight he stole from Nathan. Which raises the question - how does he choose which power he takes? Seems like it would make more sense if he stole of them.
Nathan and Sylar crash into the suite through the window and tussle until Sylar knocks Nathan back and slices his throat the same way he normally slices foreheads. Nathan struggles, but Sylar just watches him bleed out and then shifts into Nathan again.
Peter, Claire, and HRG meet up and, after HRG is convinced that they are who they say they are, run into the last group of security that doesn't know what's going on. At first they don't want to listen, but seem to be convinced to hear them out once Claire puts her forehead to the gun and says they can explain after they shoot her if they like.
Sylar, in Nathan's form, is met by the Chief of Staff and told that they have to get the President out of the building and they can't give Nathan any time today. Nathan/Sylar accepts this and then kills the Chief of Staff and takes his form. He jumps into the limo with President Worf and shakes his hand, but can't seem to take his form. Worf shifts into Peter and stabs Sylar with the sedative/tranquilizer.
Matt arrives in DC on a Greyhound bus and is met by Angela. At first, he is resistant to the idea of helping, saying that he's there to take out Building 26 so that his son will be safe. Angela points out that the odds of this ending well without Nathan are very slim and Matt finally agrees to help.
Somehow, Matt and Angela are the first to find Nathan. After having a nervous breakdown, she hatches a plan with HRG to have Matt brainwash Sylar into believing that he really is Nathan. They lay all sorts of reasons out, but the main ones seem to be that the news of someone with powers killing a US Senator would escalate things and they need Nathan to end things since he began them. Matt is resistant on moral grounds, but finally agrees and brainwashes Sylar.
HRG sneaks the shapeshifter's body - still in Sylar's form - out and the main characters all gather onto a beach to burn the body. Apparently, nobody but Matt, Angela, and HRG know who "Nathan" really is. "Nathan" lays out the plan for a new Company that the president has agreed to, with HRG heading it up. Hiro and Ando make plans to go back home, Matt goes back to his son, Suresh just kinda chills, and HRG and Claire head home to prepare for a move back to DC, I guess.
And this is the end of Volume Four: Fugitives.
In a preview for the next Volume (and the next Season), we are shown a former Building 26 agent coming home to a flooding kitchen. Part of the puddle forms into Tracy Strauss, who tells him that he is number four and drowns him.
In DC, Angela comes to Nathan's office to take him to lunch. When she chastises him for not being in touch for the past few weeks, he apologizes and says that he just hasn't felt himself lately. She talks to him about inane things, but he's still zoned out. He walks over to a clock, notes that it's a minute and a half fast, fixes it, and then seems back to normal, talking about what to have for lunch. If you don't get the significance there, Sylar had a thing about clocks and could tell if they were off just by hearing them tick.
