Sylar

Before Sylar

 A watchmaker from Queens

Gabriel Gray, is the son of a watchmaker who dreamed of being special. He is very disappointed when he has to take his father's place as a watchmaker. Soon a man named Chandra Suresh came to see Gabriel. Chandra tells Gabriel he thinks he may have special powers, believing him to be "Patient Zero" but after running some tests he begins to doubt this, though he tells Gabriel that he does have the power of intuitive aptitude - the ability to understand how things work. He decides to move on to the next person on his list.

Gabriel is angered that Dr. Suresh is so easily giving up on him and seeks revenge. He sees the name Brain Davis on a list of Chandra's and tracks him down. Gabriel is able to tell that Brian is telekinetic. Brian seems to have very weak control of his powers but Gabriel understand them perfectly. Telling Brian he is broken, Gabriel murders him by hitting him over the head, a technique he uses when he is powerless. The next day, Gabriel returns to Chandra this time displaying telekinesis.

Though the tests went well Chandra didn't like Gabriel's- now going by Sylar- ways. He decided to end the test, but Sylar hungered for more. He then killed Chandra in Chandra's own taxi cab.

Birth of Sylar

Sylar begins his killing spree across United States using the late Dr. Suresh's list. Using his stolen ability of telekinesis he would cut their heads open and "see" how their powers worked. By doing this he would gain their powers.

His list of various victims includes a superhuman victim in Barstow, James Walker, Mrs. Walker, a police officer and an FBI agent. His hunt eventually leads him to Texas where he enters a café. In this café there worked a girl named " Charlene "CharlieAndrews, a waitress with an eidetic memory. Sylar killed her and gained her powers. Hiro Nakamura tried to stop this but decided that history could not be changed, and her death was imminent.

Sylar then moved on to Claire Bennet's high school where he hoped to gain Claire's healing ability. He attack's Claire and her

 BOOM

nemesis a fellow cheerleader, Jackie, but his attack is focused on Jackie. After killing Jackie he realizes he has the wrong girl and goes after Claire. Peter Petrelli steps in and helps Claire escape. Sylar and Peter have a short fight and eventually they both fall from a fatal high onto concrete. Sylar is seemingly killed by this but seems to walk away without a scratch but in a weakenedn state. He is then captured by agents of the Company, Eden McCain and the Haitian.

While captured and locked in a cell, Eden, another "special" person, attempts to use her powers to get Sylar to kill himself. But before she can, Sylar slams her through the glass of his cell and is about to kill her when she shoots herself in the head so Sylar can't gain her powers. Sylar is then taken down with drugs, and has drugs constantly put in him to prevent him using his powers.

The tests they did to him seemed to have killed him and a man working for Mr. Bennet removed Sylar's restraints. After doing this Sylar revived and killed the man. When Mr. Bennet went to check on him he found his man dead and Sylar (appearing when he turns) who attacks him with his powers. Sylar traps Bennet in the cell he had been trapped in and then uses Bennet's driver's licence to figure out where Claire lives. But before Sylar was able to do any real damage to the Bennet family, because  Mr. Bennet arrived and shot him several times. Sylar quickly ran out the door and made his escape.

He then would find out after making a painting of the future that he would explode and kill many people. After learning this he tries to return home and live a normal life with his mother. When he talks to his mother he tries to tell her its ok to be normal but she expected more of him. He knew he would have to show her his powers now or later. So he sprayed water into the air and made it into snow but during this his mother ends up getting cut and she runs to her room. Feeling bad sylar tries to calm her down and stop her from calling him a demon. She would then pull out scissors as sylar tried to get them away from her he ended up stabbing her. She died and now sylar had nothing left to lose so why not go on a rampage.

He finds Ted Sprague in a van and causes it to crash. He cut Ted's head open and took his brain now he gains radiation powers. After painting another picture of the future he finds out he must fight peter petrelli. When Peter meets him on a rooftop the two begin to clash. Sylar was beating peter and almost killed Matt Parkman until he was hit in the head by Niki Sanders. Peter then took a couple hits to sylar but as Sylar got up Hiro appeared and stabbed sylar with a sword. As Sylar falls to the ground he makes Hiro teleport away before letting Hiro help peter from exploding. Now Nathan Petrelli takes Peter into the sky before exploding. When everyone returns they notice Sylars body is gone.

