I have often wondered this as well. My wild-eyed theory is that powers are awakened in the presence of another powered being. The people have the genetic markers, but their powers are dormant until awoken. Hiro awoke Adam, and Adam has been responsible, through the years, of inadvertently awakening others.
I know submit my theory to peer review.
To me it seems like the season is finally headed in an interesting direction. Hopefully Sylar will recover his powers and kill off the twins soon.
Apologies if anyone has mentioned this in a previous thread, but I wonder if Adam’s name is supposed to be biblically significant. Is he the forefather of all of the supers? Not hugely creative if so… :dubious:
Nah I don’t think so. It was the same rapid cutshots to show his memory coming back. Nothing to do with Mama. He partially restored his own memory unknowingly using his Claire power. Seeing his mother triggered it. It wasn’t a full reboot because he wasn’t trying. This week he did it on purpose and got the full download.
Not to be too personal but I think it might be the gay thing. To me she is incredibly convincing and superhumanly hot. Something about being a psycho bitch works for her. And me.
Oh, fine. I’ll be the killjoy again.
Claire apparently discovered her powers all on her own. The Haitan had erased her mother’s memories, but apparently never hers – and she didn’t know who he was when they met. So we know of no other heroes she’d’ve met.
Charlie’s powers turned on without any other hero. As did Dale’s. And metal-melty-guy, apparently. The latter two met Suresh Sr., who had no powers, but apparently no other heroes. Probably ditto for dream boy in India. Sylar’s understand-stuff power was apparently functioning before he met Suresh Sr., too.
… I must admit, the whole Angela thing has made me cranky. It does look like they’re going for a lame mind-control power (that usually doesn’t work, apparently), and that they’ve violated the “notable clue for the viewers” set-up for her powers only. All the other heroes have some clue that they’re using powers, when they’re using powers, usually audio cues and camera tricks. I’m just finding it… annoying.
Not sure what being gay has to do with not thinking she’s playing the role well. I was just as gay watching her on Veronica Mars and thought she did a great job. Ditto her performance in the musical version of Reefer Madness.
So the time change has officially screwed up my internal clock this year. I completely missed week-before-last-week’s episode, just watched last week’s on Saturday, and finally managed to keep my ass awake for this week’s episode, so I finally feel caught up.
Peter: Glad his memory’s back, still find he and Nathan’s relationship a little bizarre, but I’m an only child so what do I know. I didn’t care for Caitlin much, but I’m very disturbed at the idea of her being abandoned and deported back to an empty plague-riddled future Ireland - I hope there will be some sort of resolution for her.
Nathan: His burnt eye was freaking me out, so I’m glad they fixed that. Explains, I guess, why he’s been haunted by the burnt mirror image of himself, as he did actually see himself like that. One question: does Nathan know that Peter can regenerate? Because after seeing himself burned to a crisp and on the verge of death, and then waking up remarkably healed, one would think he might suspect that his brother had some sort of a hand in it.
Niki: Oh lord, really? She’s developing other multiple personalities now? What the hell is her power again? Is it just that she has super strength, and also happens to be a nutcase? All this time I thought that the two were combined, but now it seems like her having multiple personalities is just her own little wackiness, and the super strength is her actual power. I just…totally can’t bring myself to care.
DL: Sad. I like DL. Still, I find it odd that they would keep the actor around just for a couple flashbacks and nightmares; don’t think we’ve quite seen the last of DL, in other words.
Alejandro and Maya: If I never hear Maya plead for help from God again, it’ll be too soon. It was still pretty cool when she killed the entire town, however. Was the wee little flash of her and Sylar making googly eyes at each other a flashback, or are we meant to believe that they are continuously doing so? Gross. I am unable to believe that Sylar gazes that way at anyone without secretly fantasizing about eating their brains.
Adam/Kensei: He’s growing on me.
Elle: I kinda like her whole giggly/flirty/electrocutey thing. I can see it getting old fast, though.
I don’t think that the 2 are mutually exclusive. Presumably, Parkman’s father started out with one power, and that evolved/was developed into a group of similar powers, including reading thoughts, creating illusions, invading dreams, etc…, and jamming those being done to him. He developed this group of powers over a few decades.
So it seems logical to me that Adam could have developed regeneration into resurrection, or vice-versa. He’s had centuries. I think that people are making a mistake of trying to label each heroes’ power with 1-word descriptions.
Does “meeting” require an introduction and a handshake? Because her dad always had a hero as a partner. Who hasn’t at least been in close proximity to their father’s business partner?
Did she express these powers before meeting Hiro?
