Sylar

Template:Heroes character box Gabriel Gray, more commonly known by his assumed name of Sylar, is a fictional character, one of the primary antagonists in the NBC drama Heroes. Portrayed by Zachary Quinto, he is a superpowered serial killer who targets other superhumans in order to steal their powers. While he served as the primary villain of the first season, he has since begun the road to redemption in Season 3.

It was recently revealed that he is the biological son of Angela and Arthur Petrelli, thus making him brother of Nathan and Peter Petrelli, as well as the uncle of Claire Bennet. However, as of information revealed in "The Eclipse, Part 2", this may not be true.

Concept and creation

Sylar was originally created as a cannibal who ate his victims' brains and "digested their power"; however, in order to avoid the potential silliness and zombie associations, the producers deliberately made this fact vague in the series, though it is at times implied that he does indeed eat the brains. In an interview with series creator Tim Kring, it is asked if Sylar eats brains, and he merely states, "That's the popular speculation. There's a connection between the powers and the brain, and Sylar has found it." The question is finally resolved in the season three premiere, when he is depicted in the act of acquiring Claire Bennet's power. When Claire asks him the same question, he responds with disgust at the idea. Exactly what happened to the brains of victims other than Claire is still unknown.

Prior to Quinto's first appearance in the episode "Seven Minutes to Midnight", the role of Sylar is played by stunt doubles, with the character's face being obscured by shadows. Sylar's voice during a telephone conversation is that of voice actor Maurice LaMarche.

Personality

Sylar was raised as the son of a watchmaker, but always felt that he was special and deserved more in life. This and the "evolutionary imperative" to acquire new abilities are what drive him to kill the victims with powers. Taking the name "Sylar" from a watch brand, he has shed all connections to his former life as Gabriel Gray, to the point where he angrily lashes out at anyone who calls him Gabriel (with the exceptions of his mother and when he temporarily lost his powers). Quinto has said of his character,

"The sad part is, he's initially well-intentioned. He wants to improve his life. He wants to make a difference. He wants to matter. Through the process of realizing how to do that, he gets blinded and loses himself in the pursuit of it and goes a little crazy—'a little' being an understatement."

Quinto also observed,

"He's definitely somebody that has been overcome by a hunger and overcome by a pursuit for power and for importance that did start a little more innocuously than it evolved into."

When asked if he thought Sylar was irredeemable or not, Quinto responded,

"I think there's a certain point at which you cross a line and it's sort of irrevocable.... I don't know what the writers have in mind, but it would probably be kind of a challenge at this point, you know?"

Quinto has also responded to the question of whether Sylar could ever be good, commenting that,

"I don't really look at him as, you know, absolutely good or bad. I think that he is constantly walking a line of ambiguity within himself and uncertainty within himself that defines the way he acts."

Character history

Genesis

File:Heroes Sylar2.jpg

Sylar was originally portrayed by stunt doubles before the casting of Zachary Quinto, as evidenced in his appearance during "One Giant Leap".

The episode "Six Months Ago" reveals that Sylar's real name is Gabriel Gray, a highly talented watch repairman. He encounters Chandra Suresh, who tells Gabriel that he may be an evolved human with superhuman powers. Gabriel eagerly submits to testing. After being rejected by Suresh because the test results are indeterminate, Gray contacts another person on Suresh's list, Davis. Gray discovers that he himself has the power of intuitive aptitude, and murders Davis for his telekinetic powers. After returning to Suresh, he becomes "Patient Zero", and continues to work with Suresh until Suresh realizes that Sylar is murdering the people that they meet. He kills Suresh soon after.

