Heroes (TV series)/Headscratchers/Peter

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Peter can fly, so why did Nathan have to fly him up over the city when he could have done it by himself?

  • Peter is an idiot. Plus, he was kinda distracted by exploding.
    • It's kind of implied that Peter can only use one power at a time, because his powers are activated by recreating the moods, emotions, and general personalities of the person whose power he's using in his mind. Thus, he wouldn't be able to feel Nathan's Magnificent Bastard confidence and Ted's crazed, brutish, paranoia at the same time to use both powers simultaneously.
      • The writers say that he couldn't concentrate enough to use any other powers - just like he couldn't concentrate enough to stop the explosion. It should have been explained in the episode, though.
        • Can you say, "Ass Pull?" The series has a fair sprinkling of that all around (like Hiro's mysterious power loss and power regain).
        • I've seen the explanation that Peter tends to "overheat" whenever he uses too many powers in too short a time (see Peter's training fight with Claude; notable exception: the in-control future-Peter of 5YG), and if this happens, even activating one more power will mean Peter loses control completely and the whole house of cards falls down... and explodes. That's why, when he finally started massively using powers against Sylar in the Season One finale, Ted's power (the latest one he had absorbed and the most uncontrollable one) activated without Peter's conscious decision. Remember how Sylar saw this and started laughing.

Peter left Caitlin in the future, but we know the future can change.

So what happens to Caitlin if the world is saved and the virus doesn't wipe out 93% of the population? Will she disappear forever? Will she still be stuck in 2008 2012, but now it's the 2008 that results from preventing the virus? Will the universe collapse on itself? Will Peter think of any of this and go back for her before trying to change the future?

  • Good question. I would think that she would vanish along with that timeline, although it would be funny if she reappeared in this timeline while being flown back to Ireland... in a plane that isn't there any more...
  • If there hadn't been a future ridden by the virus to go to, it didn't happen, meaning Caitlin is back in Montreal wondering wth happened, and Peter only remembers the events of the time travel due to actually having the time-traveling powers. At least that seems to be what happened.
    • That future didn't happen, but Peter's trip to it still did. And there's no particular reason for Caitlin to be spontaneously propelled back to the present. I will be seriously disappointed if the writers take the easy way out and bring her back with no further effort on Peter's part.
      • Agreed, but remember: Writers' Strike. Truncated plotlines. I'm glad we're rid of Caitlin, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
      • Also, I wouldn't be surprised if it was still possible to get to that future, somehow. Maybe by going back to before the virus was destroyed, and then going forward into the future Peter's Dinotopian Girlfriend Caitlin was stranded in? Of course, I'm not sure if Peter could either come up with this plan (considering how often he seems to carry around the Idiot Ball) or pull it off (considering that time travel isn't one of the powers he's much good at), but maybe with help...
      • I guess that when the future changed, Caitlin remained in it, forgetting everything about the other future, the one that was averted, and getting new memories about the future that became. Maybe she's still in NY, as an illegal alien, or got caught and deported back to Ireland. Anyhow she's still living in the future world, probably cursing the day she met Peter. If I was him, after all that happened, I wouldn't be too eager to meet her again...

Peter. He just bugs me.

At first he was fine, even interesting, but as soon as he got some control over his powers, he's been a combination of Too Dumb to Live, Poor Communication Kills, and Deus Exit Machina. The writers should have just Retool'ed his powers to be more limited copies (slower flight, weak telekinesis) or kept as proximity sensitive, then they wouldn't have to send him to Ireland or make him an idiot.

