PASADENA, Calif. — There's great news and even better news on the "Heroes" front. First, the long hiatus ends tonight (8 p.m., Ch. 2) with a new episode of TV's best new show.

And — hold on to your hats — we're going to get a payoff to the big mystery that hangs over all the characters in the season finale when it airs in May.

"While Season 1 foresees or prophesies this apocalyptic event, we will deal with that in Season 1," said Tim Kring, the show's creator and executive producer. "And Season 2 will have another story attached to it.... No, there really is not one central question or central mystery posed by the show. It allows us not to have to deal with a giant, complicated plot line."

So before this season is over, "Heroes" will deal with impending disaster that could destroy New York.

Let's all take a moment and jump for joy.

What this means is that "Heroes" isn't going to devolve into "Lost." As it has already become clear, "Heroes" not only asks questions but it also answers them — on a weekly basis.

"We feel like we've made a pact with the audience that something is going to happen every week," Kring said. "We're not going to have the frustration level of having to wait several episodes before things actually happen."

Let's take another moment for a bit more jumping.

The fact is that in each of the 11 episodes of "Heroes" (and in tonight's Episode 12), we've learned more about both the over-arching mystery and the individual stories of all the characters as they discover they have extraordinary powers. This is not a one-step-forward, two-steps-back thing like "The X-Files" devolved into.

"Heroes" certainly isn't the first show to operate like this. Heck, going back to the prime-time soaps of the '70s and '80s, shows like "Knots Landing" and "Dallas" would build a lot of storylines around a central plot, bring that to a head in the season finale, leave us with a new cliffhanger, launch the next season from that point and repeat the process.

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which dealt with a new Big Bad every season.

It can be done. It has been done. It doesn't have to be "Lost."

Dancing ... dancing ... dancing.

According to Kring, the way "Heroes" is constructed — lots of characters with parallel and intersecting plotlines — makes his job easier.

"One of the fears going into it for a lot of people that I heard was 'Aren't you afraid you're going to run out of story?' And the idea is really the opposite," he said. "Rather than it being like a tank of gas where you use up story, these twists and turns and reveals and cliffhangers actually generate more story. So it's an engine that feeds on itself."