That can all be changed with another flashback episode. 
Noah’s family thought he worked at a paper company – as far as they knew, he didn’t have “partners”. I don’t recall, though, whether the Claude flashback showed that Claude met Noah’s family.
Of course, Claire had met her parents before, so she’s probably a poor example to prove or disprove this particular hypothesis.
Yeah, Charlie had started on her super-memory before before Hiro showed up. Even before the point in time that he went back into her past (although it sounded like she’d just begun with the super-memory then).
Ugh. Never would be too soon for another flashback episode.
I didn’t see DL’s death as random, really. It just showed that, no matter how hard they try to have a normal life, as long as Jessica’s still able to show herself, the people Nikki cares about are likely to get hurt. Makes Nikki’s decision to go to the Company and try to get cured more understandable. (I was hoping that Jessica would pop up and spread that punk all over the nightclub, though.)
Claire was born to a powered person, and it seems her abilities were known early on, but didn’t seem to kick in until late puberty (assuming she has the same ability as Adam and won’t grow older).
If my theory is true, it just might mean that Charlie and Dale and the others had some random encounter with someone else who had a random encounter, and that their story wasn’t important enough to tell.
Or I could be way off. Was there a hero around when the Wonder Twins power - Activate!(d)? Certainly no one we know, so maybe I am blowing smoke. Wonder if the writers have even thought of this?
Seriously, there’s just the one K in “Niki.” And it wasn’t Jessica who led Niki off to LA, it was the previously unknown “Gina.” Which may or may not shoot all to hell the various theories that the Jessica personality is actually the disembodied spirit of Niki’s actual sister.
Yeah, there doesn’t seem to need to be a trigger from another hero, but it has been seen quite a few times that the powers don’t (necessarily) manifest from birth. Maria didn’t kill with her oily tears until her life was threatened by another. It may be that stress was the first time something like that happened and triggered it manifesting. Similarly, Adam’s may have lain dormant until a trauma so severe as taking three arrows to the chest (he was a working mercenary so it is hard to believe he’d never before suffered at least minor injury).
We didn’t see how Claire first discovered her power but it may have just been a biological change that came along or perhaps she did seriously hurt herself an trigger it.
Of course, Hiro just seems to have an innate awareness he could do it and just took a long time before he figured out how. The superhearing woman and metal melting man both told of finding their powers as adults, didn’t they?
I thought that theory was blown out of the water because most people think it’s abnormaly stupid (even as far as Heroes theories go).
But now’s my chance for comeuppance as I have a (possibly stupid) theory of my own: I don’t think DL is dead.
I think after DL was attacked in the club (we never did see a body), Niki went to Bob the Alchemist and struck a deal. The Company then falsified a few hospital records, doped DL up until he looked dead like Sylar and shipped his body back to Vegas. After the funeral, he wakes up and phases through the casket and the dirt and goes into hiding. Niki drops Micah off at Aunt Uhura’s and goes back to Bob to begin getting better without the fear of hurting her family.
We will see DL again.
We did see how Claire’s powers first manifested (assuming that they didn’t manifest when she was a baby in the house fire). She gashed her hand during horseplay with Jackie when Jackie dropped off Claire’s uniform. The gash healed rapidly (in about a day) but not instantly.
It may be stupid but I don’t know that it’s abnormally stupid.
Pretty sure it was stated by her Claire’s bio-mom that she (mom) thought Claire died in the fire - indicating there was little reason to believe she had gotten out - so I think her healing started manifesting then.
This is ambiguous as Bennet’s boss and Papa Sulu, who presented baby Claire to Noah, could have taken Claire during the fire before she was ever burned. Remember, they were sent to recover both Claire and her mother and arrived too late to prevent the fire. They believed that Claire’s mom died in the fire.
Forgot that they’d shown her discovery of the healing. Still supports that for most heroes the power manifests at some point later in life so I don’t think there is any contradiction in Adam not knowing of his power until the point shown.
Oh, goody, I have a dance partner at the DL non-funeral! 
I’m probably not articulating correctly. Not the first time. The reason her performance works for me and not for you may be coming from a different part of my brain. Just like you used to call Suresh “Mohimbo”. When I first saw that in writing it took me a second to realize that he is in fact a very good looking guy. Just not wired that way. To me he just seemed to be the stupidest brilliant scientist I have ever seen. Kristen Bell’s character: angelic face, body of a pornstar, psycho bitch. Yep works for me.
BTW never seen her in anything else. Heard good things about Veronica Mars. If it’s out on DVD I’ll probably get around to checking it out.