"Heroes"

[stoutfellow]

Tomorrow night is the season finale of Heroes. I have scrupulously avoided spoilers; nonetheless, I have a prediction to make, under the cut.

I expect Peter Petrelli to die, or (less dramatically) to somehow lose his powers, or his power-absorption ability. He's simply too powerful, the way Silver Age Superman was.

Now, Peter isn't Superman, by a wide margin. But he's about three-quarters of the way to being a discount version of Supes. Let's compare powers, starting with the big four.

Flight. Peter has absorbed Nathan's ability to fly. Judging from the incident in Nevada, Nathan can fly pretty fast, too.

Invulnerability. Peter's not invulnerable, but the regeneration ability he picked up from Claire is a fair substitute. All he needs is a henchman to do things like pull shards of glass out of his brain stem...

Super-speed. Peter isn't super-fast (except, perhaps, in flight). But he's got Hiro's abilities: he can stop time, teleport, and even travel in time. That's close enough for me.

Super-strength. Not yet - but just let him meet Niki...

What about the minor powers? Superman has heat vision; Peter has the nuclear abilities he got from Ted Sprague. Superman has super-hearing; I don't recall whether Peter's run-in with Sylar came before or after Sylar stole that talent, but you know they'll meet again. Peter doesn't have anything like Superman's other vision powers. On the other hand, Peter has telepathy, telekinesis, prophetic drawing, and invisibility. He's also got or will get, via Sylar, other powers: liquifying metal, whatever that freeze-power Sylar used on Molly's parents was, and who knows what else? Peter has powers he probably doesn't even know about yet - and every time he meets another special, he'll get even stronger. Candice? Micah? D.L., assuming he's still alive? (It's a shame he never met Linderman.)

It's too much. Stopping Sylar will take someone at that power level, but, unless the writers plan to up the ante every season, Peter is just too powerful. (And if they do? Eh, that trick never works - cf. Willow Rosenberg, or Anita Blake, or Jean Grey, or...) (Why is it that the examples that come to my mind are all female? Well, there's Doctor Manhattan, I guess.)

Comments

[kattsune.livejournal.com]

I don't think it should be limited to characters who have been reduced. In some cases, I think the power edit may have been performed because the science wouldn't support it anymore in the minds of the average reader. Like flying against the Earth's rotation until it stops, begins backspin, and starts to retrace its steps does not equal time travel. Phenomenal cosmic powers and planet-wide destruction, but not time travel.

I'm not terribly familiar with all the comic characters you've mentioned, but I did think of another character that gave me the impression he could walk into a story and say "I win." I eventually quit reading the Wheel of Time series because by book 9, I'd come to the decision that it didn't matter what he did or to whom, everyone loved Rand al'Thor, and just in case they didn't, he had so much power he just crushed his enemies like ants at a tap-dance competition.

In the examples you gave, how "powerful" would you say that character was with respect to his or her world, and what prompted the change if he or she chose to self-limit?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to reply to this with a regular post.