The build-up to the third series of Heroes is gathering pace. This weekend, lucky fans at the 2008 Comic-Con in San Diego were treated to an exclusive screening of the first episode and a Q&A session with key cast and crew.

Click after the jump to find out what was revealed. Be warned, though: Do not read on if you don’t like spoilers…

• The first episode of the new series is called The Second Coming and opens four years in the future. It will air in the States on Monday 22 September and then here in the UK a few days later.
• The first scene has a dark-haired Claire aim a gun at Peter and pull the trigger. Peter in turn stops time, takes the gun from Claire, and disappears, leaving Claire apparently frozen in time.
• Remember the scene right at the end of series 2 when Nathan was shot just as he was about to spill the beans on The Company? Well, it emerges that the person responsible was the future version of Peter, who then assumes the identity of present-day Peter (keep up). When Matt reads his mind and works out what’s going on, evil future Peter teleports him to the desert seen in that trailer we posted the other day.
• Nathan, meanwhile, somehow survives the shooting, but is a little muddle-headed and gets it into his head that he’s an angel.
• HRG is in a Company prison cell. There’s a fat chap in the cell next to him who’s claiming to be Peter.
• Mohinder extracts something from Maya’s blood that helps him works out the heroes’ abilities work. Soon after gets his own power: Hulk-style superstrength!
• Sylar and Claire have an almighty dust-up, at the end of which Sylar captures her and slices her head open – ewwww! – and steals her invulnerability power. Thankfully, at the end of all this, he replaces the top of her skull and she heals!
• Hiro, now running his father’s business empire, has a new nemesis: a super-speedy villainess called Daphne. She steals a piece of paper he has been ordered to safeguard – no, not very exciting, we know, but apparently loads of people will die if it falls into the wrong hands – and races off out of his reach. He tries to stop time in order to catch her, but she’s so fast that she still gets away.

So, what do you think? It all sounds pretty promising to us, but then we thought the first episode of the second series was quite good, too, and look how that turned out. What do tou think?