wonder what that thing is supposed to mean.

It's a stylized S for "Sulu."

Sulu's comin....

Canon is that it translates to "Godsend".

It was also on 2 different canvasses in Isaac's apartment in the future.

For a second there I thought I had a handle on Nathan's road to the White House, but I kept thinking. Now I'm confused about when "now" is. Fall 2006 elections? That would allow him to serve his congressional term and then ride a wave of heroism in the wake of the explosion to Vice Presidency in 2008. If Sylar got to Candice and Nathan shortly after that he could easily take out the President.

And then I got distracted by that mention of the Linderman Act - I'm assuming that Niki/Jessica killed him in the other timelines as well (Hiro and Ando haven't interacted with Jessica and D.L., right?), so I'm thinking that post-explosion investigations revealed the late Mr. Linderman's string pulling in some way (though not that he rigged Petrelli's election) so that he came to signify the threat that the mutants (I don't know what to call them) pose to normal humanity.

Now I'm confused about when "now" is. Fall 2006 elections?

Yep. We're still back in November.

(Hiro and Ando haven't interacted with Jessica and D.L., right?)

Not since Hiro and D.L. saved the car crash victims. And while Ando interacted with Nikki, they haven't met Jessica.

I'm still wondering what Nathan will do when he finally meets Claire's adoptive father... and finds out it's the man who once tried to kidnap him. I'm looking forward to those two going at it.

I wonder if they're going to skip forward a year after the finale, or if we're going to get farther and farther out of step with Real Time, which would be a problem for the kids.

At this point, Nathan's really lucky he can fly, because he's quickly running out of (moral) legs to stand on. Even with Bennet's past, I'd say he's still done far better by Claire, in particular. Does Bennet know that Nathan is Claire's father?

I believe HRG knows who "the Haitian" is working for (at least did know until TH took his memory), so yes, at some point he knew who Claire's father is.

Does Bennet know that Nathan is Claire's father?

If he remembers trying to kidnap Nathan, he might have put it together once Claire told him Peter was her uncle. He didn't know before then, though, because as he said in the last episode, they didn't tell him everything.

I wonder if he would remember Nathan, though, or if he saw so many people through his capture-and-release program that Nathan was just another one of them. Matt seems to have a similar issue in regards to Molly, whom he didn't recognize in the last episode.

But then again, kids tend to look alike to me, too.

Also, screaming child held at gunpoint by your ally maybe not the best circumstances for recognition.

Matt is a Box of Hair, most of the time. As opposed to Mohinder, who is a Box of Curly Hair.

Molly was the first person whose thoughts Matt heard, wasn't she? Nothing to conclude from that, it just struck me.