the scene in which they were ambushed in the motel room or smthg.

why didnt matt parkman use his ability to create illusions? [like the one maury did...]
- or is this kind of a "high level" development of the ability that matt has yet reached?

or like; knock them out w his abilities even? was he kinda drained after using his powers on Noah B.? i dont know... it felt kinda off.

comments?

I agree. Matt is extremely underused. Both for his cop skills and his special ability. Honestly I forgot that he at one point worked in a uniform because almost none of his actions this season reflect the actions of someone who's been a police officer.

I thought the same thing...it's possible he was drained or overwhelmed

not sure if you've missed some episodes but Matt definately has the same ability as Maury to make people see things and get in their heads...he did it in season two against Maury and he also did it when Knox went to kill him and he made Knox visualise punching through his chest and killing him (volume 3)

Matt hasnt used his illusions because the writers keep dropping the ball. The specials should be much harder to track/catch than this.

They need to bring Peters balls back also and give him back his damn powers. How awesome would that safety deposit box/container scene have been if Peter just beat the crap out of everyone.

Instead, it turned into another wussy Peter scene. Sure he got away, but this show is based on powers and action, and all he can do is fly right now...

I miss strong Peter

I am going to go with he was under mental distress from finding out that with woman was still alive and was not able to react fast enough.

React fast enough?! The FBI or whatever.. didnt even know what room they were in... He had 20 minutes!

They were an army at him! I kinda doubt Matt could go in multiple heads simultaneously! One after the others, maybe, but as soon as the illusion for one would be created, another one for another soldier would disappear.

I agree, I think he had plenty of time to at the least make an illusion that there were other people in the room instead of him and Noah.

Mat does not make illusions like that. he can make an individual see what he wants and maybe he can do it to more then one but there were like 10 people in that room. I doubt he could make them all see the hallucination.

But no Matt cannot make illusions. And illusion everyone would see. Without having to invade their mind. It is more of making and individual hallucinate.

He isn't anyway near his full capabilities yet and unlike his father who could just trap people in relatively easily it is more of difficult for him as he hasn't had much practise with that ability.

I waited with baited (sp?) breath for an illusion to happen everytime Matt got cornered somewhere. Talk about a let down *groans*

It wouldnt have even needed to be an illusion, simply repeat what he did on that hill, mind control one, and have him mow down the others for you with a machine gun. At least Peter saved him, and hey, does Peter now have mind powers from grabbing Matt?

Uh, they surrounded Matt. In order for one to shoot the others, he would have to shoot through Matt. Not to mention that by now they are aware that Matt could do that and their reaction would be to shoot the source of the problem, Matt. If all of them do that then at least one of them will get their shot in before they are all dead. Keep in mind that Matt no longer has a meat shield to protect him like last time.

In short, repeating the same trick from the crash site is a very bad idea.

He's done the illusion thing before on Knox to fake his and Daphne's death. Maybe there were too many goons or something?

I'm pretty sure that's it, Picklehead said it: His illusions don't work like Candice's, you put a picture into a room that everyone can see. He has to get into somebody's head and make them see what he wants them to see. He couldn't have done that for all those goons. We've only seen this version of his ability used on two people at the same time, and that was by Maury, who was a lot better at it.

I think because Matt has to get inside each individual mind to create an illusion and there were a lot of people. He's only done an illusion once and that was only one person (Knox.)

edit: opps.... this point was already made. That's what I get for only reading the OP.

No, I'm pretty sure Peter has to make a conscious choice to absorb the ability as well as touch the person. In "Trust and Blood" Peter was holding Nathan awhile before absorbing his ability (the special effect was quicker and more subtle that time.) The only exception was Tracy on the plane but that was probably because he was afraid. And a plot device

Yes, and he didn't know how exactly his power worked, I think he was still figuring it out. He hadn't had much contact with other specials in the time between volumes 3 and 4.

Another point in case: it is estabilished that Matt's and Maury's powers are the same. When we saw Linderman's illusion, created by Maury, only Nathan (and Daphne) could see it, it was invisible to other people. So we can say that it's pretty hard, if not impossible to create an illusion that would fool at least ten people.

Why didn't he just command them to lay down their weapons, or all attack the people outside with his geass... I mean ability >_>? Mhmm... maybe all the soldiers are now wearing tin foil hats after that last incident.

