I don't think Kensei simply has regeneration like Claire..
When Peter was shot, the bullets popped out of him without any effort.
When Kensei was shot with arrows, Hiro had to remove the arrows, they didn't just come out automatically.

I think Kensei's power is different somehow.

but then the arrows in Kensei were sticking out, compared to the bullets being lodged in Peter's chest. I do think it's regeneration, remember the knife? The wound healed just like Claire's or Peter's would.

This leads me to a question as well. He was schocked to know he could cure himeslf from the arrows/cutting himself. So this means he was not able to do any of this before (ise as a kid, teen, young adult, etc). So his powers appeard all of a sudden, since healing is a passive power, wouldnt he of had this power all his life. And not have to come across it like Hiro did in his office, peter first flying etc.
So does that solar eclipse have something to do with it, I like the evolution idea alot more, but seems odd how powers come and go.

i think this Solar eClipse has something to do with it, cuz he did seem quiet shocked about this appeared abililty, good thinking

remember what a coward Takezo Kensei was when Hiro met him

running from a fight = no wounds
no wounds = no healing

*shrug*
not that big a stretch (compared to some stretches the show makes, anyway)

I do believe the eclipse has something to do with it. I can't back this up other than to mention that I've always found the title of Suresh's book interesting: ACTIVATING Evolution. Perhaps there are powers that are genetically embedded but activate each time there's an eclipse?

Or maybe that the powers just activate at a certain stage of development, and his genotypes just happen to code for the expression of power sometime well into adulthood...

Or simply that a great physical trauma is needed for the first activation of the power (I mean, it's not every day that he get a near death experience, and as isitmondayyet point out, Kensai didn't look like the type to get into situations which cause him to be grievously injured... I believe that many of us on this board are already adults and never even had as much as a broken bone... So it's very believable that he had never reached the "threshold injury level" needed for the first activation...)

Remember, just because a person possess genes that code for a certain power, doesn't mean that these genes are going to be expressed throughout life... Most babies aren't born with facial hairs or breasts, while the genes that code for these traits are certainly there already since conception...

I dunno, personally I've always found the eclipse explanation a bit strange (I can't see how the way the Earth, Sun, and Moon lies up influence the gene expression profiles of organisms), and the season 1 episodes, especially Six Months Ago kind of showed that most characters on the show got their power activated before the eclipse (ex: Claire, Nathan, Isaac, Sylar, Eden, and probably Peter with his claivoyanic dreams, etc.) despite what the first episode made it appeared... Indeed, it appeared that the activation of many of these powers involved exposure to a physical threat or psychological stressor (ex: Claire, Nathan, the Haitian, Candice, Eden, possibly Niki, etc), just like how Kensai was shot before he healed...

I see where your coming from, but Linderman just recently got his powers in S1, correct? And he has been well into his years, so that may show something about the Solar Eclipse. I'm not 100% sure about Linderman, so if you can find it, it would help.

Actually, I think Linderman should go into the list of "characters who first activated their power during psychological stresses" --> according to the GN his power first manifested when his mother was dying with cancer, many years ago before the Vietnam War...

Yeah Linderman had his powers since before Vietnam.



BINGO! In fact, genes seem to have little to do with what power one has in Heroes, every power so far is HIGHLY contingent on the character's situation and personality.

Peter is a Hospice Nurse, he gets the power of Empathy.
Nathan is an overachiever in trouble in a convertible, so he gets the power of Flight
Hiro wants more than anything to be special and be able to bend space and time... so he gets the power to bend space and time.
Claire is in a fire as a child so she gets the power to Regenerate.
DL feels trapped so he gets the power to walk through walls.
Micah breaks a computer and gets yelled at by his grampa so he gets Technopathy
Charlie wants to learn so much stuff in a short period of time so she gets and Eidetic Memory
Gabriel Gray is a watchmaker and spends all his time figuring out what's broken so he gets the power to see how things work.
Brian Davis is a lazy schlub so he gets the power of TK
Dale is an automechanic and listens to engines to see how they are, and she gains superhearing
Matt wants to be involved in the investigation and understand why his marriage is breaking apart, he gets the ability to hear thoughts.
Linderman's mom is dying so he gets the power to heal.

So while the trait to GET powers seem hereditary, the POWERS themselves have NOTHING to do with what someone's parents had.

Nobody just randomly gets 'eye beams' or 'flight AND TK' or 'earthbending' just cuz they're cool powers or their parents had them or at random.. remember if it's evolution that means a character would get what they need to survive... if it's a Godsend, then, also, a character would get what they need for their life and/or the lives of others. Nothing random about it.

