When Popularity Wins Out Over Story

This week’s episode of the show Heroes, the last one to air until January, was nothing special. The most significant advancement to happen was Nathan (Adrian Pasdar), after physically dying and having his memories imprinted into Sylar’s (Zachary Quinto) body, giving up trying to be someone who is essentially gone and allowing himself to “die” and have Sylar take permanent control. After seeing this I felt that the wrong character had just died. That the better move to make would have been to kill off Sylar instead.

Many out there would probably disagree and say that Sylar is the best character on the show. And in many ways I would agree. He is cool and intriguing and someone we root for even when he is killing people. The problem with him is that after three and a half seasons there’s simply no place for him anymore. In spite of other villains taking rise over the seasons (such as season two’s Adam Monroe, season three’s Arthur Petrelli and Emile Danko, and this season’s Samuel) Sylar remains lurking in the background. But rather then advance the overall story; he seems to just be there because viewers want him to be around.

To keep villains that are around for multiple seasons interesting, they have to grow and change as much as the heroes do. If they remain exactly the same they simply become repetitive. Since his introduction Sylar has continually been all about power and revenge. Even when he takes brief side trips he always comes back to his original obsessions. While it was a thrill to watch this during the first and even the second season, it’s stopped being interesting. Now when I watch the show I envision the writers sitting around asking themselves what can they possibly do with Sylar this week.

The writers of the show should instead take a page from the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If there was one show that valued plot progression over character popularity it was that one. Continually characters were written off of the show if it meant that the overall plot grew, even if they were beloved by viewers. While it was heartbreaking when an adored character was written off (as I experienced in season six when Tara was shot and killed) I had to give the writers credit for having the guts to get rid of popular characters if it meant the plot was advanced.

It might be time to think about getting rid of Sylar for good. Either that or come up with something for him to do that actually matters to the overall story arc.