In "Villains", Hiro sees Sylar's life shortly after the murder of Brian Davis. Intensely remorseful over the act, Gabriel attempts to hang himself. Elle walks in and saves him, convincing him that he's a good person. However, she is actually working with Noah Bennet to get Sylar to reveal the method behind transferring powers from one person to another. Elle befriends Gabriel and the two begin to share feelings for each other. Against her wishes, Elle helps Noah manipulate him to kill again by introducing Gabriel to Trevor Zeitlan, a young man who can kinetically shatter objects by "shooting" at them with his thumb and forefinger. She purposefully enrages Gabriel by having Trevor repeatedly demonstrate his ability by shattering glasses while calling him "special." Gabriel turns on Elle, who tries to stop him from killing Trevor. When Gabriel realizes Elle also has an ability he is furious and commands her to leave before turning on Trevor and taking his power. Bennett and Elle watch from the car as Gabriel attacks Trevor.

Sylar is first referenced in the first episode when Mohinder Suresh finds a cassette tape labeled "SYLAR" on both sides in his dead father's New York apartment. His character is next mentioned in the series as a mysterious serial killer sought out by the FBI, whose existence is completely speculative. Appearing as a shadowy figure, he attempts to obtain Molly Walker's power after failing the first time, obtains the power of Charlie Andrews, and attempts to obtain Claire Bennet's regenerative abilities, but is stopped by Peter Petrelli. He is greatly injured and is captured by Eden McCain and the Haitian to be experimented on. After various experiments, Sylar manages to escape, but he is again repelled from an attempt to obtain Claire's power.

Remembering Suresh's list, Sylar makes his way to Zane Taylor, and by posing as the person Zane was expecting, Mohinder Suresh, he kills him and obtains his power. After Mohinder arrives, Sylar poses as Zane, and convinces Mohinder to take him to help convince other people with special abilities that Mohinder’s research is real. After meeting and obtaining enhanced hearing from a woman named Dale, Mohinder discovers Sylar's identity and manages to incapacitate him with drugs. After experimenting on Sylar to create a new list of people with special powers and attempting to kill him, Mohinder is captured. After Peter shows up and is temporarily killed by Sylar, Mohinder knocks him out, but ends up leaving Isaac Mendez's address on the ground.

After meeting Isaac, and being told that his fate is to die at the hands of the other heroes, he takes Isaac's power to paint the future. He soon finishes a painting depicting himself about to kill and acquire the power of the radioactive Ted Sprague, and believes himself to be the "exploding man". Believing that only those who "don't deserve" their powers are the ones that need to die, he doesn't want to kill innocent people. After attempting to confide in Mohinder, he returns home to his mother in the hope that she will tell him that it is fine not to be special and live as a normal watchmaker. She tells him that he can be anything, including the president, causing him to demonstrate his powers and accidentally injure her. This causes her to panic, which eventually leads to her death, and Sylar deciding that his path is correct.

After acquiring the radioactive powers of Ted, Sylar paints a picture of himself facing off against Peter Petrelli at Kirby Plaza. Realizing Peter is part of his final destiny, Sylar prepares to hunt him down. Before he can leave, Ando Masahashi arrives to kill him, though Ando is easily thwarted. After Sylar discovers the comic depicting his death at the hands of Hiro Nakamura, Hiro appears and rescues Ando. Sylar sets off for Kirby Plaza to wait for Peter. After a struggle involving Sylar, Peter, Matt Parkman, and Niki Sanders, Peter begins the process of exploding, showing Sylar that he is not the exploding man. Soon after, Hiro arrives and impales Sylar through the chest as the comic predicts, terribly wounding him. His last act is to telekinetically throw Hiro towards a building, forcing him to teleport and rendering him incapable of stopping Peter, as he collapses with a triumphant grin on his face while events that transpired throughout the season that end with his injury by Hiro play in his eyes. However, near the end of the episode, a trail of blood leading from where Sylar collapsed and ending at an open manhole is seen, indicating that Sylar is still alive.

