BFFL Best Friends For Life

OK. I have been thinking way too much about this. In Heroes, one of the characters, Hiro, can travel through time. The writers just had him go back to the past to prevent a girl from being killed in the present. He meant to go back in time one day, instead he went back at least 6 months.

This is where I start theorizing how the writers may want to resolve this because time travel can be tricky (I can't tell you how I know this, but I do). You don't want to go around screwing up timelines and causing new realities for trivial reasons.

So far, in the last week or so, we have traveled with Hiro from Tokyo to the US. Before a few weeks ago, we have no real sense of his life, other than get up, go to work, go home, read comics, go to sleep and repeat. Let's call this Hiro, "Alpha".

We're with Alpha right up to the moment in a Texas diner where he attempts to travel back in time one day. At the moment he time travels from the present, he disappears from the present and re-appears in the past (6+ months ago). At the time he left the diner, it was a full blown crime scene. After he leaves, we are not sure if it still is. We see cops, but they were in the diner before Alpha and his friend ever arrived, just hanging out and eating.

Now here is the tricky part. In the current timeline, Alpha goes into the past. If he is successful saving the girl's life, then when we get back to present day, Alpha would have no motivation to travel back into the past. Also, at the moment that Alpha sent into the past, he would become another Hiro, "Beta". Because 6 months ago, Alpha was in Tokyo. When Alpha goes into the past, the original Alpha doesn't stop existing, which means that you now have 2 simultaneous Hiros. Alpha in Tokyo and Beta in Texas.

Once Hiro, now Beta, arrives in the past, he must realize that he lacks any real control of his time travel skills. I guess that we are lucky that he ended up anywhere near the diner. With the realization that he can't really control his power, I have no doubt that Beta would decide that trying to get back to the present is too risky, and would decide to stay. It's not that big a deal. It's only 6 months. He can wait it out, assuming that he can find way to support himself and not get arrested or deported. Beta is in a good place to prevent the murder, because he knows what day it happens, and he has enough time to get to know Charlie well enough that she trusts him.

The bonus, however, is that he now has 6 months to learn better English and try to gain better control of his abilities. That could come in handy in the inevitable battle with Sylar. If you assume that I am right so far (which could be a bit of a stretch, here is the problem. When we fast forward to present day, we likely have 2 Hiros at the diner in Texas. One that speaks pretty good English and has some reasonable skill with his power (that would be Beta) and the one we know and love, the adorable Alpha.

Assuming that the timeline is relatively unchanged, Alpha and Ando will stop to eat in this diner at about the same time they did originally, and Sylar will be there. The difference will be that Charlie will not be there, because Beta got her to stay away, and Beta could be somewhere nearby. We have a few problems to clean up:

1) We can't go around with 2 Hiros in the present day

2) We need a Hiro to go back in time 6 months to maintain the integrity of the timeline

So here's my theory:

Beta goes to the diner knowing that Alpha and Ando will be there. He does not want to attract any undue attention, so he finds a subtle way to get Alpha's attention. It's possible he hides in the bathroom, knowing that Alpha will have to go (as he did in the original timeline). It is also possible, that he simply freezes everyone except Alpha, like he did with Peter Petrelli on the train.

Beta explains to Alpha what happened. He also explains that to maintain the timeline, Alpha has to go back in time and become Beta. He will need to do most of the important things that the original Beta did to maintain the timeline and will eventually have to come to the diner to give this speech to the next Alpha. This will create a loop, but won't upset the timeline.

Since Alpha does not know how to control his power yet, Beta will offer to teleport Alpha to the time and place he needs to be, and then return to the present. When we see Ando waiting patiently at the end of the episode, he is waiting for Beta to return, although he may not have been brought in on the truth. However, he might notice that Hiro's English has improved greatly.

There is an alternative theory that my friend Howard brought up to solve the problem of too many Hiros. One of them could be killed in the battle with Sylar, or a skirmish with Sylar at the diner (which might again be a crime scene). If either one of them were killed and the other did never went back, however, we still have a dead Charlie...

Any questions?

Labels: heroes, tv