BrainBuster, read the rest of this topic. It has been pointed out several times that Matt can't mind-control so many people at the same time. The instant he tried to tried to manipulate them, they'd have shot to kill.

On the hillside after Daphne was shot, he manipulated one of them to shot the others. That worked because none of them was prepared for that sort of thing.

Didn't he mind control the press room? Well I know he mind controlled the entire police station in S2 but that's not cannon. I guess it's a good point that they had their fingers on the trigger and Matt's mind powers don't move faster than it takes to shoot someone I guess.

Hm, good point about the alternative ending of season2. Which would have been canon.

As for the press room, I always assumed he just talked tot he right people to organise the press conference; he wouldn't have to control the entire room.

Don't forget he had been using his powers for severals hours by then, most of the time against Noah's resistance (interesting side note: his powers allow for seeing pictures now, that's why Noah thinking in a foreign language did not keep him from reading his mind anymore). I think it's safe to assume he was not at his best after all this, so entering the mind of only one of the troopers would have been quite a task, but creating an illusion for all of them was way of the charts.

Very good point!

Hmm, you guys are right. Me and my friend were thinking the same thing after watching, but we didn't think about him having to put the illusion in everyone's minds individually.

This takes away the disappointment, but I agree that his ability is being underused/underwritten yet they chose to give him another brand new (recycled) ability. Boooo. There are so many places they can take the ability he already has.

It's because Matt's power is not Illusion Casting... it's mind manipulation. He can manipulate other people's minds into believing they are seeing something that they are not.

With that said, it would be extremely difficult, stressed or not, to try to lock onto the minds of 10 guards who break into a small hotel room, and manipulate all their minds at once. That'd be like trying to read 10 minds at once.

i think we all were waiting for that to happen. i guess a good excuse would be that he did a lot already busting into bennett's brain, not to mention the "fight" with mohinder

Or he could have made 1 guy spray a round of bullets into the unit, it worked before..

That scene was really anti-climactic though. Even if he gets taken down eventually, at least give us the fight.

Matts ability has nothing to do with illussion.
He would have (as others already also pointed) to mind control everyone around to see what they want them to see and hold it there OR mind control one or two (like he did on the hills) to make them attack each other.
At the rate they were there and the fact that he was already tired from overusing his ability towards noah, he couldn't do it or they would had killed him.

What you guys mean is something that only Candice were able to do cause in her case she would just walk through them and nobody would even know she is there.

"Why didn't Matt..."
Sounds a lot like "Why didn't Peter..." for season 1, 2 and now 3.
When abilities get too powerful viewers will always think there is a mental defect in the character in question. (Even though Matt has never came across as bright or with much conviction in any season)

I can accept that he was tired from trying to get information from Noah for this case though.

Nathan had Matt force the entire room to listen to him. Yeah, he talked to the right people to get the press conference in the first place, but Matt made everyone there want to listen.

I just think Matt was too busy with mind-reading Noah and he was under too much pressure to even think at the time.

Except for being able to somehow fool cameras, I don't see why Matt couldn't imitate Candice's power, with enough practice. Candice made people see what she wanted them to see. I'd say her power is just a highly specific use of telepathy.

Nope it's not.
- Matt controls the mind
- Candice manipulates all senses

On this terms candice is more powerful when it comes to such things but even she can fool you to see what she wants you to see, she isn't able to control your mind by putting a thought in it the way maury or matt does.

It's very similar in some terms but it's not the same.

Sylar's illusion showed up on camera which leads me to suspect that Candice's ability was either manipulating both light and sound around her or 'hypnotizing' people to see and hear (and possibly even smell and sense physically) what she wanted them to by manipulating light. Matt can obviously do the latter directly but I suspect only to one or two people at a time since the way he is doing it at present is a lot more work than Candice's. He might in time learn to do it more like Eden, just persuade everyone in the room with a powerful telepathic "These aren't the men you're looking for."

It's easy to see these guys as "superheroes" and forget that the characters are also human. Sure, if this was Professor Xavier I would have been disapointed by him not owning these guys cause he's 1) powerful beyond the scope of the show "Heroes" and 2) even if Matt had Xaviers power he has nowhere near the experience using his ability. Matt is still an infant in terms of learning how to use his abilities, in fact, most of the "Heroes" on the show don't know how to really use there abilities to the max yet. I can't really think of one, maybe a villain or two, but not a Hero.