So Kenzei, well, he had the trait, he died, he manifested right then and their. Now if he had been killed before that, he probably would have manifested earlier, wouldn't he have? But as said before, he was a "smart fighter" and thus, never discovered this ability before... doesn't mean that he HAD it before, though, does it? So when he thinks of his power to heal himself as a curse, then blames Hiro for it, then has no idea what he's talking about, then has the use of his power radically change his lifestyle, it becomes VERY clear that he did not have hte power before.

That does make sense. Evolution is about survival and change. And powers do makes sense for this, but the eclipse being shown for what reason? Anywho, just another fact to point out.

I'm sorry, what situation did Zane Taylor face?

Has anyone ever considered the possibility that Kensei later becomes Daniel Linderman? Maybe that's his real name.

I read somewhere that the eclipse has meaning. However I think the powers manifest whenever they need/want/trained/have to. Kensei may have the power to...I can't mention it here. Follow the rabbit down the hole towards the spoiler/speculation section.

How many times do we have to tell you.

Kensei is not Linderman.



Yeah well I agree that personality and psych stressors.

Wonder if eroes is going to ever have a blank slate hero.

Genetically speaking having two parents as heroes yet not manifesting.

The x gene could be the holy grail to some people like the Company or Sylar.

Excellent post.

Stressors is a GREAT word.



I really don't know anything about Zane Taylor except for the fact that he was a slacker, music lover and lived by himself. Who knows? Sometimes I wish/wonder if Zane had something more akin to alchemy from Fullmetal Alchemist as opposed to JUST being able to make puddles.

But yeah, Linderman and Kensei have different powers. One is the power to heal others, the other is spontaenous regeneration. Linderman can be killed and can age. Kensei cannot.

Well, in theory D.L doing what he did to Linderman would kill just about anyone. If Peter was temporarily dead because he had a shard of glass stuck in the back of his head, what would happen if he got a large chunk ripped out?

First, you've got amazing "powers" of observation! I'd noticed that myself before, that the powers people get are often very much linked to their trials, tribulations, and personalities. But I really hadn't pushed the reflexion to as many characters as you have.

BUT!

And there is a "but".

Saying that the power they "get" is activated by a situation that they face means we're talking about intelligent design rather than evolution.

I.E. if giraffes spontaneously got longer necks, out of the blue, over the space of a generation because there was no more food available for them at ground level - this means some sort of higher conscience inside of their cells made the trait of the "long neck" appear in their code when it wasn't there before. This is intelligent design.

Evolution on the other hand works very differently. In the context of evolution, if over a generation, food on ground level rarefies, then the giraffes with shorter necks will die of starvation before they are in age of reproducing, while the ones with slightly longer necks will survive, dramatically but gradually changing the genetic pool. (Stress the fact that the population of giraffes already had the genetic possibility of having a longer neck. Same goes with the powers - they must have already had them, from the point of view of evolution.)

Evolution doesn't mean you "get" what you need according to your immediate needs, it means that people with powers would survive more easily to the situations they are facing, and the ones without abilities would die before being able to reproduce, which means the genetic pool would change and the proportion of people with abilities would greatly increase. For example, any baby Claire's age would have died in that fire instead of surviving and being able to reproduce (with West? Ugh.) and therefore transmit her genes.

ALTHOUGH, the fact that characters seem to get abilities suited to their particular situations is a great poetic trait of the show (and by poetic I am talking about the format, the way the fiction is developed). If you want to develop themes in fiction, you don't always have to justify it by scientific theory or logic (after all this isn't a classic case of science-fiction). To make the show more, well, awesome (devoted fan here), it's good to have these little bits of apparent logic here and there that "seem to make sense" on a whole other level (i.e. Claire is in a fire and therefore she gets regeneration), the level of fiction, rather than make sense on the level of the theory of evolution. Aristotle said it - the greateness of fiction resides in its capacity to make sense of seemingly unrelated events, and change temporal juxtaposition into a relationship of necessity and causality between events.

When you think about it, we notice the situations in their lives because their powers help them cope with them - this is evolution. It doesn't mean the immediate situations trigger a certain type of ability. It only means Heroes is showing us how these new powers are "evolution" in the sense that these people with abilities are better suited than the rest to cope with hard situations.

I always figured the trials and tribulations the characters went through were put into the show to highlight their respective powers, seeing as someone who never gets hurt wouldn't find out about (or for that matter need) regeneration, an apathetic loser wouldn't need/use empathetic powers, a kid in 3rd world africa wouldn't need/use technopathy, and would anyone really care about sylar if he was "too nice" to use his powers? The powers seemed to be scripted for the characters, and the situations are simply the neon arrow saying "Look!"

in conclusion, I highly doubt the situations had anything to do with power alotment, they were simply emphasizing the "usefullness" of the powers by puting the characters into situations in which they needed to be used to solve some sort of problem, thus placing a higher value and "cool factor" on them.