  • Yeah, seriously, why didn't they just leave his powers like they were in early season one, where he had to be close to someone to use their power? It was working just fine. And if you think about it, the plot of Season One really needn't have been all that different. Let's review his major actions in the last part of Season One:
    • He goes to Mohinder's apartment, gets attacked by Sylar, throws Sylar into a glass cabinet with telekinesis, thus freeing Mohinder from Sylar's telekinetic hold. Then Sylar throws glass at him, which sticks in his head. Mohinder defeats Sylar, then takes Peter back to the Petrelli house, where Claire pulls the glass out of his head and he regenerates. The fight with Sylar would have to be reworked a bit, but otherwise it could have gone exactly the same way.
    • In the FYG future, he rescues Future Hiro and Ando by stopping time and then teleporting them away. Obviously, there wouldn't be any problems there.
    • Later, he assaults the Homeland Security building along with Future Hiro. Future Hiro's powers should have been sufficient to take out the guards, and if you absolutely had to have those one or two shots of him throwing Swat guys around, Future Niki could have come along too.
    • He fights Future Sylar. He would have had all the powers that Sylar had gained over the years, easily enough to hold his own.
    • Back in the present, Mr. Bennet recruits him to stop Sylar. Again, he'd still be the only one who could match Sylar's power in a fight. The events leading up to this would have to be changed, but not by that much.
    • Finally, he starts to explode and Nathan has to fly him into the sky where he can explode safely. Okay, this one does require him to keep a power if he moves away from the person, but all he needs is to keep that particular power for a few minutes. It's easy to think of some other way to allow this.
      • But then Claude would be no use as a character, so we would have a) lost one of the best characters in the series and b) Peter would have had nothing to do in the middle of the series.
  • I do wish they'd kept him as a Badass Normal instead of restoring his powers, or at least making it a little harder than jabbing himself with a needle. An interview with Bryan Fuller says that we're going to see him as a paramedic in Volume 4, though, so we're getting back to sort-of normal at least.
  • So... is this about the character or the writing staff?

Why did everybody think that Peter was in danger during the explosion until they discovered he absorbed Claire's power?

Ted proved that exploding people aren't damaged by the radiation and explosions they create.

  • I suppose he might be harmed by the debris, but I was wondering the same thing.
  • Well, I don't believe any of them had met Ted by that point, so they didn't know how the power worked. All they knew was that Peter was going to somehow generate a nuclear explosion.

Future Peter put present Peter in the body of one of the Company's prisoners.

But what happened to that guy's mind and Peter's actual body?

  • Tonight's episode made it look like Peter's body was somehow stuffed into the criminal's. The criminal's mind was still in there too, apparently semi-aware of what was happening.


And now Peter, one of the show's Healing Factor heroes, has a scar. Again.

In the same episode that another Healing Factor hero has a part of their body entirely removed, then reattached, without a mark.

  • Well, he is from a future where people with super powers are persecuted and exploited. I suppose it's not too much to assume that at some point he's been in a situation where his powers were repressed for a significant period of time - proximity to the Haitian, infection with a strain of the Shanti virus, etc.
  • Peter's powers also seem to be a lot less reflexive. Maybe he's intentionally repressing the healing factor so as to remained scarred for some reason.
  • He's from a mysterious future we don't know about where super powered people are killed and experimented on. The writers know he has a healing factor, he uses it several times. It's obviously intentional to hint at something we don't know about yet. Why is this so hard for some people?
    • Because giving a character a cool scar is just usually a cheap way of making them older and more badass than anything significant.
    • It's also a handy shortcut for telling the two Peters apart.
  • I always thought it related to the reason Claire can have a tan, as mentioned above: Their regeneration powers allow them to heal back from very significant wounds. Getting your face messed up is nowhere near as important, physiologically speaking, as cutting off a toe or getting shot.
    • Or your foster brother putting a staple in your finger?
  • I suspected that Future Peter's storyline was similar to Bishop of the X-Men, then the facial scar might be a Shout-Out to Bishop's M tattoo.

So Peter can be killed permenantly by a bullet to the head, but he and Claire can survive being at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion? Huh?

