Heroes (TV series)/Headscratchers/Angela

Are we ever going to find out what Angela Petrelli's power is?

Not to mention the rest of the "Company Founders".

• Super-bitchiness?
• Oh come on. This one's easy. Angela Petrelli has the power of persuasion. But it requires physical contact, or at least very close proximity. Notice that any time she manages to convince Nathan or Peter (or, in season two, Nathan's wife) of something that they otherwise should not be contemplating, she does it by coming up close and fiddling with their clothes or touching them. She's a Pervy Touchy Feely Psychic. As for the others? Nobody knows Nakamura's power, but Charles Deveaux was most likely an oracle of sorts, able to see the future. We know Bob is a walking philosopher stone.
  • Well Her power has been described as similar to someone else's but she "gets from point A to point B" quicker. Also, Word of God is that we have seen Peter use Angela's power. It was recently confirmed we will find out her power in season 3 (hopefully in one of the earlier episodes).
  • That's been denied by the actress and others. All of Angela's touchy feeliness was an unscripted improvisation. And besides, when she tried to convince Nathan to let Peter explode (during which she did her usual touchy feely routine), she failed miserably. Powers on this show tend to be a lot more reliable than that.
• Not all the Company founders had powers. Victoria Pratt definitely didn't.
  • Just because we didn't see her power doesn't mean she didn't have one. The implication was definitely that all of the company's founders had powers. The fact that we never found out what they were and generally found out very little about them, was one of the major failings of Season 2. I mean, it was called Generations for a reason.
• Prophetic dreaming. Confirmed during the S3 premier episode(s). It certainly explains (1) the dreams Peter was having before "discovering" he had a power (2) her obsession with how the future "should" turn out.
  • Which means the character with similar powers is Isaac Mendez, and she does indeed get from point A to point B faster. I love this revelation -- I wonder if it was planned from the start or if they thought of it later as a way to fill in some holes.

What's up with Angela saying she's Sylar's mom?

Should we assume from this point out that everyone is a Petrelli? Or is it just that no one in that family is particularly mentally stable?

• The Petrellis are the Uchihas of Heroes. Everyone has to be related to them to be an important character. I'm waiting for the revelation Angela is also Hiro's mom as well.
  • Which is actually more likely than it sounds, given the implied affair between Angela and Kaito.
  • It's entirely possible Angela made the whole thing up to manipulate Sylar and gain his loyalty. After all, both of her sons are now wishy-washy do-gooders, and here's a guy who's almost as powerful, and is also more willing to get his hands dirty.
    • Ding ding ding! As of the Volume 3 finale, we have a winner.
  • Uchiha? More like Tangled Family Tree.
    • It would be entirely in character for Angela Petrelli to manipulate Sylar and his parent issues this way to gain control of him. After all, she tells him exactly what Sylar wants to hear... his Changeling phantasy from Season 1 come true... he's not the poor goatherder's son insignificant clockmaker's son, but the lost son of the powerful queen matriarch. A mother who offers him praise and a true identity, who promises to be there for him even if he slips up, who will not be horrified by what he is and can do. A mother who will not call him cursed and damned. And he'll follow her and protect her (see Angela's vision when she is facing the villains in Level 5, and Sylar comes up behind her to glare at the villains) and do everything to make her proud of him. Woe to her if it is a lie and Sylar ever finds out... we've seen what Sylar did to Chandra Suresh, his father figure in Season 1, when Chandra "betrayed" him.
      • Chandra betrayed Sylar by rejecting him after building up his hopes. Angela could probably spin it if it's a lie saying, oh... her own sons have been disappointments and have rejected her pretty regularly and she saw something worth saving in him, and his ego might make him buy it. Because Angela is awesome, and Sylar is unstable and has mommy issues.
      • With good reason, as we now know what happened to his real mom.

Actually, forget Noah. Why is Angela working with Nathan after he betrayed her?

Even after Arthur tried to have him killed twice (one when Nathan was investigating Linderman and once when he warned Samedi that Nathan was going to Haiti) and mind-raped Angela (once when Nathan was investigating Linderman and once when he trapped Angela inside her own mind), and after Angela told everyone about her visions that The Synthetic Superpower Formula would cause the end of the world... Nathan still joined forces with his father. And yet, three months down the line, Angela is readily aiding her treacherous son in going much further in ruining the lives of innocent people in the name of maintaining order than she ever did with The Company, even to the point of allowing her loyal (and supposed favorite) son Peter to be "contained".

• Of course, this is rather a moot point now that Angela told Nathan to go fudge himself and clean up his own mess when he called her to ask for her support in Trust and Blood, after Nathan realized that his field commander is a trigger-happy psychopath and that Noah Bennet is ready, willing and able to out Nathan as a mutant the minute he thinks things are getting out of control.

Why, in the name of all that is Good And Plenty, did Noah and Angela forget the lesson of this Chapter RE: lying to their loved ones?

