Heroes question - Spoilers inevitable

Heroes Questions:

Ok, I watched (and loved) season 1. I watched (and hated) season two. I started season 3 and got about 4 episodes in and gave up.

I’ve got some questions (I don’t remember a lot of the names, so indulge me)

  1. I thought Hiero/Matt/etc got their powers from their parents (in EvilCorp) tampering with their genes. But the parents in Evilcorp have powers too. How? Why?

1.5) Mohinder’s daddy (and Mohinder…and a chunk of the first season) all said that the reason everyone got their powers was evolutionary. A big chunk of the plot depends on that. Later on, it turns out that none of it was the result of evolution–it all came from Evilcorp. How did Mohinder’s daddy get things so wrong?

  1. What’s with that sort of “f” shaped symbol? (It was on the magic sword, it was on Linderman’s stuff, etc) A huge deal was made of it and it was never explained.

  2. Did they ever explain why Hiero needed the magic sword to regain his powers? What about the sword reactivated them? This was a huge (possibly THE huge) flaw in the first season. If the powers are evolutionary, then why is there a magic sword that reactivates powers?

  3. What happened to the really cool chick with the photographic reflexes?

  4. I don’t get Sylar’s power. He has to take out and eat people’s brains to duplicate their abilities? He has telekinesis so he can cut the tops of their heads off with the power of his mind alone? How did he discover that he has this power?

  5. Did Mohinder ever stop being an evil bug? Did he get better? How? What’s the use of Mohinder as a character if none of this is evolutionary.

  6. I never got why Claire was freaking out so much early on–“I’m a freak! Everyone will know!”…why? How? It’s not like she was sprouting bat-wings or something. It’s a pretty subtle power. You don’t want people to know, don’t stick your hand down a garbage disposal in public.

  7. What exactly are schizo-girl’s powers? How did Bad-ass Schizo-Girl learn all those skills?

More questions later (I’m rewatching season 1)

I’ll try to tackle a few of this, although i’m not terribly sure myself.

The powers come naturally, evilcorp tried to and succeeded in replicating the process. So for some people they are hereditary and some people (i believe just Ali Larters characters) were given theirs.

Mohinder isn’t exactly bright for a scientist, maybe daddy wasn’t either. Although i believe he wasn’t actually wrong.

It was Takezo Kensei’s symbol, it was in his sword and i believe his flag. I imagine since he was one of the main members of the company at first that the symbol stuck with them.

It was a mental block more than anything. Hiro believed he needed the sword because future Hiro had the sword and was a badass. The sword wasn’t actually magic.

Same thing that happened to Claires ambiguously gay friend and Peters not very cute girlfriend. They weren’t popular so they were forgotten.

Sylars power is to figure out how everything works just by looking at it. He looks at peoples brains to see how their power works. His first victim had the TK power.

Mohinder doesn’t stop being a dumbass because then he wouldn’t be Mohinder, but at least hes absent in the current season.

She IS very injury prone though. That girl “died” like three times in one week during the first season.

No idea who schizo-girl is, sorry.

Schizo-girl is the one with the son (Mica?) who talks to machines. Um…Nickie?

And, heh–you’re right about Claire being accident prone. I’m up to ep 3 and she dies like twice in that episode. I made it through four years of high-school. without ever dying once!

What was the resolution of Mohinder-the-Bug’s storyline? Did he get better or is he still eating people?

Oh, her power is just super strength. The schizo part is just her being crazy, i’m not exactly sure what skills you mean.

Drawing a blank on this one. That was the worst season and i’ve kinda blocked it out. I believe he helps the bad guys develop a working power giving serum and injects himself with it so he ends up with vague spider-man like powers but without monsterification.

Teleporting for one. She kills the two goons, she knows how to steal a car (car theft skill), puts the bodies into the car, teleports into the desert, leaves a shovel, teleports back, writes up a series of instructions for Nikki, apparently twiddles her fingers and completely rearranges the garage.

Plus she’s got (IIRC) spy-skillz, burglary skillz, etc.

It’s kinda like in Spiderman 2 when he began losing his powers when he lost his confidence. Hiro lost his way, and felt that gaining the sword would regain his confidence. It turned out to only be McGuffin and I think it was actually training with his dad that gave him his powers back in full force.