  • As long as the explosion doesn't lodge something in his brain... But seriously, yes, even a regenerator should not survive being burned to ash. The only reason I could see for Peter surviving the first explosion in Season 1 was that he exploded, or rather the energies blasted outwards from him instead of his actual body actually exploding. We've never seen if Peter was even injured, we ony saw Nathan get roasted during the flashback at the start of Season 2. When Ted started to go "nuclear" in that scene in Season 1 at the Bennet House, Ted's clothes and furniture around him started to get charred from the heat radiating from him, but Ted himself was unmarked, being the source of the energy, and being immune to his own radioactivity and energy powers. So, the real question is, where was Sylar after Sylar going nuclear in grief and anger in "I Am Become Death" after his son had been killed? If Peter and Claire survived, Sylar totally should have done, too.
    • Maybe it's because Sylar didn't want to survive. One of the reasons he was such an interesting threat (in S1 at least... hope springs eternal for S3) was that he had complete mastery of all the powers he stole, in many cases above and beyond that of the original owners. It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to think he may have found some way to turn off the ones that are usually involuntary like healing. Hiro lost his powers when he lost his self confidence and Elle lost control of hers when Sylar tried to kill her, so emotions can dampen/increase powers.
    • Plus... it's conceivable that Sylar did survive, and just didn't do anything camera-worthy after blowing everything up. Just because it happens offscreen doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
  • Now that I think about it, it's probable that Future Peter was permenantly killed because the Haitian was there to block his regeneration, not because Future Claire shot him in the head. So, if headshots are NOT permenant kills, then by Magic A Is Magic A logic it's conceiveable that Pete and Claire could survive a nuke... although of course if you use real world logic you run straight into another brick wall (would there be enough of them left to regenerate from?).
    • Eclipse shows us that regenerating powers work after death if the source of blocking is gone, and the Haitian is nowhere to be seen where they keep the body. Furthermore, after Sylar explodes, we see Present Peter by Claire, they both have healing powers, but while Claire is normal save for that, Peter is full of powers, How the hell did she catch him? she didn't even have a weapon, since it was destroyed in the explosion. And then, Slyar+ Peter vs. Claire+ Daphne+ Knox doesn't make any sense either: two powerhouses versus two medicre at best powers and one that's useless in battle (a gun is not the best choice against telekinesis), easy call, right? wrong, knox was only powered by Sylar's son, and he had been owned by him in the present. Everything about the future is pure unadulterated nonsense.

So Future Peter tells Present Peter that they needs Sylar's power to fix the past in Season 3...

  • How many paradoxes were caused by this episode? Future Peter takes Present Peter to his time and is promptly killed. Present Peter goes to Sylar and gets his power. So why does Future Peter need to get Sylar's power if his past self already had it?
    • Our Peter had ceased to be that Peter's actual past self; he'd already changed history by that point, theoretically causing the timeline to branch off from his own. Thus, anything which happened to our Peter from then on would no longer affect Future!Peter.
  • For that matter, why didn't Peter have that power in the first place? He got telekinesis from Sylar and it is well established at this point that all Peter needs to do to absorb a power is get close to another powered person.
    • He most likely did, but he wasn't able to activate it.
    • In the episode, Sylar seemed capable of somehow "blocking" Peter's attempts to absorb the aptitude, up to the point where Peter had to actually get his permission to gain it. It's conceivable he already had the power on and active by the time he and Peter met.
    • I thought Sylar was blocking Peter's attempts to use Matt's telepathy to pull the info on how to access his power out of his head, since we've never seen anyone able to "block" Peter's attempts to copy their powers but we have seen that it's possible to block a telepath who isn't Maury level proficient (Angela with Matt in the police station), but same general idea.

What, so Peter doesn't just have "the hunger" now, but is also a raging psychotic?

  • Now that he's absorbed Sylar's power, Peter screams through every conversation ("Raaar! I'll never be like Sylar! NOW I EAT YOUR BRAIN!") and ends up trying to kill every single person he meets seconds after saying "hi". I mean, I can understand Peter having homicidal urges, but even Sylar in season 1 was able to act natural, hold a normal conversation, and not kill everyone he met.
    • It really seems like they're confusing "Dark" with "Chaotic Stupid".
      • Also, Peter's an idiot. Sylar's all about control while Peter's all about the lack thereof (Hell, that's why HE thought he was going to blow up NYC before he knew about Ted), and has never had any grasp on turning off powers he's just gotten.
  • Also, Peter's "motive" for stealing brains seems to be that he thinks he can read people's minds by looking at their brains. Um, why doesn't he just read their minds Parkman-style like he normally does? Would Peter really be able to read someone's mind by ripping out their brain and studying it, or is he just batflip insane now? I mean, Sylar at least got a tangible benefit from stealing brains (gaining powers by studying the part of the brain that controls them). With Peter, it just seems like a case of Sylar's power making him crazy and insane.
    • They've established that basic telepathy can only listen to someone's internal monologue. So if someone isn't saying anything in their head, their mind can't be read. Peter has a "hunger" to understand what makes a person tick and why they do what they do which requires a bit more than simple mind-reading. Sylar's power is warping his understanding of how to get that information.

