Adrian Pasdar's final bows

This time, Heroes' Nathan Petrelli is really most sincerely dead.

Nathan and the actor who plays him, Adrian Pasdar, will take their final bows Monday night (NBC, 8 ET/PT) in an emotional scene with the character's brother, Peter (Milo Ventimiglia).

The demise of Nathan, a central character, marks the most significant departure in Heroes' four-season run.

It has been a harrowing path for Nathan, a U.S. senator with the ability to fly. He was thought to have exploded at the end of Season 1 and appeared to die by an assassin's bullet in Season 2.

He recovered each time, "but some deaths really need to stick," Pasdar says. "I'm happy to have had the opportunity to have this long of a run."

Nathan actually has been dead for a while, killed by the evil Sylar (Zachary Quinto) at the end of last season. But an essence of the character survived in signature Heroes style: Mind-controlling Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) put Nathan's memories into Sylar's head, leading him to shape-shift into Nathan.

In recent episodes, Sylar's consciousness, which has remained in Matt's mind, has angled to get back his body.

"On a show where you put characters in life-and-death situations with real stakes, characters have had to die," creator Tim Kring says. Writers initially hoped to have Pasdar and some form of Nathan in all 19 episodes of Season 4 – aka "Volume 5: Redemption" – "but we were starting to run out of ways to keep that character around," he says.

Kring says it's a double loss. Pasdar is a "loved member of the cast," and the brothers' relationship has been central to the series. He called the brothers' final scene "heart-wrenching. ... Adrian has never been better, and Milo has never been better."

Whether the episode will give Heroes a ratings jolt remains to be seen. Once a hit, it has struggled to attract viewers in an earlier time slot this season (No. 62, averaging 6.8 million viewers, and No. 40 among 18- to 49-year-olds). But it's one of the better performers in time-shifted viewing, growing 25% or more when a whole week of TV watching is considered.

Kring is proud of the volume, saying "it's deeper in terms of character because it's moving a little less quickly." There's no word on a fifth season, but he says he's "fully expecting" it.

Pasdar, who would like to return to direct an episode (and there's always the chance he could return in flashback), says shows get kicked when ratings drop, but he thinks in retrospect people will realize how good Heroes is. He remembers a couple of things from his final episode. It was "a terrifically written scene," and he was hanging by a wire 40 feet off the ground.

"It's a goodbye, brotherly. 'You've got to let me go. You've got to carry on and fight the good fight for the both of us,' " he says. "It's simple and pure."

SOURCE : USATODAY