All true. However, the nature of the show provides the capacity for us to hypothesise rational explanations for these poetic traits. That's what I love about it! Let me have a go at offering some explanations...

Activating Evolution:
1) The example of Claire and West echoes the relationships of Nathan & Merideth and DL & Niki and illustrates that Heroes attract Heroes. This is evolution! Both those former relationship spawned early-presenting individuals... And Molly is destined to marry Micah! Just kidding.

So, under the mechanism of sexual selection, the species could at least be diverging, those mutually attractive overachievers begetting more and more super-powered kids. This is quite an interesting idea!

2) It could be that in fact each of the Heroes has an identical genetic adaptation which gives them the predisposition to manifest a superpower for survival purposes. (Could they also manifest a power that increases their reproductivity? Makes them irrestibly attractive perhaps?). All the Heroes' power could be explained like this, even Peter's and Sylar's where their adaptation has specifically manifested - because of their respective personality traits! - as an ability to acquire others' talents.

The problem with this is that it's a big ask of genetics and science in general to achieve the kind of things these guys can achieve through their powers. But is it impossible...?

This is where it starts getting really interesting. The world we see in Heroes seems to imply the hand of some higher consciousness. Obviously that's because there's a team of writers creating a fascinating and exciting epic, but I don't think Heroes is going to reveal (in the controversial season 5 finale) that the ultimate force guiding it al is the almighty King Trim. Who are the story-internal agents of the apparent intelligent design?

Some god-like possibilities:

3) Maybe there's a source. An origin. a single mutation so improbable but so significant that even though it has occured only once, it has been able to propagate and facilitate the Hero phenomenon.

4) Maybe it's the characters themselves. With Mohinder's genetics, Hiro's time and space, and various powers via Peter (Charlie's memory, Sylar's intuitive aptitude) or an even greater combination, couldn't they mastermind the whole thing? Let's face it, Peter can travel in time and space. He can get any powers that anyone's ever had. And combine them. Surely that's enough power to write history... He could also get Linderman's power and use it to save Heroes. And then transport them through time and space...

5) Maybe it's the company, how long has this still-very-mysterious organisation been around?

6) Maybe there's another evolutionary imperative - an evolution of possible worlds: those that are more meaningful, that have the more significant connections are those which persist. So despite Peter's hypothetical omnipotence, his powers have a will of their own... Despite Hiro's actions and his ability to effect changes there are still inevitable convergences...

7) But whatever the source, it make would sense to use an eclipse - "a global event" - as a trigger. These are regular, predictable and provide a robust cycle... it's almost like an astronomical clock. Does the intelligent design bear the marks of the master clockmaker? Or any individual or organisation who wanted to reset their systems? Or are they built by evolution into biorhythms like solar and lunar cycles? Or do they provide quantum convergences of a galactic scale?

I love the way that in ep1 it was clear that Hiro had thrown a spanner in the works of history,

...in ep2 it was obvious he would solve this by becoming Takezo Kensei,

...and in ep3 he has restored Takezo Kensei to the role of supernatural hero of mediaeval Japan!

Are we going to find out who the swordmaker is?


I'm enthralled by the way they can keep us guessing. Lead us one way then the other, but leave all of these options open. And lay clues, suggestions, red herrings and foreshadowings all over the place!

I am just speculating here, and probably way off base!

When Niki & DL wnet to Lindermans place, where ever that was, it showed that DL & NIki were "brought together" so that they could see what cmae of there relationship, ie Micah.

It also said in the comics that Papa Peterelli and Linderman came together and started the Company, shortly after the Vietnam war or after they came home from it. Though others knew about powers cause of the mission they were sent on.

If Micah's great aunt has powers, or is one of the founders, then she knew about DL and Niki setup or had a hand in it.

Kinto, Hiro's dad also has a power. We haven't seen it yet, or heard about his wife. But he was waiting for "accension" in his line and when it was Hiro, he helped him.

Papa Peterilli said he has no power or didn't at the start up of the company. But he had the money. Angela has a power as do Peter & Nathan. Nathan's wife doesn't, and we dont' know aobut his kids.

I think,like in the Avatar series, if anyone watches that on NICK (yeah, I have kids!) the eclipse in that takes powers away form one group during the eclipse and strengthens the power if the other. Also the sun gives more power when it is up to one group, the moon another.

Saying that, the eclipe(s) in Heroes may activate something regressive in the Heros. Hiros did start after the eclipse when he slowed the hand down. Peter started thinking he could fly, after he dreamed of Nathan's accident and being with Deveroux after the eclipse.

I can go on, and probably have to much... Let me know!