Sylar appears on a "beach" next, in episode 3, "Kindred", of season 2. It is actually an illusion of Candice o saved him, and has adopted a new identity called Michelle. She drops the illusion, and Sylar is unable to use his powers. We learn in this time that he's has been into surgery eight times for his chest. Attempting to start over again, Sylar kills Candice, and takes her power, but finds out he is unable to use it. He runs out the front door to find that he's in the middle of a jungle.

While Maya, Alejandro and Derek are on their way to America, they find a man lying in the middle of the road, Sylar. They bring him along, and he tells them his name is Gabriel, and Maya thinks this is a sign from God. When Derek finds out that the twins are killers, Sylar kills him, hoping to find out more about them. He discovers their abilities, and tells Alejandro (unable to speak or understand English) that he's going to kill both of them.

Sylar later helps Maya control her ability, in attempt to get rid of Alejandro. But Alejandro has discovered he killed his mother, but Sylar says it was an accident, and Maya understands. Alejandro won't let his sister go with Sylar though, and when he confronts Sylar, Sylar kills him. At the end of the episode, Sylar phones Mohinder, revealing that he and a "friend" are waiting for him in his apartment, with Molly.

In the next episode, Mohinder rushes into his apartment to find Maya cooking and Sylar sat in a chair. Mohinder reveals that Sylar is a killer, and Sylar pulls the gun on them. Maya begins to cry (her powers originate from this) but stops when she sees she's killing Molly too. Sylar wants his power back and knows Mohinder holds the cure, so Mohinder takes Sylar, Maya and Molly to his new lab, Issac's loft. Watching the security cameras, Elle sees Sylar and rushes to aid Mohinder. Sylar discovers that he has the virus, and when Maya confronts him about him killing her brother, he shoots her, and Mohinder uses one of the cures on her, reviving her, showing that it works. Elle suddenly rushes and attacks Sylar escapes.

Sylar is last seen in an alley taken the cure, and using his telekinetic powers to summon a can to him, stating "I'm back".

Sylar Reborn

With his regained powers, Sylar is back, and his first target... Claire Bennet. He attacks her at her very own home, when she is alone and although she tries her best to escape him, her last hope at escape fails when she stabs him in the heart with a knife and he simply stands there. He than saws off the top of her skull, laying her upon the coffee table, studying her brain as he shares a very intellectual conversation with her. At last he seems to have found what he needed and without further adue he pulls the kitchen knife from his heart, watching silently as the wound heals. Placing Claire's skull back on her head so that it heals to become a part of her, he than goes on his way, a folder full of Level 5 inmates at the Company in hand. Claire seems suprised why he did not kill her and asks him why to which he simply responds, "You still don't get it do you. Your special. You can't die...and well I guess, now neither can I." A fact that is proved only moments later when a few cops shoot at him, he heals and than casually throws them aside through use of his telekinesis.

When Sylar does break into The Company, his first target is the Company's head, Bob, whose power he takes before anyone even knows he's within the premises, Elle finds her father dead and in a panic she rushes to Level 5 in her hopes to stop Sylar. She frees HRG from his cell in Level 5, gives him a gun and asks him to help her stop Sylar, but when HRG shoots Sylar, he simply revives and heals, thanks to Claire. Than he rids himself of Noah and turns his gun to gold in front of Elle, showing her what her father could do. Finally, he craves her power and as such he begins to cut off her head. However, the stress upon her causes her electrical powers to be unleashed and go out of control, knocking Sylar and herself unconciouss as well as unintentionally freeing all the captives on Level 5, allowing some of the worst metahuman criminals on Earth to go free once again.