Generations

Sylar is rescued by Candice Wilmer, who uses her powers of illusion to make Sylar disappear. After undergoing eight surgeries, he eventually awakes and realizes that he cannot use his powers. Though Candice promises that they will come back eventually, he kills her and attempts to acquire her power in order to start over. After realizing that it also doesn't work, he attempts to leave, though he realizes that he is in the middle of a dense jungle in Mexico. After wandering for three days, he is rescued from the brink of death by the passing-by Maya and Alejandro Herrera. He introduces himself using his real name, and eventually finds out that they are in search of Chandra Suresh to help control Maya's power. He tells them that he knows Suresh, and that he will take them to him.

He continues to travel with them, and while Alejandro becomes more distrustful of Sylar, Maya becomes more trusting of him. After teaching Maya to control her powers, he convinces her that her brother hates her and that in her heart she wanted to see his wife dead. Convincing her to send Alejandro away, Sylar is eventually confronted by Alejandro. He kills him, but states that he would have let Alejandro go had he not come back. Soon after, Maya confesses her love for Gabriel, and they reach Mohinder's apartment. Sylar attempts to obtain a cure for his condition, later revealed to be the same strain of the Shanti Virus which Niki was infected with. Upon finding that Sylar cannot use any of his obtained abilities, Mohinder attempts to kill Sylar, causing Maya to find out Sylar's true intentions. Sylar then takes Maya, Mohinder and Molly hostage, forcing Mohinder to give him the cure. Elle walks in and injures Sylar, but he is able to escape with the cure.

Villains

In the third season, Sylar injects himself with the cure, healing his wounds and regaining use of his telekinesis. Sylar makes his way to California and takes Claire's power, though he does not kill her, claiming that she is special and that he couldn't do so even if he wanted to. He also takes several of the Company files on superhumans she had collected.

Sylar breaks into Company headquarters, killing Bob Bishop and acquiring his power. He is captured after attempting to take Elle's power, which results in her involuntarily releasing an electric burst which knocks him unconscious. The discharge also disables the Level 5 security system, allowing a dozen dangerous inmates to escape the complex. Before Sylar can regain consciousness, he is locked up. During his imprisonment, Angela Petrelli reveals that she is his mother and attempts to rehabilitate him. She allows him to kill Bridget Bailey, a woman who can see the history of an object by touching it, in order to feed his hunger for power. When Noah Bennet returns to the Company to hunt down the escaped villains, Angela assigns Sylar as his partner, sending the two out to confront the villains and save the trapped Peter Petrelli.

Wanting to prove he is not just a killer, to both himself and Bennet, Sylar saves Bennet from Jesse and Knox, two of the escaped villains. However, his "hunger" reasserts itself and he kills Jesse, allowing Knox to escape in the confusion. Sylar is placed in his cell once more, where he is visited by Peter, who angrily snaps his neck after Sylar reveals that they are brothers. Peter, having absorbed Sylar's power and thereby his hunger, nearly kills Angela before Sylar knocks him unconscious. As Angela deals with her youngest son, Bennet arrives to take Sylar along to capture another Level 5 inmate. Sylar is surprised that Bennet would want to take him, but Bennet rebuffs him and tells him not "make it harder than it already is." Noah chastises him about the murder at the bank, and Sylar states that "rehabilitation doesn't happen overnight. I am trying."

They track the escapee, Stephen Canfield, to an empty house, unaware that Claire has already made her way there. The man creates a powerful vortex in the room which nearly sucks in Claire, but Sylar saves her at the last minute. The power gained from Bridget enables him to experience the horror she went through, so he attempts to sincerely apologize to her, but she regards him with anger and disgust, and Bennet emphatically tells him to never to speak to his daughter again. The three find Stephen at an amusement park, where Bennet tries to force him into killing Sylar in exchange for freedom; though Sylar is clearly aware of what Noah is trying to do, he doesn't do anything to stop him. Rather than become a killer, Stephen kills himself with his power instead. Sylar later calmly remarks to Claire that her father doesn't see people with abilities as human, and never will.