Do Peter, Sylar and Arthur all have differing degrees of the same absorption power?

It would explain a lot - like how Arthur knows so much about his sons' powers and that Sylar's "Hunger" can apparently be cured by his getting in touch with his sense of Empathy. It would also explain how Sylar is now able to absorb powers without killing. But it doesn't explain...

  • ...why would Peter need to go to the future, meet a non-crazy Sylar and take his power so that Peter would be able to understand the ramifications of his altering the time stream?
    • The key here would be the "differing degrees" part of your summary. While Peter's power kicked off from Empathy, Sylar's kicked off from Understanding. Being all care-bear sympathetic with people the way Peter's power works would not allow him to figure out the mechanics of an erratic, butterfly-filled timeline, while Sylar's original start-off power would.
  • ...why would Peter need special permission from Sylar to absorb his power when Peter's absorbtion has always been an automatic reflex?
    • For one, we don't even know what other powers Sylar has. He may somehow have one directly related to blocking that kind of absorption. For another, similar powers have been shown to interfere with each other in the past - remember when Matt and Peter first met, and all they could do was give each other headaches?
    • It's possible that, lacking permission, Peter's ability would just keep absorbing one stolen power of Sylar's after another. He couldn't risk absorbing so many other abilities that quickly, else he might blow up all over again.
  • ...why didn't Peter feel the influence of The Hunger before he absorbed if from Sylar?
    • Again, "differing degrees". Peter's power was Empathic from the beginning, while The Hunger was based on wanting to have the power, without having a non-lethal way to get to it. Potentially, the Sylar of that timeline never discovered the Empathic application of his power, and so when Peter got the power from him, he didn't also get the realisation that killing isn't necessary to the process.

When did Peter's scar disappear?

Maybe it was just the choppy signal I got, but I could swear that in the "The Eclipse", Peter didn't have his face scar the whole time he was in Haiti.

  • Eh? Present-day Peter has yet to acquire a facial scar; only versions of him from crapsack futures seem to have it. And the future Peter from the version of the future that we've seen this season is dead, so I think that means we can't see any more of that Peter until they avert this particular apocalypse, establishing a new timeline...or something.
    • Actually, Present Day Peter DID get his face scarred after Sylar threw him through the window just as Elle and Claire were walking up to the Pinehearst building in "Eris Quod Sum". It was one of several injuries from the broken glass Claire had to help him bind since, as she noted, he wasn't healing the damage because his powers were gone.

This is an oldie, but still. Why did Future!Peter involve Jesse in the whole process at all?

Here he has a power which allows the insertion of someone into another person's body, thus taking over control of that person, including all powers. So, here's an idea: since you want to replace yourself in that timeline, why don't you insert yourself into your past self's body instead of shoving him off somewhere else and relying on an illusion?

  • Well... maybe he could only insert other people into bodies, and not himself? Alternatively, he might only be able to remove the 'inserted' people from the outside, so if he possessed someone, he'd be trapped inside. And of course, there's always the risk that merging together two Peters would create an all-consuming black hole of stupid that will consume all life.
  • Future!Peter was still Present!Peter and also had quite a few powers. Given that Present!Peter pretty much exemplified Idiot Ball when he had powers and became a Badass Normal the second he lost them it would seem that Powers = Idiocy. Future!Peter was as idiotic as Past!Peter. But now we're dipping into WMG.
    • It was stated that while Peter was inside Jesse, he has access ONLY to Jesse's powers. If Future!Peter Put himself inside Present!Peter, then he would have Present!Peter's powers only, and no means of escape.


Why was Peter so worried about falling out of the plane?

He can fly!