Sylar awakes in a cell in Level 5, where he is temporarily stripped of his powers, or at least he thinks he is, and while there Angela Petrelli, the new head of the Company comes to him and reveals that she in fact is his mother, which would explain why he was "special" all along. At first he is in disbelief but that changes over time and she gives to him a girl named Bridget with the power to know something's history by touching it, she is simply meant to feed his hunger for power. Angela than begins rehabilitation for Sylar, teaching him to control his urges and finally decides to put him in the field alongside HRG, their first mission, rescue Peter who is trapped inside the body of a Level 5 escapee. When they arrive however, Sylar is ordered to stay outside and away from the buffet of powers but of course he does not listen and eventually saves HRG, though in the process Knox is able to escape again because Sylar is distracted with Jesse as he slaughters him for his power.

For a time, Sylar is left in his cell again where he has an encounter with Peter that leads to him having his neck snapped because Peter has taken Sylar's ability and can't handle the hunger, eventually Peter is stopped but his hatred for Sylar does not die. Than Sylar finds himself on another mission, this time however he is surpringly asked to join by none other than HRG himself and so the two go hunting Stephen Canfield, a man who can create outerdimensional portals. Sylar thinks HRG needs him but in all reality it is later revealed that HRG's plan was to have Stephen send Sylar into one of those portals, ridding the world of Sylar forever, but the man cannot do it, cannot become a monster and instead sucks himself into one of the vortexes.

After that Sylar is once again, locked in his cell, only this time he is found by Daphne, the messenger of Pinehearst who gives him their card and tells them they know he is special and would like for him to join them. He refuses but still keeps the card and now gets Peter to join him in helping their mother for she has fallen into a coma, courtesy of her husband and Sylar's father, Arthur Petrelli. Peter is able to get a symbol out of her mind and Sylar shows him the card, bearing the same symbol. Peter decides to go to Pinehearst and Sylar tries to stop him but is easily defeated and left in the artificially-induced coma that Peter had been put in after his hunger had gone out of control.

Angela however awakes him when she comes to in his mind, tells him to save Peter and makes him aware of the fact that he is more powerful that he knows and shows him that he actually still is fully capable of using his powers. So he breaks free of his cell and heads off to Pinehearst to save his foolish brother, once there he does "save" Peter, but he himself is taken out by a metahuman Mohinder and has his first encounter with his father who deceives Sylar, or at least we assume so, into thinking it his mother who has been using him and that she in fact tried to kill him at birth when she saw what he would become. Sylar seems to have taken Arthur's word for this because when Peter (now stripped of his powers) returns to save Sylar, Sylar does not wish to be saved and instead he throws Peter out of the window of the building and remains with Arthur. But Peter does not die from the seven floor fall, no, he just ends up with some injuries, for it is assumed Sylar lessened the blow to save his little brother's life. This event leads to Arthur telling Gabriel that just like Peter, he too can take powers through emotion rather than slaughter.

Sylar is than put in Elle's cell, as to prove that he does not need to kill to gain power and although she begins to attack him repetitively and forcefully with her lightning strikes he only asks for more, telling her that he deserves it, all of it, perhaps a little masoschism? Eventually the two seem to get over their differences and Elle regains control of her powers, while Sylar also gains control of them, proving murder is not necessary. He and Elle end up traveling to the neighborhood of Noah Bennet when the eclipse hits and both lose their powers, consummating their love, they soon find themselves under attack by Noah who reveals Sylar is being manipulated. Sylar is killed, but when the eclipse ends he regains his powers and is out for blood, killing Elle and beginning his own mission.

Killing a woman named Sue Landers, he takes her ability to be a human lie detector and uses it to interrogate Arthur Petrelli and learn that he is not the Petrelli's son, in return he kills Arthur. He later shows up at Primatech where he takes on the role of "Jigsaw", the psychopath playing games that cost lives but in the end it is he that is killed by Claire as she shoves a shard of glass into the place where revival is impossible unless its removed.

He later appears, fully alive and well and on a quest to find his biological father, on his journey he meets a fellow superhuman psychopathic murderer named Lucas Campbell who knew his father and now seems to be bonding with Sylar on their journey to find him while resisting capture by the American government.

