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RELIVING THE PAST Hiro (Masi Oka) and new Hero Takezo Kensei (David Anders)

Paul Drinkwater

SPOILER ALERT: This article reveals major plotlines for season 2 of Heroes

So. What were you expecting from the season finale?

A blockbuster explosion of superpowered action? Logic-tight resolutions to twisty-turny, season-long story lines? A haircut for Peter? If so, you're among those for whom the finale didn't quite ''flame on!'' For those new to the Heroesverse — or if the memory somehow faded during the Harry Potter/High School Musical/''Umbrella-ella-ella'' heat wave — here's a brief refresher. Sylar, the Megalomaniacal Mutant Serial Killer (Zachary Quinto), was ready to nuke New York, but curses! He was foiled by Hiro and his Legion of Superpowered Acquaintances. Pummeled by Niki, the Very Strong Schizoid Stripper (Ali Larter), skewered by Hiro, and power-sucked by Peter (who in turn went radioactively ballistic), the deviant dweeb disappeared down a manhole. Claire, the Indestructible Cheerleader (Hayden Panettiere), escaped her power-hungry blood kin, the Petrellis, and reunited with her adoptive dad, the morally ambiguous Horn-Rim Glasses (Jack Coleman), while the fates of wounded Heroes Matt, the Mind Reader (Greg Grunberg), and D.L., the Walks Through Walls Dude (Leonard Roberts), seemed uncertain.

Meaty, huh? But on screen, surprisingly thin. True, in Coleman's words, ''a TV show can't do what Spider-Man 3 can do.'' But it tried: Kring's original script was ambitious and epic, but had to be scaled back due to time and budget constraints. ''On paper, there was this big final battle, with buses flying and trucks tumbling. And I know we shot a lot that ended up on the cutting-room floor,'' says Oka. ''I understand the criticism, but in terms of the story, it served its purpose.''

Yet good intentions don't quite explain the finale's biggest Huh? If Peter can fly, why did he need Nathan to zoom him up, up, and away before exploding? ''It's all about Peter's mental state,'' says Ventimiglia. ''He was so focused on stopping this power coming up from within him, he couldn't tap into anything else.'' Coleman teasingly suggests that expectations may have blinded viewers to the possibility that Sylar was diabolically manipulating the entire denouement, from his apparent defeat to Peter's paralyzing meltdown. ''Maybe we needed to play that up some more,'' allows Coleman. ''But I think there was a slyness that some people missed.''

Of course, with the first season now on DVD, fans can go back and judge anew. Or maybe Team Heroes can just promise us that they'll try harder. And guess what? They are! Kring and company realize that spinning a dense, complex, season-long saga put too much pressure on the finale to hit a transcendent crescendo. ''The good news is that we've been able to learn from the mistakes and make the second season better,'' says Panettiere. The big adjustments: dividing the season into at least two separate sagas (or ''volumes'') and more episodes that focus on smaller groups of characters like last year's stellar H.R.G.-centered ''Company Man.'' Larter describes season 2 as ''a weave, especially in the early episodes; we're introducing new characters and weaving in and out of old ones.'' Adds coexec producer Jesse Alexander: ''It was too much for the audience to invest emotionally in a story that stretched 23 episodes. Season 2 is more focused.''

NEXT PAGE: ''They really keep [the cast] in the dark. You probably know more than I do.'' (Well...yeah, we do.)

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