I've always been troubled by the appearance of Future Hiro to Peter, and this morning I was reviewing that encounter when I realized that things didn't go as Future Hiro planned. While he did get Peter on the quest to "Save the Cheerleader", yada yada, it appears that Peter would have eventually been on that quest eventually, anyway.

Consider: Peter was already trying to get with Isaak. Without Hiro's intervention he likely would have gone back to meet with Isaak the next day and made the discovery of the cheerleader paintings which would have sent him down the chain of events to Odessa. No Future Hiro intervention required. So what was Future Hiro really trying to accomplish?

Well, Future Hiro's message wasn't to Peter. It was for Peter to relay the message to current Hiro. "You must tell me where we will meet." Future Hiro is adamant that Peter return to meet with Isaak, the painter, because he will know where, and that Peter communicate that to Current Hiro.

And that's where things go drastically wrong for Future Hiro. Peter returns to Isaak's, but the painter is missing a painting and actually doesn't know that vital bit of information that Future Hiro seems to believe he has. When Current Hiro calls and talks with Peter there is no way Peter can tell anyone that they "must" meet in Odessa, but instead just tells him to get to NY and they will figure it out. Thus, Current Hiro has not had any real change of plans--he is already on his way to New York, so Future Hiro's intervention has had no net effect on Current Hiro's plans at all.

In fact, from this perspective, the only thing Future Hiro has managed to accomplish by his appearance to Peter, aside from getting Peter a 12-14 hour head start on the paintings, is to give the head's up to HRG which is probably not what he intended to do. [Although I will grant that HRG may have wanted to bring Isaak in anyway, it was the Cheerleader message that seemed to draw his interest and give him more urgency. Without Hiro's intervention he may not have found out about the cheerleader business until it was too late. Then again, he may have asked Eden to bring him in anyway even without the Cheerleader bit and discovered the warning in the paintings anyway, in which case Future Hiro hasn't really accomplished much of anything.]

So this leads me to what was Future Hiro really up to and has Peter failed in whatever that was? I wonder if Future Hiro intended himself to not have the Charlie "incident" at all. And now it is too late for Peter to contact Hiro, as he's in the past.

Wow, when you consider this...what if By Hiro's going back in time for the first time (for the waitress) He eventually screws up his whole life. And Future Hiro travels backwards to Peter to try and ensure that His own life isn't messed up from the way it is.

Pretty much, Hiro is actually the biggest dolt ever!

I was under the impression that Peter did tell Hiro where to go. He didn't tell him where to go to find Claire, he told him to go where Future Hiro told him to go between scenes/off camera. Or so I thought.

(That place would appear to be the diner btw, where Hiro is going to get a big lesson about time travel.)

i did not get the sense that anything was said "off camera"

You seem to be forgetting the key word in the message. Cheerleader. Without that he would not have pieced together Isaac's puzzle, because he wouldn't have known what to look for...

The only reason for future Hiro to be on the subway and interact with Peter is so they can actually get the "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World" slogan in the series.

To me, the important part may not have necessarily been "save the cheerleader" but the "save the world" part. From the paintings, it might have been clear that they should probably save the cheerleader. But without the importance of "save the world", there might not have been the urgency. I'm sure Peter is a good guy and would have probably tried to save the cheerleader either way and pursued it, but saving the world gave it the extra umph needed for him to obsess over it.

He saved "the cheerleader" and NY hasnt blown up yet, so could he have failed already? If there's one thing we've learned from movies and tv it's that its not over until its over.

We wont ever know, but we have to assume that by Peter going to Odessa, he changed the outcome of the short future by distracting Sylar long enough for Claire to get away.