Sylar and Lucas goes into a bar, when agents come and tries to attack them, Lucas protects Sylar but Sylar just runs away. Syalr then coems back and saves Lucas. The drive to an old diner and here Sylar remembers his dad sellign him to a wife and husband. When he's a child he sees himself running outside to his dad seeing him get into a car with his mom, his father then slices her head with telekinesis and throw her out of the car. Sylar then leaves Lucas and goes to kill his father. He finds his father and finds out he has cancer and he's going to die. He then is attacked by his father who sees him heal himself and thinks that he can use it to live longer. Sylar overcomes his father and leaves. Sylar then behind scenes took down the Puppeteer and giving him to Danko half alive.

Danko then gets into his car to find Sylar in the back seat. Sylar tells Danko he can help find the man that killed Dankos agents. Danko then turns around and pulls a gun on Sylar, who  disappears and then is shown on top of a building. Danko gets a phone call from Sylar whot tells him that the man that killed his agents is a shapeshifter and then Sylar tells him to look in the box in the room. Danko looks and sees the face of one of his agents that was just in the room with him. He gets agents and chases him outside only to loose him. Sylar goes to the shapeshifters house and is found by Danko. Syalr gives Danko an offer that they can work together, if Sylar helps catch all the people with abilities Danko will let him get their superpowers. Danko agrees and the go after the shapshifter after finding information on his whereabouts. They find him in a club in the form of Danko, they chase him but looses him. Danko and Sylar walks out the back door and Danko turns around and shoots Sylar. The real Sylar comes from behind and takes the shapeshifters ability without cutting his head off. Noah Bennet comes and opens the body bag to see Sylar with a knife in the back of his head. The lady who showed him the bag goes back to a car with Danko in it and shifts into Sylar. Sylar states this is going to be much easier when people think hes dead. Danko says when they kill all the people with abilities he will be the last one.

Sylar is starting to have an identity crisis, shifting into his mom telling himself what he should do next. He saved rebel from the soldiers who tried to kill him. By shifting into Micah he was shot and fell into a lake. He then told rebel to run and never come back or he will kill him. When Sylar wakes up he has shifted in his sleep into someone else. Sylar sets his plans to become the President by shifting into the Senator and having a meeting with the president. Sylar meets the senator in his office when Danko arrives and shoot the senator with sleep darts. Danko then begin to tell Sylar what he want him to do, Sylar says he doesn't care and then is struck with a pocket knife into the back of his head. Danko calls for a clean up crew just as Sylar wakes up and makes a statement that it hurt.

At that point he does away with Danko (by framing him) and then proceeds to take on Nathan Petrelli's form, using this he poses as the Senator, fooling even Claire, so that he can gain an audience with the President of the United States, and of course, become him. Through a chaotic climax, full of confusion over who is who, who knows what and what is going on, Nathan, Angela, Matt Parkman, Noah and Nathan Petrelli all come to Claire's aid and to stop Sylar and in the process...Sylar murders Nathan. Angela is near her breaking point and makes a decision, Matt is to make Sylar believe himself to be Nathan, and when the dust settles it looks like it was a success. The shapeshifter who had died in Sylar's form burns on a pyre and Nathan (actually Sylar) is once again just a Senator. 

Redemption

In Los Angeles , Matt discovers his son,Matt Parkman Jr. is missing from his crib. Shortly after, he finds an apparition of Sylar (as himself) holding the child.

Sylar appears to Matt while on a bust in a drug dealer's home. Sylar tells Matt he doesn't want to be trapped inside his mind but Matt insists he will be forever trapped because it is the price they will both pay. Sylar then helps Matt by telling him the drug dealer is about to open fire. The dealer does so and Matt is able to avoid the shots and catches the bad guy. As Matt and his partner begin to search for the drugs, Sylar taunts him to use his abilities to find them. Sylar then has Matt notice a stuffed rabbit and declares that the house isn't just used for drugs but something much worse.