I don’t know, she was one of the best parts of season 2 and it’s a shame they couldn’t figure out what to do with her.

Sylar’s power is being able to sense how things work and if something is broken, he’s able to know instantly how to fix it. This made him good at fixing watches, which is what he did until Mohinder’s dad came along and convinced him it was a superpower. When Sylar met his first other superpowered guy, the guy with telekinesis, he sensed what was going on in his brain, and was overcome with an urge to “fix” it. TK was the first power he stole.

Then he lost his powers at the end of season 1, took the formula at the end of season 2, and for some reason got TK back again, but nothing else. I’m not sure if that was ever explained.

I chalk it up to her being an insecure teenager. Pretty standard stuff.

Teleporting? She lives in Las Vegas. You don’t have to go very far to be out in the middle of the desert. It’s been a while since I’ve seen season 1 but I don’t remember her doing anything particularly skillful besides ripping people in half.

Well, most of the stuff you are talking about such as the ‘blink and you missed it’ rearranging of the garage were just left unexplained. They can probably be chalked up to the writers cheating to make the show look cooler. And I guess in a few instances can possibly be explained by Niki not fully appreciating that she’s actually missed chunks of time due to her alter ego being in charge. Certainly, there is nothing to suggest in any way that Niki had any other power other than super strength. The alter ego seems to have been the result of her mental illness and nothing to do with her power, per se.

Mohinder gets better eventually but I forget how too. He keeps the super strength as a souvenir, though.

Was this ever explained in-show? I don’t remember it at all from the first time I saw it!

She left in the middle of the day (mid-afternoon at latest) with Mica, drove until it was completely dark (it’s set in late Sept, so it stays light fairly late–say, 9:00, so say she drove until 11:00), then had (with no super strength remember) time to dig a pit 7 feet wide by say, 4 feet deep with time to finish just at sunrise.

Unless Tough-Nikki teleports, it’s a huge flaw (so far) that Tough-Nikki stole the car, drove out into the desert (with the bodies in the trunk), left a shovel for Wimp-Nikki, drove back and then had Wimp-Nikki drive BACK out there (with Mica in the car with the bodies, no less) and make Wimp-Nikki dig all night when Tough-Nikki had the car, the bodies and the shovels–along with super-strength to make it a matter of 10 minutes work to dig a deeper grave. And it would have protected Mica.

Also, how did Linderman know to send his goon-cop to just that specific location in the ass-end of nowhere to find Nikki? I thought the only person with the “identify heroes” power was the kid that Matt rescued.

Evilcorrp= Primatech Paper, the front company set up by a collection of people with abilities in the 60’s to find/contain other PWA’s, do research etc. The people who set the company (many being the parents of current characters) up all had natural born abilities- what they did was develop a formula that could give abilities to anyone else. This formula required a semi-magical catalyst- some big glowy light that was residing in Hiro’s mom until she died around that time-in order to actually work. They tested the formula on kids-Niki, Tracey and a third twin, presumably orphans-and also Nathan.He wasn’t born with the whatever to develop abilities later in life. (I have my suspicions about Shanti Suresh, too) So most come to their abilities naturally, a *few *had them induced.

Not wrong-most people who have abilities got them from standard mutation in themselves/inherited from parent. A very few had them induced

See Digital C’s answer. It looks cool and has a historical significance

See DigitalC’s answer.

No brain eating. He thinks that’s disgusting. His base ability is the ability to understand/repair systems, processes, mechanics, and sometimes people. His first stolen ability (obtained via smashing victim in the noggin with big rock and looking around his brain) was TK, and it seems to have imprinted as a secondary ability.At one point when Primatech had him strapped to a table they said they tested him and all they could find evidence of was TK, but he had a few more besides that. So I think that’s why it came back when he got Shanti-virus cured, and the other ones didn’t. Later in the third volume, he learned that by understanding/empathizing with someone he could acquire their ability non violently (learned that off Elle, and I think he did that to get shapeshifter’s-he’d spent all day in his house analyzing his stuff, building a psych profile) BUT- it seems to be a less effective method. He had to practice zapping stuff with Elle, it didn’t all come together until he brained her too

Stopped being an evil bug when he got a vatful of The Real Thing ™ formula (w/extra catalyst!) in the face. That seemed to both overwrite his bad bug juice formula dose to make him healthy, and also gave him strength. He hardly ever uses it though. Again, this did not discount the evolutionary aspect of ability development. Most people with them inherited them, a few had them induced.

