Heroes: An Invisible Thread

By TrinityVixen

How do you solve a problem like Sylar? Frontal assaults don’t work. He could be anyone at any time (and be them convincingly thanks to Mama Petrelli’s interference), so it’s pretty hard to get the drop on him. He’s fairly clever, unquestionably psychotic and immeasurably powerful; in other words, he’s smart and ruthless enough to take full advantage of any and every ability he has at every moment. He is this show’s Dark Phoenix. Given the similarities, you’d almost suspect that the writers borrowed the “out” for Sylar from Marvel. Of course, that would require them to have more than a passing awareness of comic books. As the writers have demonstrated, with their undisguised loathing and mockery of mouth-breathing, acne-sporting comic book fanboys, this could never be, right? Nevertheless, there is much to be learned and understood from the infamous Dark Phoenix Saga as it applies to the final solution for Gabriel “Sylar” Gray. I’ll get to that. First, how it all went down…

Volume Four, Chapter 12 – “An Invisible Thread”

We pick up with last week’s revelation that Sylar was no longer vulnerable to sharp sticks to the back of the head. This is because his shape-shifting ability allows him to maneuver his one weakness to a secret, undisclosed location (kinda like Dick Cheney). Incensed that Danko would attempt to tell him what to do (what, Danko thinks he’s Daddy now?), Sylar frames Danko for the murder of his own men. Danko’s out as far as the Super Gitmo Action Squad is concerned. Insult to injury: he is imprisoned in Building 26 with Noah Bennet, who took the fall so Claire and Mama Petrelli could escape while all twenty billions SGAS troopers took him down. (Seriously, they sent five times as many guys after Mr. B as they or anyone ever did after Sylar. It still doesn’t seem like enough, though, does it?)

Sylar sticks to his plan to meet and copy the President of the United States, dragging Claire along to where the POTUS is giving a speech after “proving” he is “Nathan” to her with the aforementioned ridiculously useful ability to read the entire history of objects (in this case, the necklace she pawned in Mexico and that Nathan bought back for her). A series of minor missteps on Sylar’s part (Sylar’s a southpaw, Nathan is not, though Sylar almost covers with a plausible lie centered on a baseball metaphor) lead her to suspect “Nathan” isn’t her Bio-Dad, but, as always, Sylar is three steps ahead of anyone who suspects him. When her father, newly sprung from detention in Building 26 thanks to Hiro and Ando freeing him and the supers, calls to check on his Claire-Bear, Sylar delights answering for her:

Mr. Bennet: Where are you?
Sylar (as Claire): I’m with Nathan.
Mr. Bennet: Are you sure it’s him?
Sylar (as Claire): Oh, it’s him. Don’t worry.
Mr. Bennet: How do you know?
Sylar (as himself): Because it’s me.

Okay, so it doesn’t really make sense, but Sylar pulls it off with his usual, iconic creepiness such that it’s very bad-boy awesome. His fixation on tormenting Mr. Bennet is just about the only bit of consistent characterization this show has ever had. (Which is why “One of Us, One of Them” was a failure before it even got started.) The weak attempt at schmoozing/seducing Claire that follows is less awesome—is vomit-inducing, even. Sylar makes the point that whether he kills the Bennets off one by one or not, they are going to die, and Claire won’t. One way or another, it will be Claire and Sylar. Forever. They might as well get used to it now. Maybe with some loving. I cannot possibly overstate how intensely revolting this entire discussion is, for not only is Sylar propositioning a romantic, even sexual relationship with the girl he stalked and cut open (and whose family he’s still actively trying to murder), he’s doing it while he uses the Puppet Master’s ability to force her to eat, drink, and be merry with him. It’s no less gross because Sylar is more attractive than the man he stole the ability from. Trust me. Claire promises to spend the rest of their forever—such as it may be—trying to kill him. “Everybody needs a hobby,” Sylar concedes before he goes right back to touching Claire inappropriately and making vague allusions to sex they could be having. Vomit much?

