Last night was the last episode of season four, and as usual quite a lot happened. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading here.
The biggest thing was Sean's brother Danny's ability, which infects other people with promicin whether they want it or not. Kind of a crap ability, given that he can't control it - the first thing he did with it was kill his mother. The crazy thing was that from there, it spread like the flu. Now that rocked Seattle. 9000 dead. Assume another 9000 just got abilities, whether they want them or not. And Danny chose death rather than continue to spread the "plague". Poor Sean - he's the clearest "good guy" on the show, and he's got to lose all his closest family on the same day.
Isabelle, on the other hand, needed to die. I hated her when she first grew up, and it was interesting when she seemed to be turning a new leaf, but that didn't last long. At least she redeemed herself in the end by taking out that Gayle King-looking Marked woman and freeing Tom and Jordan. On that note, Tom and Jordan still seem to be getting along fairly well, which is an interesting change. We've got that midseason dreamworld session to thank for that, I guess. Tom gave Jordan a list of all The Marked, reasoning that while NTAC couldn't deal with the powerful figures possessed by The Marked through official channels, Jordan's P-positives wouldn't have much trouble hunting them down. Of course, Jordan himself has been injected with a Mark, which hasn't yet manifested. He knows this, and has been told how to deal with it, so I'm hoping it's no longer a reason to worry, but only time will tell whether this will be dealt with offstage or whether it will actually become an issue.
Interestingly, after Danny's promicin infection plague, NTAC is now nearly 100% promicin-positive, the only real exceptions being Tom who wasn't around and Diana who's immune. That changes a few things. Will the prisoners such as Richard be released? Will those who have taken the shot be pardoned now that there's no way to prove that they actually did take a shot? In this new world with upwards of 10,000 promicin-positives, can Seattle get by without P-positive law enforcement? Jordan's crew is handling civil order for the time being, but will they give the city back? Or will the spraypainted sign we saw become a reality - will Seattle become Promise City?
In the meantime, we saw some damn cool new abilities. Megan, who is a better character than I originally gave her credit for, can grow plants. Or at least turn pens into flowers. Garrity, who I'd never really noticed before, can duplicate himself. That should be interesting. Can he suck back the dupes, or are there permanently two of him? Can there be more? Could get messy. And the best new ability: Marco's. The man can teleport. But does he need to look at an image of his destination? Could be a neat limitation on the ability. The 4400 comes up with unique abilities better than any other show I've seen.
My only concern at this point comes from an interview I recently listened to with one of the show's creators, who stated that rather than have a story arc in mind for the show's eventual conclusion, they'd continue the show indefinately until it was cancelled. I'm hoping that the show hits a graceful end-point somewhere and doesn't end abruptly on a cliffhanger a la Surface. And yes, you could say that even this episode was a possible end point, but I prefer a more solid ending with no loose ends. In any event, I'm eagerly awaiting season five.