Straight up Hulk power. How’d she get the skills? You’d be surprised how crafty a person with no sense of morality can get.

In bits and pieces; he describes his abilities to others as “I can see how things work”, Noah fills in some blanks elsewhere (like when he’s talking to a Primatech wonk when they have Sylar on a slab, wonk says the only ability they fond was the tk). The really disturbing bit was when he was poking around Claire’s brain, finds a particular spot, pokes it and goes ‘aaaahhhhhhh’.

  1. This isn’t the Zapruder film; eat some popcorn, enjoy your fantasy TV. Or see what’s on Discovery tonight
  2. Jessica was demonstrating to Niki what she was doing to protect them, making her presence known to Niki for the first time beyond a creepy reflection. Making the Niki persona complicit in the murders would ensure cooperation.

Later that season, when Jessica is trying to shoot Matt and his client and Matt overhears Niki and Jessica in a stairwell and asks Jessica where Niki is- I thought ‘hey, maybe she does break off into 2 people, cool!’ Then, oh, sometime the next season I remember- duh, Matt! He heard the dual conversation in her head. :smack:

The ElderSupers had their powers naturally. You can get them naturally or with SuperJuice - the earliest powered man in the series manifested 400 years ago. Sometimes it passes on, sometimes it doesn’t - Papa Petrelli was disappointed that Nathan wasn’t born with anything, for example.

Hiro and Ando have a chat about it resembling a mix of the the Japanese characters for “God send” or “Divine gift”. Given that we see it first in Feudal Japan this is the most likely explanation. Then Primatech nicked it. It also looks like a DNA double helix, back to the evolutionary stuff.

It’s more his character flaw, he needs it to ‘focus’. Plus it gave them a McGuffin to chase. In later seasons when he has a greater master of his power he doesn’t need the sword.

Put on a bus along with Maya(aaaaa!) and that annoying little flying prick. Presumably to cleanse the season 2 suck.

Others have answered this better, but basically his power is ‘seeing how things work’, hence why he was so good at repairing watches. In season 3 he got a ‘hunger’ to see how things worked, by splitting skulls and examining brains.

Yep. He got the ‘missing piece’ of the SuperJuice he injected himself with.

Simple answer: she’s a moron.

Her primary power is annoying the viewer.

IIRC, Linderman owned the world’s largest private collection of Isaac Mendez artwork.

I…I don’t think I can. :frowning:

:wink:

Actually, this makes a TON of sense. :slight_smile:

Time for me to refresh the ole tagline, at least until Glee and Heroes go bye bye for their winter hiatuses:

Can I stick smilies in a tag? I need a winkey :wink:

“Eat? That’s gross, Claire.”

I finished rewatching S1 and remembered why I loved it the first time around (and why I had so many questions–hint: if you’re going to miss an episode, 1x10 (“6 Months Ago” really isn’t the one to miss. :smiley: ). Now that I finished watching though, I have more questions.

  1. Syler…we know every person he got powers from. How’d he get his freeze power? Why did he never use the super-smarts he got from the waitress again?

  2. What was with the little Indian dream-walker kid? What was his power and how’d Peter get it in the last Ep to talk with Simone’s dad in the past?

  3. Bennett is many, MANY things (ambiguously evil, for one) but he’s not stOOpid. Why didn’t he empty his gun into Syler’s brain after Hiro shish-kabobed him? And then get Matt’s and do the same thing? He couldn’t know for sure what powerset Syler had. Also, how’d Syler get Eden(? the chick with the MIND CONTROL VOICE)'s powerset? She blew her brains out so he couldn’t?

  4. I don’t get why Peter exploded–was it overload from grabbing all those new Syler powers or just that he couldn’t control the nuclear thing?

  5. What exactly was the goal of The Linderman Six*? They wanted (and KNEW somehow–not only through Isaac’s paintings) that Pete would explode waaaaaaaaay in advance–years, maybe decades early. And they wanted it to happen…because…um…

…they wanted Future-Syler to…take over and, five years later, round their kind up into concentration camps for quick extermination? Wha? Why? They KNEW the future–they clearly did…so why was that The Lindeman Six’s goal?