  • Based on the fight scene, it seems like he only has the power of the last person he touches; he went from owning those guards to hurting his fist on the guy's face (which, whatever) after touching Ali Larter.
    • Based on the power of the "vacuum" described below, and since it managed to rip a chair off the plane and throw it around, I'd think Peter would need Mohinder's power just to hold on at all. After Nathan's contrived stupidity with Claire, this whole episode was a season(3.5)-starting Wall Banger for me. I'm not sure there's any good reason to believe Mohinder's power necessarily confers any sort of toughness, especially looking back on the end of 3.0.
  • I am tired of people saying stuff like that. Even if he still has the power to fly (see spoiler above), he'd probably be in shock. What would you do if you were about to be sucked out of a plane? I think he handled himself pretty well. And it's Peter we're talking about.
    • Shock from what? He very thoughtfully woke Mohinder and took his power when he was too slow to be up. He did this shortly after being woken. And if I was about to be sucked out of a crashing plane, you'd sure as hell bet I'd fly out of it.
      • Well ... he might only be able to hold on to one power at a time. As soon as he touched Tracy, he was noticably hurt by punching the gaurd. And the "shock" part... He kind of caused the whole thing...
  • Forget that. What about the fact that the plane acts like it's attached to a vacuum pump? One the pressure equalizes, the characters would have nothing to worry about. Even more disconcerting is the fact that this sucking effect continues well after the plane has reached a point in the atmosphere where decompression would be a non-issue.
    • I think it's just the wind that threatens to pull them from the plane, not a pressure differential. If that plane was going fast enough, there'd be hurricane-force winds around that hole in its side.

How much longer until Peter and Ando actually try things?

I'm willing to accept that Peter can only hold one power at a time, and am happy to see how much less of an Idiot Hero he's become now that they don't need to Deus Exit Machina him all the time. But so far, we've only ever seen him use synthetic powers, without even attempting to absorb something from the always-more-powerful natural mutants... not even Claire, for cryin' out loud. And on the other hando, we have Ando, who proclaims his ability "worthless"... even though we've seen him use it a grand total of four times, and one of those was just a demonstration of the pretty lights. We've never seen him even try to use it on a non-mutant, so we have no idea what kind of effect it could have.

  • In fairness, Ando has only had his powers for three episodes and isn't quite as hip to becoming a professional superhero as Hiro is, so I can see him sitting on his abilities for three months and not experimenting with them. And Peter - based on what we've seen - hasn't exactly been the most social person for the last three months and was actively avoiding his family. And though he may have been - for most of the series - The Grand Exalted Holder Of The Idiot Ball - even Peter can see problems with testing yourself to see if you have a healing factor.
    • To say nothing of the problems if Homeland Security is monitoring his phone and he calls up his niece saying "Come over to my place. I need to touch you." (I know... I know... I'm ashamed of that joke too.)
  • Peter seemed to be aware of what his new ability entailed, as he immediately reached over to Mohinder when he needed to break his bonds, so he's presumably done some sort of testing. As for only using it on synthetic mutations...the chance hasn't come up yet I guess? Or maybe there's a plot twist they're saving, like the revelation that he can permanently store natural abilities, or can't take them at all. But if not, all he needs to do is get his hands on Sylar, since he's apparently an empath now, all should be well.


How did Peter rescue Matt?

Matt has a power. Touching him should've caused Peter to involuntarily lose the ability to fly. And if the drugs, or the non-synthetic nature of Matt's power were the reason, how would he know that was going to work? Of course, maybe the next episode is going to start with them a thousand feet up in the air, using mind-control powers to persuade each other that they're not about to die horribly.

  • He could grip him by the husk. Of course that does bring up the problems of weight-ratio and the mean air-speed velocity of an unladen Petrelli...
  • Based on what we've seen - and ignoring the theories about Peter only being able to absorb synthetic abilities - Peter's power requires skin-to-skin contact to work. As long as he was only touching Matt through his clothes, they were golden. He could easily have grabbed Matt fireman-style, slung him over his shoulder, and taken off in seconds.
    • I think he took Nathan's power right through his shirt, but maybe not. Anyway I was expecting that to happen--Peter swoops in, grabs Matt, and then they fall like a rock right back into the midst of the stunned team. Maybe since he was more prepared than his accidental touch of Tracy, he was able to prevent the reflex to grab the power or something.
      • Actually, I just rewatched the scene and it looks like Peter briefly touches Nathan's neck while grabbing him and spinning him around BEFORE grabbing a hold of his shirt. But I like the idea that Peter can control who he copies and when.
  • Update! Peter copied Matt's power by gripping his bicep through his clothes. This cancels out both "only synthetic powers" and "only skin contact", leaving us with "Peter can control who he copies and when". Which is handy.
    • So perhaps he absorbed Tracy's power on the plane because, even though he didn't know what its limitations were, he knew he needed something besides Mohinder's strength to succeed?