Sylar is returned to his cell once more, where he is approached by Daphne Millbrook with an offer to join Pinehearst Industries, who will accept him for what he is. Sylar refuses, wanting to change. After they leave, Sylar revives Peter so he can help Angela Petrelli. Peter is initially skeptical, but Sylar's willingness to change combined with experience with the future Sylar convinces him; Peter's description of the future Gabriel Gray also gives Sylar hope that he can be redeemed. When Peter discovers the Pinehearst logo in her mind and attempts to go there, Sylar tries to stop him from doing so, but Peter easily defeats him due to his wider variety of powers and places him in an artificially-induced coma just as he had been. Angela is able to use her powers to wake him so he can rescue Peter, who has been stripped of his powers by Arthur Petrelli. Sylar does as asked, but is convinced by Arthur to turn on his mother. Arthur has Sylar throw a powerless Peter out a seventh-story window, but Peter miraculously survives. In "It's Coming", Arthur reveals that he knows Sylar slowed Peter's fall. Arthur is not angry; instead, he uses this event as evidence that Sylar can use his emotions like Peter could, to obtain someone's power without killing them.

Sylar is placed in a cell with Elle, who is restrained and still suffers from her uncontrolled ability. She is furious at Sylar for her father's murder and repeatedly electrocutes him to no avail. Sylar confronts Elle with his sorrow for what he's done as well as her sorrow for what she's done. She rages at him and continues to attack, finally collapsing and begging him to kill her so that her pain will go away. He forgives her for turning him into a monster and convinces her to forgive herself for her crimes, wanting to take away her pain without killing her. At that moment, Elle's pain disappears and she regains control of her ability. Likewise, Sylar is able to absorb her power. Sylar is overwhelmed by this development, as he no longer has to kill to satisfy his hunger. The two appear to rekindle their old feelings for each other as Elle teaches Sylar how to use her ability. In The Eclipse, Sylar is relieved when he loses his abilities, and wishes to restart his life with Elle. However, after Noah Bennet claims that Angela and Arthur Petrelli are not his real parents and are just manipulating him, Sylar realizes that he will never change. Having regained his abilities after the eclipse ended, Sylar attacks Elle, using his telekinesis to cut across her skull as he did before. Her screams quiet just as he looks up with a smile.

Alternate timelines

• In the first alternate future depicted, set five years ahead in the episode "Five Years Gone", Sylar has gained countless new abilities, including those of Candice Wilmer and D. L. Hawkins. Nathan Petrelli, now the President, concocted a story for the explanation of New York's destruction, which blamed Sylar for the explosion, and he is assumed to be deceased. Sylar is able to use Candice's ability to murder Nathan and assume his identity. As President, he begins a campaign to hunt and exterminate all people with abilities, originally claiming that it will unite the world in grief. However, he really just doesn't want the competition. When Claire Bennet is captured, he has her brought to him, pretending to be her father. However, he simply desires one final ability, hers, which he takes. Later, while giving a speech in the ruins of New York, he is informed by Matt Parkman that Peter, the future Hiro, and Ando are staging an attack to free the present-day Hiro. Upon hearing this, Sylar, still disguised as Nathan, flies away from the crowd. He confronts Peter, revealing himself, and they prepare for battle.

• In a timeline set four years in the future, as seen in the season three episode "I Am Become Death", Sylar has reassumed his identity of Gabriel Gray and is working to suppress his homicidal hunger for the sake of his son, Noah, who lives with him and Mr. Muggles in Claire's former home in Costa Verde. He is visited by the Peter Petrelli of the present, who is intent on learning how to activate the intuitive ability he has absorbed from him so that he can understand the complexities of changing the timeline. Gabriel is initially reluctant, resisting telepathic compulsion to teach Peter, but ultimately relents and tutors him after painting a precognitive picture of the Earth exploding, despite warning Peter that with the intuitive ability comes the same homicidal hunger he has been trying to resist. Shortly afterwards, a team led by Claire Bennet storms the house intent on killing Peter, and in the ensuing fight, Noah is killed. Enraged and grief-stricken, Gabriel loses control of his radiation ability and releases a nuclear detonation, destroying Costa Verde and killing over 200,000 people. Whether or not he survived the explosion is unknown.