Sylar has made Matt find a ransom note and urges him to use his ability. Matt does so and discovers the body of a little girl, dead. Matt beats the suspect until his partner comes in and declares that there is no body. Sylar is amused at this and tells Matt that he is using his own mind game against him. As Matt's partner decides to report his actions, Matt is forced to use his telepathy to erase his memories. Sylar congratulates him and warns Matt that if he doesn't help him reclaim his body, then the mind games will continue.

Angela brings some toys to "Nathan" in his office in Washington . He picks up a toy plane and sees when Nathan used it as a child. He then picks up a baseball cap and he sees a woman jumping into a pool and dying. Sylar then goes to see Peter and tells him that he has been slowly discovering new abilities . He describes his experience with the toys and Peter tells him that it sounds like psychomethrics . When Sylar tells him about Kelly Houston, Peter wonders if someone killed her. Sylar leaves, saying that he is going to find out.

Sylar goes to see Millie , who talks with him about Kelly. She admits that she believes Kelly ran away because she was a horrible mother and Sylar goes out to the pool. He uses his clairsentience and learns that Kelly died because of him. He goes to a bar and Angela finds him and asks him why he is digging up the past. Sylar tells her that he can't let Millie think that her daughter is still alive. He tells Millie the truth but she chooses not to believe him. Soon, at a parking garage, Sylar is abducted.

The man dumps Sylar into a grave and then shoots him repeatedly. He buries the grave and leaves. Shortly after that, Sylar emerges, back in his old body.

Sylar pulls himself out from his grave and wanders the roads until a police officer, Captain Lubbock arrests him under the suspicion that he is drunk. Sylar is placed in an interrogation room and the authorities learn that he has no memory of who he is. Madeline Gibson comes to see Sylar and promises him that she will help him regain his memories. Later, while drinking tea with Madeline, Sylar describes how everything is new to him. Feelings, sounds and temperatures are all strange in his new eyes. Madeline runs an exercise with him and has him close his eyes. She tells him to tell her the first thing he sees and Sylar describes and is able to tell her the difference between the clock and the watch . Madeline leaves and Lubbock enters, saying that Sylar is a murderer who killed his mother . Sylar is afraid and tellekineticlly throws Lubbock through the window. He then grabs a ride with Madeline, reminding her that she promised she would help him.

Sylar insists that being a killer is not who he is and he believes that Madeline also thinks that. He decides to turn himself in but when he is surrendering to Lubbock, he begins to generate some electricity. Lubbock shoots Sylar and Madeline follows the body, witnessing him heal Sylar flees into the woods and comes across a carnival . Samuel Sullivan signals for him to come in and introduces the carnival as Sylar's new home.

Sylar stays inside his trailer within the carnival while Samuel and Lydia talk about him. Samuel brings Sylar outside and offers to help restore his memories. He tells him that a great damage has been done and asks Sylar to tell him what he would like to be called. Sylar thinks about it and says that he feels like "Nathan " is his name. Samuel shows Sylar around the carnival, explaining about their concept of family and the existence of power. Sylar watches as Teddy demonstrates his power and then shakes hands with Lydia and briefly remembers shaking a lot of hands. He looks at Samuel and asks if he may have been a politician. Sylar works with Lydia, who tells him about Joseph 's method of living. While working, Sylar is attacked by Edgar . He uses his telekinesis to throw the speedster into a wheelbarrow and then goes back to Samuel and tells him that he believes he used to be a pilot. Samuel is annoyed that his true memories have not yet returned and calls over Damien for assistance.

Damien takes Sylar to the hall of mirrors and uses his ability Sylar then begins to see images of all the people he has killed. Sylar is horrified and runs outside. Samuel finds him and tells him that  Captain Lubbock is at the carnival and tells him that they brought him in and risked their own safety. Sylar asks him what he wants him to do and Samuel shrugs, saying it is up to him. Sylar enters the hall of mirrors and faces Lubbock, but he does not kill him. Edgar, however, does. Later, Samuel baptizes Sylar and initiates him into the family. He happily eats dinner and then goes into a trailer with Lydia.