How does Peter know how his powers work?

Seriously. Back in the first season, Peter didn't even know how to telekinetically tie his own shoes before Claude showed up. Now, after his powers have been given a major overhaul, he seems to have some instinctive grasp on the fact that it requires touch (he got Claire to free Mohinder's hand specifically for it) and that he can only hold on to one at a time. Dialogue with Nathan ("What was the last thing you saw me do?") implies that he was still holding onto flight at the time, which (except for him somehow getting ahold of West or some other flier) means that he couldn't have done any experimentation.

  • Actually, that dialogue implies the exact OPPOSITE. Peter knows that Nathan has probably been having him watched at that point, hence him asking what Nathan last saw him doing. When Nathan answers "you flew", Peter knows that Nathan HASN'T seem him experimenting. Don't believe me? We don't see Peter fly at any point during the first episode of Series 4. We don't know what power he might have had before touching Mohinder.
    • Hey, that's a really interesting point! Thank you, Above Troper, for peeling away layers of awesomeness that I hadn't even noticed before.
      • No problem. It is just a theory - but it makes sense, since the only powered person Peter was likely talking to at that point was Claire, and she's probably the only person he'd trust to help him experiment at this point. True, Matt was in New York at the time and is probably about as trustworthy, but if Peter had telepathy, he would probably have read Nathan's mind to see what was going on. There's a bonus theory for you.
    • And since Peter touched Nathan to hug him during that episode, odds are he had flight again anyway when he was captured.


Peter's demands seem a bit... lacking.

Matt Parkman and Daphne Millbrook... does anybody else think that we're missing a certain super-strong geneticist?

  • Well, if you want to go the cynical route... given that Mohinder was all too willing to experiment on Peter when he was working for Arthur during Season 3 and that Matt had discovered that Mohinder sat on the information that The Government was planning to come after them during his interrogation of Noah... somehow, I doubt Peter is forgetting anything. Of course Peter wasn't there when Matt found out about what Mohinder did, but Matt did say that Mohinder "didn't get a vote" regarding what they did to Noah, and Matt would have had ample opportunity to tell Peter the details later.
    • For that matter, Peter wouldn't make demands regarding Tracy for pretty much the same reasons - why go out of my way to save the woman who was going to sell me out to my brother?
    • You "doubt Peter is forgetting anything"? Peter has superhuman forgetting ability.
      • I was being ironic. What I mean to say is that even ignoring that Mohinder was living up to his fan-given nickname of Mohinderance, AND that Peter didn't know what Matt learned about Mohinder sitting on the information that the government was about to go after the super-powered, Peter has plenty of reasons from Season Three, alone, to not go out of his way to help Mohinder.
  • Of course, if you believe that Peter honestly has some of his old idealism left and wouldn't throw people like Mohinder or Tracy who screwed him over to the wolves, or that he knew there would be some kind of ambush coming after he called Nathan, his demands were just for the sake of making demands and a distraction from the fact that he had already given the evidence of Nathan's crimes to the media.
  • Mohinder hasn't exactly been the most helpful of late, and Peter didn't know about his Heroic Sacrifice at the motel (that we see). Additionally, Daphne is absurdly powerful and TWO Daphnes (Peter) could run riot right over the Government's plan.
  • There's also the fact that Peter and Matt don't know for certain that Mohinder (or, for that matter, Tracy) are still alive. The only person they knew for sure was still alive was Daphne. So even ignoring whatever selfish "screw you" motives Peter and Matt might or might not have for not wanting to save Mohinder or Tracy, neither of them has any reason to believe the government isn't rounding them up to kill them at this point.
    • Peter had at least a little bit of time at the operation's databases. Considering how the went through that list of names and picked one out by first name (he double-checked the surname after he found Daphne's entry), it wouldn't have been hard for him to check up on Strauss and Suresh. Heck, they'd be right next to each other.
      • That's a fair point - and I remember seeing Tracy's name flash on the screen as Rebel was accessing the records. Unfortunately, this does seem to reinforce the idea that Peter didn't care about saving Mohinder or Tracy specifically.
  • Not that Peter and Matt are likely to have thought it this far through, but making a small demand at the beginning was a good negotiating strategy. If Danko had agreed, it would have established that they had something of value, and they know that Rebel can get it for them again at any time.
    • That... is not even remotely how negotiation works. Quite the opposite, actually: standard strategy is to start ridiculously high, so that your opponent think they're getting a good deal when you roll your demands back to what you were originally planning to settle for, if not significantly higher.
      • You reached the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. This isn't a normal negotiation, it's a Mexican Standoff hostage situation. Peter only has one piece of leverage that he can use, and he can only use it once (Danko would delete the remaining evidence). So he has to leverage it as much as possible up front, because its the only chance he gets.
  • Actually, it makes perfect sense if Peter was planning to pull a Rorschach - i.e. give the evidence to the media before going to meet with Noah to secure Matt and Daphne's freedom in exchange for the evidence - just in case Peter didn't make it out alive or uncaptured. Why bother negotiating for better terms if you're not going to uphold your end of the bargain anyway? Especially when releasing the evidence will put you one step closer to freeing everyone - not just two of your allies.
  • This bugged me too. Mohinder is clearly feeling like crap about his mistakes in Volume 3; that makes him a more reliable ally than Matt, whose obsession with Daphne now trumps everything else. Hell, the obvious thing for Peter to do would be to demand the release of all the prisoners, since he doesn't know exactly who Nathan has. But Nathan and Bennett weren't thinking too clearly either. They would have had only Peter's word that he hadn't copied the information; nowadays, if somebody steals your computer files, you'd better just assume they're no longer secret.