  1. How did “Saving the cheerleader save the world”? Isaac never painted Claire dead. The first change we out-and-out saw was in the last ep where Hiro saves Ando and dumps him back in Japan. It wasn’t until then that we knew that the future was fluid. (Actually–I’m still not clear if Hiro saved the waitress only to have her die of a brain tumor (boo! Stupid decision!) or if she DID go back to work and Syler killed her.) Did saving the cheerleader mean: “Claire melted Nathan’s cold, cold, heart so Nathan would fly Pete away”? Or was it “If they hadn’t saved Claire from Syler, he’d have had rapid healing”?

  2. Linderman is crazy about knowing the future, up to going to insane lengths to get Isaac under control. Why didn’t he snatch Peter and set him to work painting the future? Or grab Hiro (via Hiro’s dad) and get reports of the future?

  3. Do I have the timeline more-or-less right?

400 years ago: The drunk with the sword in ancient Japan was a mutant, despite the fact that Mohinder’s dad said that the changes are just starting now.

~45 years ago: The Linderman Six created a “golden age” where they improved the world…without making any changes whatsoever. They split up for…reasons unknown.

~more recently than 45 years ago. Linderman sets up EvilCorp with Primatech Paper as it’s front. To watch mutants? Mess with mutants?

~As the series opens, Mohinder’s dad has noticed these mutants and wrote a book about them…clearly a good-seller (of the “Brief History of Time” variety) as his books are everywhere. Despite having vast amounts of control, the Linderman 6 don’t try to squash the publication of the book (by, say having it published by a small publishing house that can’t distribute it well, etc.)

~During the series: Mommy Petrelli, Linderman and maybe Hiro and Simone’s dad are still working together to

  1. blow up New York and set Syler up as president so he can have all the mutants killed
  2. ???
  3. Profit!

Wha? Do we ever learn why they wanted to accomplish that?

  1. Do we learn what powers Creepy Momma Petrelli, Simone’s dad and Hiro’s dad had?

I still loved S1–Noah, Matt, Claire, Hiro & Ando, Dad Bennett are all such strongly drawn characters (plus the wonderful and too short guest appearance of the spectacular and horribly underused Ellen Green as Syler’s mommy) were great and a lot of the other characters were solid (except Nikki/Jessica who I loathe). Don’t take my nitpicking wrong: I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t enjoy it.

But I’ve read Jeff Loeb’s comics and he’s very, VERY good about continuity and long-range plotting, so…I can’t figure out if I missed this stuff or if he was just sloppy as hell.

*Creepy Mom Petrelli, Linderman, Simone’s Dad, Hiro’s dad, Matt’s dad and Peter’s Dad

Sylar was already on a killing spree when the season began, that’s why FBI girl was after him. It’s assumed he got the power from one of his early victims as we see Mollys dad frozen solid. Waitress didn’t have super smarts, just super memory.

Its not clearly explained but its assumed it had something to do with Simones dad power. The little indian kid was just someone who could appear in your dreams and give you cryptic advice.

What makes you think Sylar ever got Edens power?

Exploding power was very hard to control apparently.

Because it would lead to Nathan being president and they thought they could control Nathan.

Thats it. Hiro stabbed Sylar but since he had Claires healing power he didn’t die and the world went to shit cause of it, so he went back in time to warn Peter to save Claire.

Momma Petrelli can see the future in her dreams, i don’t remember the others of the top of my head.

The future that they “knew” was all pieced together from paintings. One painting in particular had Nathan standing in the Oval Office. Their plan was to make Nathan president and then through him basically control the world. But as we saw in the dysutopian future, Sylar had gotten the illusion power and was pretending to be Nathan, so the painting was actually depicting Sylar. The rounding up of other supers was Sylar’s plan presumably so he could steal their powers and kill them, and then be the only super powered person left.

Mrs Petrelli had precognitive dreams. Simone’s dad apparently had mental powers similar to Matt’s (probably the reason why he knew invisible Peter was there during his trip in the season finale, he could read his thoughts). I’ve heard that Hiro’s dad’s power was revealed in a deleted scene that never aired, so nothing’s canon.