Luckily for my stomach, Peter revives the real Nathan in his office and they go to stop Sylar. In the process, Nathan outs himself as a super (and outlines for the audience the mechanics of Peter’s ability: it is dependent upon touch now, but, unlike Daddy, he can only hold one at a time). The brothers Petrelli declare their love for each other (still less disturbing than anything Sylar was getting up to with Claire) and charge towards the suite where Sylar waits. Claire is thrown bodily into the hallway, encourages her Bio-Dad and uncle to go in and kick ass, and then watches the fight (which we, watching Claire, never see) from the doorway. It’s a fairly lame way to avoid staging an epic, super-powered battle, but seeing as “epic battles” are usually pretty lame on this show, I don’t mind. The end result is that Sylar and Nathan leave Peter behind as they—yes, both of them—take to the sky. Peter has dropped flight for one of Sylar’s billion abilities. Without it, he can only grab Claire and go pick up Mr. Bennet, who, still freaked out by that phone call evilness from before, pulls a gun on his daughter until he’s sure that she’s herself. The reunion is short as the Secret Service shows up. Claire convinces them to work with her by being utterly unafraid of their threats to put a bullet in her brain. (“You can either listen to me now, or I’ll tell you after you shoot me.”)

Family unity is all well and good for Peter, Claire, and Mr. Bennet, but Nathan is still on his own with Sylar. As soon as Claire and Peter are gone, Sylar returns to the destroyed suite. He tosses Nathan about with as little effort as he puts into his dainty landing. Nathan must struggle with simply standing after being thrown into a piano. Already bored with a fight that he won before it started, Sylar telekinetically slashes Nathan’s throat.

Nathan Petrelli is dead.

Sylar laughs as Nathan chokes on his own blood and expires without a word. “Claire’s going to be so mad at me,” he says, smiling once as himself before scorning Nathan’s corpse with Nathan’s borrowed face as he leaves. Nathan is just one more victim. A nobody who had something Sylar wanted—in this case, his political connections more than his ability. Now, just a body.

Nathan Petrelli is dead.

No matter what comes after, this remains a fact. Nathan is gone. He never got to right the wrongs he sprung on the supers with the SGAS and Building 26. He dies a villain to many and a hero to so very few—none of whom will ever be able to tell anyone else because of what happens later. It’s not even his fault. This isn’t one of his many morally questionable decisions coming back to haunt him. This is Nathan trying to be a hero and succeeding. But such glory does not change the fact that Nathan Petrelli is still dead.

It’s fitting, then, that a man so desperate to save a kid he didn’t care about until last episode, is the one to console Nathan’s mother in her grief for her son. Mama Petrelli has worked to bring Matt Parkman to where her dreams indicated he would be so that he could save Nathan. With much cajoling and appealing to Matt’s protective urges vis a vis his son, Mama Petrelli convinces Matt to use his ability to get her into the building and up to see Nathan. Matt is the first one in the room, and almost immediately, he sees that everything has gone to hell. He cries out for Mama P to turn away, begs her not to look at her eldest, oft-scorned son, bled out in a chair. Mama P looks and starts screaming. I have never heard anyone shriek in grief and surprise and rage the way Mama P does. (Christine Rose, as I’ve frequently said, is an unparalleled triumph of an actress.) She is outraged that her dreams—which are as infallible and immutable as Isaac Mendez’s paintings—have hidden from her the real truth: there is no saving Nathan because Nathan Petrelli is dead. All she has is pain and confusion and anger. She has lost her son. He is gone.

Elsewhere, the man who would have been her son (and who will be), continues on his quest to meet and become the POTUS. Sylar-as-Nathan kills the Chief of Staff to get closer to the President, and he slides into the limousine as comfortably as a king into his throne. And why not? This is where he has always believed he belonged. All he wants, all he has ever wanted—power—is one handshake away. He reaches to congratulate the President on his escape. Victory is at hand.

Except it isn’t. The handshake goes very, very wrong. I confess I gasped aloud at this point. Was the President a super? All this time? Is he, like the Haitian, immune to Sylar’s ability? Sylar, no less surprised than I, fights the transformation but becomes himself just as “the President” jerks him by his clasped hand and shoves a syringe into his neck. As their heads come together, Peter lords over Sylar. “Bet you didn’t think I took that one from you,” Peter grunts. Well played, show. You not only successfully astonished me with a genuinely believable yet unexpected development, but you also managed to make Peter do something halfway intelligent. I think that latter part might be the most impressive display of super powers all season. I am still sort of agog at the possibility of Peter plotting against and outwitting Sylar. Yes, well played indeed, show.