Peter holding it together so well during An Invisible Thread.

I thought Sylar's Power came with The Hunger and that it was near impossible to control. And yet Peter didn't seem to be having any problems this time around after taking Sylar's powers, despite killing a future version of his own brother and nearly killing his own mother earlier this season...
  • Peter's control of that ability had improved a bit by the time he lost it to Arthur. Self-control is mental -- he didn't lose that. He probably had to work on it offscreen once the crisis was over, though.
    • It's entirely possible he only absorbed shapeshifting from Sylar, so he could impersonate the President and ambush Sylar. Peter's not shown using any of Sylar's other abilities, and it seems like the whole point of his Volume 4 Discard and Draw power was to avoid the plotholes created by giving him God Mode Sue powers.
      • That's possible, except 1) that conflicts with how all of the Mega Manning powers in the past have worked, with both Peter and his father taking ALL of a person's powers whenever they confronted someone with multiple powers and 2) that makes Peter and Nathan's plan to charge Sylar and get Peter close enough to copy Sylar's powers suicidally stupid. Granting that Peter wouldn't have had any way of knowing whether or not it would work in advance or not, it's unlikely Nathan would have taken the chance if he didn't think Peter would be able to copy all of Sylar's powers.
        • In season one, it seemed like Peter only got telekinesis when he met Sylar. He never showed any hint of having super-hearing, perfect memory or freezing.
        • Nerdwank: Sylar never got Perfect Memory. The waitress that had that power also had a brain tumor that made her power unreadable to Sylar IIRC.
          • Sylar used supermemory in one of the graphic novels to learn how to drive a truck. It was the one showing him arriving at Zane Taylor's house who answers the door thinking he's mohinder.
          • It seems to me that Peter ONLY got shapeshifting, but by then was at least part of the plan. He seemed like he knew what he was going for. If he had really gotten Sylar's powers, one would think he would have gained the ability to hold other powers from people again. Peter couldn't fly again after stealing shape-shifting. And he even seems to confirm it, "Bet you didn't think I took that one." Peter probably even explained it to Sylar during the fight.
      • Peter only getting shapeshifting does also explain why he was still injured when Claire got to him; if he had all of Sylar's powers, he would have regenerated immediately.

Why did peter and nathan think flight vs electricty would be a good match up?