 Sylar in 'Redemption'

After Sylar takes over his body and has sex with his wife , Matt becomes obsessed with getting rid of Sylar. While drinking beer, he notices it seems to hurt Sylar. He keeps drinking until Sylar disappears, at which point he passes out. Sylar sees this as an opportunity and takes control over Matt's body, posing as him when he speaks to Janice and Matt. Sylar then taunts Matt, asking him if he wants his body back.

At the carnival , Sylar sees Tracy and slightly remembers her ,but Samuel informs him that they are not his memories but Sylar states that he wants to know who he truly is.

Five Years Gone

I Am Become Death

Powers

Sylar has the ability to use the powers of other super-human individuals. He acts as though he can see what makes someone possess a particular ability (although he may not notice until he pays particularly close attention). In order to incorporate the powers of others Sylar studies their brains in trm learning the brain's trick to using the ability. As he has acquired a range of other abilities this process has become rather quick. He generally uses his telekinesis to saw of the top of his target's cranium. It is believed that this part of his ability is absolutely necessary. In nature, one tapeworm can gain the knowledge of another by consuming it. This is called Cestodapetitus and it seems as though Sylar has this ability with the only differences being that he must devour his victims brain, and he gains powers instead of knowledge. Noah Bennet has implied that the DNA of these individulas is grafted into Sylar's own.

Sylar also possesses an innate (possibly superhuman) ability to understand the way that machines function, identify even degrees amounts of malfunction, and fix them. He often identifies those he finds with powers as having something wrong with them, or stating some curiosity about how they work, likening his targets to the machines he used to fix.

This list only is composed of powers that are known whom their benefactor is, other speculated powers are listed on the powers list, to the right. Currently Sylar is unable to access any of his powers, and the reason for this is only speculation.

Inuitive Aptitude: he originally has the power of understanding how things work and knowing how to fix them, it is unknown to what extent he understands things. This was shown as him knowing how clocks work and people. It has been shown on one occasion to be able to tell how people with abilities how theres work.

Telekinesis: Brian Davis. His first power to be acquired it is also the one that helped him in gaining others by slicing off skulls and taking out brains from other "special" people. He often uses it to throw things aside or to pin his victims down and he can use it with great precision. Able to use it to increase his strength to the point of throwing a teenage girl across the room and break her arm and snap her neck. He can use it with precise and pick up multiple glass shards.

Eidetic Memory: Charlene Andrews. His first victim seen killed he is never actually seen using this power while she is numerous times, if he realized the truth of this power it is likely he would have used it to memorize the Mohinder's list when he saw it, but he didn't, so whether he has this power or knows how to use it is unknown.

Liquefaction: Zane Taylor. This victim trusted Sylar believing him to be Mohinder but was murdered for his spectacular power. Sylar mastered it within a few hours, showing off his great skills to the real Mohinder claiming to have had an epiphany.

Super Hearing: Dale Smither. It first seemed that this power was uncontrollable as it is always active and makes his hearing super sensitive but after a time he has adjusted and uses the power to great effect.

Precogniton: Isaac Mendez. His benefactor knew that he was coming by using this power and he was amazed by this. He spent quite a bit of time painting the future and unlike Peter was his first time, Sylar seemed to have great skill in painting and painted images that intrigued him greatly and made him afraid, one where he was the President of the United States (beneath an illusion of his own creation).

Radiation: Ted Sprague. This power made him unsure about his future because he feared he would cause the bomb that destroyed NYC, and unlike his other murders, these would be "innocent" people unlike the others. He has great control over this ability able to keep it into a ball of energy in his hands.

Personality

Sylar demonstrates classic antisocial behavior. He displays little remorse for what he does, and often acts as though his actions are justified. He has stated on multiple occasions his desire to be "special" above all other things and that the original owners of his powers did not deserve or appreciate them. His main motivation seems to be his constant efforts to acquire more powers, perhaps to be the only "special" person left. Mr. Bennet has stated that the addition of so much foreign DNA has damaged Sylar's sanity and judgement by affecting the functions of his brain.