Noah almost certainly has alienated everyone in his family but Claire because of his double-life, chronic lying and paranoia. Angela almost destroyed her family completely because of all of the secrets and treachery she had kept hidden for fifty years. So why are they now blowing the last of whatever goodwill they have left by keeping the fact that they turned Sylar into Nathan a secret from their friends and family? Even if you ignore the fact that not two episodes ago, Angela was lamenting the way secrets nearly destroyed her family and Noah's reaction to probably losing Sandra forever, it doesn't make any sense if for no other reason than so they'll all be ready if/when Sylar's programming breaks down and he remembers the truth? Do they really think that Peter or Claire might not figure things out, even by accident?

Noah and Angela's plan is brick-stupid, breaks the characters, and ignores far more sane options.

• As noted above, keeping Sylar alive is absolutely insane. He's a nigh-unkillable psychopath, and this might be their last chance ever to get the upper hand on him. They give two reasons. First, they cannot allow the world to know that Nathan was murdered by a mutant. Even ignoring the healing power of Claire (and Sylar's) blood, Peter is a shapeshifter now! Simple, "Nathan" survives the incident, and two weeks later show him getting into a car with Claire in front of TV cameras. Peter absorbs Claire's power, stage a car wreck and bam, dead Nathan with no way to blame it on Sylar. Second, Angela gives a Hand Wave Ass Pull about needing her son, and how if Matt's son were dead he'd go to any length to bring him back. But she's * not* bringing her son back, she's dressing his murderer in a Nathan-shaped flesh suit. Perhaps that sort of irrationality can be expected from Angela, who's just found Nathan's body, but from Noah? He should know better. Finally, even if Sylar has moved his Achilles' Brainstem, have Matt find it or compel Sylar to tell them where it is. I expected better from two of the series' premier Chessmasters.
  • The more I think about, the dumber it looks. The show has already showed us that super-healing is a passive power, which means that Sylar should still have it no matter who he thinks he is. The first time "Nathan" cuts himself, the whole thing is blown. Couple that with the fact that Sylar is immortal, and he'll figure it out eventually no matter what happens. Not only is the plan likely to fail, it is guaranteed to fail, and could potentially happen long after any of the Supers (save useless Claire) even remember who Sylar is.
    • I'm assuming that all the other powers must have been turned off. Otherwise we've got a man deeply involved in US Senate politics with the power of lie detection. Hmmm...
  • Matt could've easily "turned off" the part of the brain which controls healing, telekinesis and all of Sylar's Non-Nathan powers. He wouldn't be able to camoflague Sylar's natural ability which is why he can still see how things work. Obviously due to the show's rather silly "IF WE GET RID OF SYLAR THEN THE FANS WILL STOP WATCHING!!!" mentality all these powers wont be removed, but buried under layers of telepathic barrier just waiting to be released when Tracey attacks Sylar/Nathan. Another mystery solved by the fact than Matt can control everyone and everything.
    • Yes, because it's so much better that they go out of their way to depower Peter and Hiro because their powers SHOULD allow them to solve all the conflicts in five minutes but now they are using the Marvel Comics Telepaths Are Invincible rules in relation to Matt's powers work to the point where he now has Isaac and The Haitian's powers in addition to mind-reading and mind-control.
    • "Anything the brain controls, you control."

Angela's Total 180 On Her Family Dying?

I'll remind you that this is the woman who was so cold-hearted that she was willing to go along with a plan that would have seen one of her sons become a human nuclear bomb and blow up New York and her granddaughter die in order to empower a serial killer in Season One. Knowing that, explain why she suddenly loses her shit and insists that her other son, Nathan, cannot be allowed to die and that the serial killer who has been making everyone's lives Hell should be brainwashed into thinking he is her son.

• Okay, I think it's bullshit, and I'm glad that the first episode of the new season has HRG and Matt saying as much as "We grabbed the Idiot Ball for a few minutes, lady, but now we've let go, you should too." But here's my attempt to justify it: I think maybe on some level she actually was telling the truth about wanting Sylar to be her son, even if her conscious reason is that she was using him as a "blunt instrument". Sylar's ruthlessness is a quality severely lacking in Peter, one which she appreciates, which is why her approach is to try to rehabilitate Sylar and put Peter into a coma. Hence, her brainwashing Sylar let her have both her favorite son and Sylar.
• Possibly, there's some important future event that she knows about that requires Nathan to be around? In just about every version of the future we've seen, either Nathan or Sylar-as-Nathan held a great deal of power. That common thread may be more important than we know, important enough for Angela to manipulate everyone else into going along with her plan. Just because she seems more emotional and attatched to her family doesn't necessarily mean she's had a change of heart; Angela's always been good at manipulating everyone around her.

The latest episode (as of December 2 2009), specifically:

Good lords and heavens I don't want Angela Petrelli to remind me of Sarah Palin any more than her hairstyle always does. Manipulative Bitch-iness aside, a WELL-INTENTIONED-BUT-ALSO-THE-EVIL-KIND-OF-SMART Sarah Palin is creepy as fuck.