Candice did not control any senses. She actually altered the area with an actual illusion like a hologram. Thats why people she did not even know that were there still sees the illusion. Like her appearance. Everyone saw what she made he self look like whether she was aware of their presence or not.

So she was just really good at mimicking voices too then.

Who said that illusions cant have auditory as well?

All senses are controlled by the mind.

- People touched her and couldn't feel that she is actually a obese female person.
- She made people hear the voice of the person they made the see
- Micah had no clue that it wasn't his real mother even after he had touched her.
He got suspicious through her behaviour only after she were way too defensive when it came to linderman wanting him to do things micah didn't wanted.
- She altered everything around her (wanna go to a island trip and drink something?) including even the drinks she offered Sylar that actually wasn't even there which means she could even manipulate what you taste thinking you are drinking something while you have nothing in your hands at all.


That's true. However, Matt and Maury could do that only selectively by trapping someone into their minds while Candice could make a whole town with millions of people watch everything she wanted them to watch even through cameras.

The main difference between both abilities is that matt has to try to read your mind to know what you know AND can put a thought in it asking you to tell him and you'll tell.

Candice on the other hand extracts what she needs automatically from your memory and uses the information in any way she wants (like the guy in the GN with his father issues) by creating illussions out of what you know no matter if she ever meet you before or ever known you at all OR creates random stuff she thinks herself.

She can try to persuade you to do what she wants you to do or force you through a illussion(if it works) but you can always say no.

Once again:

- Matt traps you in your mind, Candice traps you in a environment(mainly).
- Matt affects mainly one person (like Maury with Nathan and Daphne) while Candice affects everyone.

This part of the episode was pathetic.


No one has stopped to think, Hey why didnt he do something BEFORE they got to his room. Mo was able to get out of the room and cause a distraction that bought them time. So why couldnt Matt?

Matt could have Mind Controlled one guy before they even got to the room. He could have made that guy see parkman running away and around the side of the motel. Thats all it would have taken. One person to start shouting "There he is, he just ran around the side of the building!"

Then they all start chasing a fake person and that opens the door for a get away.

Or

He could get in HRGs head, make HRG see him run out of the room, then make someone outside see him run around the building out of view. Then Matt just has to hide under the bed or in the bathroom until everyone leaves.

Matt could hide in the bathroom while he listens to peoples thoughts. When someone thinks "I better go look in the bathroom" Matt simply makes him think "you dont need to check it, you already did, its clear".

The thing that makes comics and shows like this so interesting is that with the right writer, you can do some very very very cool stuff.

Matt is probably one of the most powerful people on the show, but they need to have some consistancy.





oh and Candice was really nothing more than a telepath. She just developed her powers differently. How else could you explain her powers? Its not like she was the scarlet witch and she was bending reality. She wasnt using "Magic" or anythning. She was just a telepath who could change how people saw\felt\smelt anything. Not sure if this is considered a spoiler, but Tim Kring has said about powers that many of the different powers on this show come from the same root power, its just developed differently because of their personality. I think he said this originally in relation to the Peter\Sylar powers.


As a hardcore comic reader I find this show is just written poorly. Put someone like Mark Miller as a head writer on a show like this and I bet any amount of money things would be 10000x better.

Because Matt wasn't exactly sitting around and dusting his fingernails during the entire incident. He was actively going into HRG's head and sifting through his memories. That obviously wasn't exactly a walk in the park. It took its toll. In fact it would have been ridiculously stupid if Matt had managed to do everything you're suggesting right after what he did to HRG. He's a human being, not a robot nor a god.




I disagree with this statement, with regards to this context. This isn't X-Men or the DC verse. It's ordinary people with extraordinary abilities, not a team of mutants who go to a school for superheroes.

There is a reason god didn't give us human beings powers... We would rely on them for everything...

Can we actually see a hero be hero without using his abilities?

Maybe it hasn't gotten to us yet why Hiro won't have a power this Volume.

I'm getting tired of people complaining about all that "why didn't X do Y with their Z power?"... It would make sense to complain about some of the stuff that Peter did in the previous seasons, when he could have simply choose to use another power to achieve his goal (ex: using phasing instead of spending all the effort breaking into the Company safe telekinetically), but for this volume and the past one, there are always complaints of why this character didn't do something that may actually be beyond the reach of the power level or physical and emotional status of the character at that time. These arguments presumed that if a character possess a certain power, then we must assume the character must have the capabilities to wield them not only with perfect ease with 100% infallibility all the time , but to also have the vast capabilities that we conventionally associate with the power (perhaps influenced by other medium, such as how these powers works in comics and movies).