HONESTLY I know that the Petrelli Bros were dumb, but seriously a human missle tattic in an enclosed space against a guy with a shitload of other powers that can stop you in your tracks and two hands so he can after you at the same time. an what was with the whole "the president can only be saved by people like us" speech when they don't have an offensive power in their body?

  • Maybe they were just rushing him to give Peter a chance to grab one of Sylar's powers.
    • That was the point; they explicitly stated as much. I didn't buy into the speech, myself, but that had more to do with honestly thinking that fight would have gone a lot smoother with a healthy dosage of heavily-trained agents with assorted guns on the Petrellis' side.
      • Peter doesn't have super-healing and it's a bad idea to be trying to grab a guy who's being shot at by multiple people.
        • True. However, they could still lead the charge, soften him up (if only for a crucial few seconds) and then scatter for the big superpowered heroes. Then again, they might not have had any appropriate "hunters" on hand at the time, but shutting them out completely feels irrational.
  • Problem is - even if the Hunters were still willing to listen to Nathan at this point - what could they do against Sylar? Peter and Nathan both know Sylar has a healing factor. Even if they didn't know that Sylar had shifted his weak-spot (which Nathan had a decent chance of figuring out) they would have known that regular bullets wouldn't hurt Sylar anyway and that all an army of armed agents could accomplish was getting killed and getting in the way while they were trying to accomplish the primary objective (i.e. get Peter close enough to leech off Sylar).
    • It could be wishful thinking, but it looked to me like those darts were actually hurting him -- just in little, easily-healed doses, thanks in part to Danko's poor planning. Against a team that actually knew what they were up against this time, rather than half a dozen agents who still caught him by surprise a couple times... well, that's not to say it would have necessarily gone better if their goal was only to bring Peter in range, but it's not as if they had a bad track record against supers. Nathan's speech just bugs me.

What's with the complete reversal?

This has to do with Peter's power. Let's compare:

  • Season 1, pre-Claude Peter: Can copy any number of people at once, but can't hold powers when away from people.
  • Formula Peter: Can copy only one person at a time, but can hold powers at any distance from that person.

It's a direct inversion. What's up with that?

  • It's the writers' way of avoiding the Boring Invincible Hero trope from (further) ruining his character. That they couldn't make it look as anything but a cop-out is an entirely different matter.


How Peter's new power works, re: touching another person with powers.

So he just lost his running power due to his run-in with Emma. How, then, did he not lose his powers when he shook Samuel's hand or hugged Claire?

  • It might have something to do with how he was using his power at the time he touched Emma, whereas he wasn't when he touched Samuel or Claire.
    • Except they've made it prety clear that Peter has some degree of control over being able to absorb a power. Hence why he was able to air-lift Matt Parkman when the Feds were chasing them in Chapter 4 without losing his flying for Matt's telepathy or touch hug Nathan or Claire without losing whatever power he had at the time.
      • He has some degree of control, but can switch powers by accident, early in season 3 there was a scene where he was beating up the soldiers using super strength until he accidentally touched another hero and switched to a useless power. When Peter knows that another person has powers he can presumably concentrate and use his current power without the power absorption power, but when touching some random person like Emma he has no reason to specifically try not to absorb powers since the odds that they even have powers are miniscule.
    • My theory (and this is on the WMG page) is that Peter's power never really changed - his power has just weakened as Peter's capacity to empathize with people weakened. Before Peter got his power back, he discovered that basically his entire family were amoral jerks who hated him and all of them were working, at one point, to get him killed. That kinda jacks with your moral center, hence why Peter has been working to try and connect with more people. It's about saving lives, sure, but it's also about regaining what he lost on a spiritual level. Given that, it seems that Peter was able to absorb this power without doing it conciously, just by being close to a person wiht powers... just like he did in Season One.
  • Notice that whenever he switches his powers accidentally it's in an emotionally charged situation - presumably, during such times he has less control over his power than when he shakes someone's hand or hugs someone.

Peter killing future Nathan.

  • After two seasons of seeing how Peter is so full of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, he absorbs Sylar's powers, goes nuts, and then kills his own brother when the "hunger" hits. Did that ever come up again? Because that's kind of a big deal.
    • Its Peter killing Nathan. Fratricide is just how he rolls.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Heroes_(TV_series)/Headscratchers/Peter?oldid=1349261"