Powers, abilities and skills

Sylar's base power, as described by Chandra Suresh, is "intuitive aptitude", the ability to understand and manipulate patterns within complex systems. As revealed in "One of Us, One of Them", this power comes with a nearly insatiable hunger for "understanding", which, in Sylar's case, specifically refers to craving the powers of others, driving him to kill other superpowered humans to make their powers his own. Despite the strength of this hunger, two episodes have shown that it can be resisted or satiated: in the alternate future of "Five Years Gone", Sylar has taken on enough abilities that he simply desires to get rid of all of his potential "competition" (other superhumans, to be exact); in the future of "I Am Become Death", he has resumed his identity as Gabriel Gray and denies his hunger for the sake of his son.

Sylar's intuitive aptitude allows him to deduce the workings of the powers of others; by examining the brain of his victim, he is able to find the brain's connection to the ability, and once he finds said connection, he can immediately replicate the power himself. However, he cannot acquire an ability from a dead person, even if their brains are intact. In "Fallout", Noah Bennet states that Sylar's additional powers are a product of using foreign DNA to alter his own, which has also had the side effect of driving him insane.

Of all the powers Sylar has acquired, the most prominently used is telekinesis, which is the first power he took. In contrast to the limited abilities Brian Davis displayed, Sylar's skills are far more advanced; he exhibits both fine control (precisely cutting open the skulls of his victims) and sheer force (flipping a police van), in addition to being able to use it to enhance his own strength and durability to superhuman levels. Tests done on Sylar by Bennet's associate Hank show no overt signs of powers other than telekinesis; while their tests show that he possesses other powers, they are unable to identify what they are. In "The Hard Part", Sylar demonstrates he can use at least two of his acquired abilities at the same time.

During his first killing spree, Sylar acquires or displays the following abilities:

Power	Victim	Episode
Telekinesis	Brian Davis	"Six Months Ago"
Kinetic projection	Trevor Zeitlan	"Villains"
Cryokinesis	James Walker	"Don't Look Back"
Enhanced Memory	Charlie Andrews	"Seven Minutes to Midnight"
Liquification	Zane Taylor	"Run!"
Superhuman hearing	Dale Smither	"Unexpected"
Precognition (expressed through visual art)	Isaac Mendez	".07%"
Induced radioactivity	Ted Sprague	"Landslide"

After being injected with the Shanti virus by the Company, Sylar loses all of his abilities. After he is cured at the end of the second season, he only regains his abilities of intuitive aptitude and telekinesis. In the third season, Sylar acquires the following abilities:

Power	Victim	Episode
Rapid cellular regeneration	Claire Bennet	"The Second Coming"
Alchemic transmutation	Bob Bishop	"The Butterfly Effect"
Clairsentience	Bridget Bailey	"One of Us, One of Them"
Sound manipulation (expressed through voice)	Jesse Murphy
Electric manipulation	Elle Bishop	"It's Coming" (through empathic mimicry) "The Eclipse, Part 2" (through intuitive aptitude)

In "It's Coming", Sylar learns how to gain abilities without removing a person's brain, obtaining Elle Bishop's power of electric manipulation by empathizing with her and convincing her to let go of her anger. This empathy allowed him to retain the use of Brian Davis' telekinesis after being cured of the virus, due to the guilt he felt over his death. Arthur explains that Sylar possessed this ability all along.

Reception

Sylar was named one of the best new villains on TV by Entertainment Weekly. Sylar was also named the best villain of 2007 by IGN.

Appearances in other media

Zachary Quinto provides the voice of a Robot Chicken-parodied Sylar in the episode "Bionic Cow". In it, he kills a man named "Uncle Glen", who is apparently able to remove his fingers, failing to realize that this is a simple sleight of hand trick to impress young children. He instead inherits Glen's power of "explosive diarrhea," remarking that sometimes his power backfires.

External links

• Sylar on the Heroes wiki