Milo Ventimiglia, Greg Grunberg and Adrian Pasdar in Heroes by Adam Taylor/NBC Photo
Last time we saw Nathan Petrelli on Heroes, he was the victim of an assassin's bullet. Since then, the audience has been hanging in limbo wondering, is Nathan dead? For that matter, is Niki? TV Guide caught up with Executive Producer and Director, Allan Arkush, on Saturday afternoon at the The Women in Film (WIF) Actors Group in Los Angeles.
Arkush says the series, which begins shooting its next 25 episodes on May 1, will return witha bang post-Olympics, with the first and second episodes airing back-to-back. "We're picking up exactly where we left off," he says. "There will be some huge surprises." One change viewers will notice is a new series regular. Though Arkush remained mum on the subject, he did talk about the types of characters that will be making an appearance. "There will be characters coming that you've heard about."
Some of these could be people from the past, like the group including Angela Petrelli and Kaito Nakamura featured in the mysterious photo. "We'll learn more about that,” promises Arkush. As to whether this will be through flashbacks, Arkush would only say, “We are going to play with time and we are playing a lot with space and where people are on the planet."
"Villains" will take center stage in the upcoming episodes, as well as the nature of these villains being set loose. "It will be really clear who these villains are," says Arkush. "These are not necessarily characters you've met already. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of Sylar." Will some familiar faces clumped into this category? "One of the things that strikes me as so interesting about the show ("Company Man") was when H.R.G. says, 'I'm very comfortable in the morally grey area,'" says Arkush. "Think about that. Just like when Nathan and Linderman were going to destroy New York for reasons they thought were correct. And who on the show seems to be able to make very hard decisions and has grown as a character? One of those people is Angela (Petrelli)."
When it comes to grey areas, will Matt Parkman be exploring his newfound power and perhaps tapping into his dark side? "Matt's going to be flashing someplace," Arkush explained. "It's one of the cool surprises." As for the characters' powers, he says, "One of the things that we're going to explore is the very nature of these powers — where they come from, who has them, what the different aspects are of how they each got their powers and how it affects them. That's going to be a major storyline this year — the actual genetic essence of the power."
Among other burning questions is, will the innocent Hiro we first met turn completely to his warrior side? "As you've seen before in the show, sometimes there are multiples of the same person," says Arkush. "That's all I'm going to say about that." And as for "multiples," was Niki blown into a zillion pieces? "There's some interesting stuff there, too," Arkush says of the storyline.
Most importantly, by saving the cheerleader, have we saved the world? "In this version of this reality we have," says Arkush. "As the show has shown, there are multiple realities. Every time you change something, every time you step on a butterfly, you could be changing the flow of the universe. That's the chaos theory and that's one of the things this season is about."
For fans that can't wait until fall for a Heroes fix, the series' current soundtrack is available now and the DVD of Season Two hits store shelves in August. — Bekah Wright
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I hope Angela Petrelli is the new regular and Arthur Petrelli is the character coming on we've heard of.