I am – Hercules!!

“Heroes” returns with a typically engrossing installment on Jan. 22, and Ain’t It Cool has already gotten its hot little hands on it. Fearful that NBC might take away our pencils if we reveal too much this far in advance, we offer here just a few hints of what's to come, cloaked carefully in the text invisible:

* The episode, titled “Godsend,” begins with the superimposition “Two Weeks Later” (which puts it just three weeks before Nov. 8, when Manhattan goes boom).

* As the episode begins, Hiro, Nathan and Peter have all returned to New York, where we learn Hiro’s powers have been diminishing since he failed to rescue his waitress-girlfriend Charlie. Peter, meanwhile, is in a coma, reliving the dream of apocalypse.

* It turns out that Syler did not escape PrimaTech Paper following the unpleasantness with Eden.

* Claire’s nerd-pal, Zach, isn’t gone for good after all.

* Nathan comes to remark that Hiro’s English is much improved. Hiro attributes this to Charlie, who taught him “many things.”

* Niki, while in Vegas stir, makes a very interesting discovery about herself. I think.

* We do not learn to whom Jack Bennet reports, but a plural pronoun is employed.

* The shadowy “Linderman” does not yet surface (at least not overtly), but the name “Linderman” comes up a lot.

* Peter does not fly, but there are special effects aplenty.

* The new Christopher Eccleston character is indeed introduced in this episode. He sports a beard and we don’t meet him till near episode’s end.

* And here’s how it ends, spoiler boys: “Who needs God when you got me?”

9 p.m. 13 days from now. NBC.

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