The syringe has enough night-night drugs to send Sylar into beddy-bye-bye land while Mr. Bennet and Mama Petrelli work on securing Matt Parkman’s help with a desperate plan. Someone has to reassure the POTUS and his security forces that all is well now; that Sylar is no longer a threat to him or anyone; and that Nathan Petrelli has not, in fact, just been murdered by one of the supers that the SGAS was formed to neutralize. Notably absent from this discussion are Peter and Claire. I assume they might object to the plan to give Sylar a psychic make-over so that he believes he is Nathan Petrelli. Hell, Matt Parkman objects, and he isn’t known for loving Petrellis or anything. Mama P and Mr. B’s cooler heads prevail: they need Nathan to diffuse the situation; Nathan Petrelli is dead; Sylar has the abilities to physically resemble Nathan and to absorb memories that Nathan put into the objects in his life; ergo, Sylar must become Nathan. Thanks to Matt Parkman’s powers, he can. Under an assault from Matt’s telepathy, Sylar’s body groans and shudders; his memories from all the previous volumes disappear backwards as Nathan’s take hold. He turns away from the onslaught of a new personality and returns wearing that personality’s face. Nathan wakes up, wonderingly looking into the worried, pinched face of his mother.

A little while later, the Petrellis—Claire and Peter included this time—Bennet, Matt Parkman, Hiro and Ando, and Mohinder, gather together with “Nathan” to burn Sylar’s body. Nathan has secured government resources to continue the hunt for supers, but those monies/men will be repurposed into The Company 2.0 to prevent the abuses of the SGAS. Bennet is tapped to lead it, by “Nathan’s” recommendation. Claire breathes a sigh of relief that Sylar is gone. A warning look from Bennet to Matt across the pyre makes it clear: the switch has been made, but no one who was not in the room at the time has any idea.

So, Gabriel Gray is dead? Sylar is dead?

At this point, we come back to the Dark Phoenix. For a time, this boundlessly powerful creature was restrained by the psyche of a morally upright human woman, Jean Grey. Heroes starts at a disadvantage because its villain never had any sort of moral center with which to bind his darker impulses. Sylar was a narcissist from the outset, and his self-aggrandizement only metastasized as he became more powerful. When the Dark Phoenix could not longer control her more violent, destructive tendencies, Professor Xavier put the psychic brakes on the Phoenix using Jean Grey’s mind (and her assistance) as his template. A good person’s mind was capable of restraining a supremely willful, malevolent one with a little outside help.

The point of the Dark Phoenix Saga, however, is that this is a temporary and ultimately untenable solution. No artificial constraints could hold the Dark Phoenix forever. Under duress, the powerful, subsumed personality will break free. So there’s the answer to why I asked if Sylar were dead but stated that Nathan was.

Because Sylar is only sleeping for some indeterminate amount of time (of which, being functionally immortal, he has plenty), but Nathan is dead. This much is made clear in the previews for next season, but should be obvious from the get-go. A person is not a face plus a collection of memories. As much as Matt could, with those touchstones, recreate Nathan’s personality, he couldn’t capture Nathan’s soul. Whatever walks, talks, and acts like Nathan Petrelli is not, no matter how uncanny the likeness, Nathan Petrelli. Volume Four ends with the burning of Gabriel Gray, but it is Nathan Petrelli who must be mourned.

I’ll miss Nathan. He, like Bennet, flirted with the morally gray, but he was always genuinely conflicted about whether what he was doing was right. His principles weren’t in line the way Bennet’s were because he loathed as much as loved his family and, as such, could draw no lines as to how far he would go where they were concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually loving the idea that, with Peter and Claire in the dark about “Nathan” and his true identity, the show manages to dignify previous storylines involving Sylar-the-wayward-Petrelli. (What can I say? I’m a sucker for callbacks, and making metaphor out of outright inanity is better than just letting inanity pass or fade.) But I will still regret the loss of Nathan.

As his star fades on this show (along with Zachary Quinto’s for the time being), another’s must rise. In the previews for next volume (entitled “Redemption”), a former member of the SGAS walks into his apartment to find the kitchen sink overflowing. The water moves into his living room and solidifies into Tracy Strauss. “You’re number four,” she says, and that’s the last of him. The next day, “Nathan” reads about another “mysterious drowning” as his mother comes in to take him to lunch. The ruse has worked for six weeks, but from the way Mama Petrelli panics when “Nathan” spaces out for a second, I’m betting she, Bennet, and Matt Parkman have been on tenterhooks the whole time. “Nathan” hears a clock in his office running out of sync with the wheels in his head and, mesmerized, goes to fix it. Like I said, you can’t keep the beast sleeping forever, especially not when said monster is forever. I’m almost sorry for this part of the preview, seeing as it takes all the suspense out of Sylar’s eventual return. (It makes it decidedly less eventual and more immediate.)

Besides which, we might have been better served examining why, exactly, Hiro’s powers are suddenly causing his brain to leak out of his face. It will just have to wait. See you in Volume Five.

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About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.

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