An example include "why was Sylar worried about 3 superpower guys, 2 of which has long range offensive powers, charging towards him simultaneously, since he does have telekinesis?" Maybe in comics and movies, characters like the Phoenix has the power to effortlessly control 10 things at the same time with telekinesis, but it doesn't mean that in Heroes, telekinesis have the same scope of power. Maybe regardless of how much control Sylar has over his powers, the limitation of telekinesis in the Heroes universe is that it takes great focus, and it is simply difficult to focus one's attention on 3 things at once.

Same with the argument this time with Matt. Just because Professor X or characters in other media with telepathy can properly cotnrol the minds and project hallucinations into an entire group of people in a press conference, doesn't mean that Matt has the skills to do that. Indeed, I may be wrong, but I have never seen the power of telepathy in Heroes (not counting the deleted scene, because the fact that they are deleted means they may not necessarily be directions that the writers are going towards in constructing the rules of this Heroes universe anymore) to be able to affect more than 2 or 3 people at the same time. Which is not surprising, because other than receiving surface thoughts, all other aspects of the telepathy of the Parkman's has been shown to require the active actions of the character on each individual mind involved.

An analogy may be this: suppose you can run very fast. Does that mean you must be able to run fast under all conditions, regardless of whether you have just finished running an entire marathon, or just have spent the last 48 hours without sleep? If you say you can't do it under these conditions, does that mean you aren't a fast runner? Or that if you are perfectly capable of eating, perfectly capable of reading and writing, does that mean you can run really fast, eat a hamburger, read a book and copy down what you have read all at the same time? You are perfectly capable of doing each of these activities on their own, and they are involve different parts of your body, so surely you should have no problem doing all of that all at the same time, with the exact same efficiency as if you are doing them all independently? Or that, since you can run very fast, does that automatically means that you can ride a bike very fast too, because they both simply involve moving your legs in rapid cycle of activities? These questions may seem very ridiculous, but that's what the logics of complaints of "why doesn't X do Y with Z power in Q situation?"

Matt COULD use his powers in that moment, BUT he didin't because he wanted to see Daphne.

Haha, I can imagine Matt doing the jedi hand gesture in their face, and talking backwards.

She were confirmed as a illusionist and nothing else. So no telepathy for you.


The whole "problem" or rather debate started because in other cases he could control multiple persons and stuff at the same time without even have to look and in this one case he did all "surprised". I understood that they did it this way only so HRG can get center stage in that one scene and show the "partnership" of both and I had stated it as it.
However, if you would look besides the fact that they wanted to give hrg to focus in that scene, sylar actually should had been able to hold even more than these 3 and that he can is a fact.
Before you start debating about this I would just say that you really don't have to because its old stuff anyway and in the last episode of the villains volume he already showed that he were controlling the whole building at the same time he was going after everyone (actually kinda crappy in my opinion but I just looked over it and ignored it while focusing to the characters themselves).

Raekon, is it really that hard to mentally flip the switch that sets the lockdown procedure up? They obviously had lockdown procedures in place, all Sylar did was turn them on. It isnt like he mentally held each window shut, he closed the security bars and stuff on the windows so he wouldnt have to.

And as for the bank scene, I've always held that just because he can regenerate doesnt mean it isnt scary to realize you're about to get a face full of fire, especially if you have your hands full with other dangerous people. He looked surprised, it isnt like he even got hit, all he did was have a certain look on his face, but people insist on tearing it apart, lol

(Spoilers from Exposed)

Ok, we just got the proof today that Matt's power is really limited on the amount of people he can mind control simultaneously. During this whole episode, both Matt and Peter never controled more than 5 individuals at the same time (Noah, Nattan, Danko and the two guards (and I'm not even sure all of them were manipulated)). Moreover, they were 2 mind-controlers vs 5 individuals, and they still managed to catch one of them, while they were, like, 20 guards in ''Cold Wars'' vs only one Mind-Controler.

And don't tell me that Mind-Control were underused in ''Exposed'', I won't believe you!