Okay… A romance would seem creepy for Sylar. What about a bromance ^^ Since he wants to fit in so much, he should totally get a BFF.

“HRG’s Primatech boxes have become a substitute plot device for Isaac Mendez’s paintings.”

True, although in this case I have to defend Samuel because that move made a lot of sense. If Samuel didn’t have the kind of comprehensive database of supers that Primatech NY would have provided, he went to the next best thing, which was a box full of potential recruits, along with (one assumes) detailed information about their abilities, their last known locations, their behavior and mental stability, and so on. So, yeah, it is very much a plot device, but a logical one within the context of the story.

“Ditching [Sylar] in a pre-finale episode raises the ‘what next?’ question…”

I’d go further and say that even ditching him in a pre-SERIES-finale episode raises the “What next?” question. At this point, four seasons in, with perhaps a fifth season to go, I think the show would struggle to fill the void Sylar would leave. It wouldn’t be a creative void because, as I’ve argued (and with the exception of killing Nathan), Sylar’s involvement in the broader story arcs the past three volumes has been minimal. But in terms of there being a long-standing “opposite” to Peter (as you’ve mentioned on a few occasions), I wonder if killing off Sylar would create an imbalance.

Then again, if Peter’s ability-absorption is going to remain the way it is for the rest of the series’ run, is there really an imbalance to create in the first place?

I agree that ZQ could probably sign off Heroes and make the transition to a successful movie career, but why would he want to when TPTBs are willing to write around actors’ movie commitments the way they did recently for Ramamurthy? I’m not sure I buy that explanation for his absence, but assuming it’s true, I imagine TPTBs could still adapt their story the way they planned to for the back half of Season Two; that Sylar could ~*mysteriously*~ disappear for 10 episodes and then resurface. It would allow Quinto to make another Star Trek (or anything else he had lined up), it would appease Sylar-haters by limiting the character’s screen time, and it would give the show a chance to prove that it can tell a story that doesn’t involve heavy doses of the same villain.

LeeAnna, I wanted to come back to a topic we were discussing upthread because I think it’s relevant to this discussion:

Re: the idea of introducing a female character as a parallel to Sylar:

“This person would probably have to be on par power wise just enough (or intelligent enough) to knock him down a peg. I just hope that if the show presents the relationship to him, and he takes it, that it isn’t a girl that he falls in love with. I’m all for strong females, but I think he needs a friend, not a girl friend.”

I love this idea. I can’t see TPTBs writing a romance for Sylar after this episode, but it would be such a great opportunity for the show to create a strong female character, and to establish whether there’s anyone else out there with intuitive aptitude and who, unlike Samson and Gabriel, didn’t become dangerously warped as a result of the ability. As disturbing as the thought is, I can imagine a She-Sylar who isn’t psychotic and hellbent on acquiring everyone’s abilities, and at the same time a character who can’t be outwitted or outmaneuvered the way everyone else is by Sylar. That would be a character that Sylar would respond to, if only because he wouldn’t immediately be able to slice her scalp off, and because his fascination would probably outweigh his killer instinct.

The only way I could see the show getting past the “power vs. love” issue would be to go back to the Amnesiac-Sylar storyline. It would be a neat way to stand the Sylathan concept on its head, because if the argument there was that the memories make the personality, the argument here would be whether the absence of memories adds up to a new personality. I’m not sure it’s possible for Amnesiac-Sylar to atone for Actual-Sylar’s actions, but perhaps that would be one way to go about it, and perhaps that would be one way to conclude Sylar’s arc without killing him off.

Would we be complaining so much about Sylar if he only appeared as often as guest starring roles, say half a dozen episodes per season? Or, to put it another way, imagine you’re looking back on the first few seasons from the perspective of season 10, 12, 15, etc - will you be glad that the show has a stable of recurring villains more interesting than ‘that old brain guy’, or will you wish that someone would unstake Sylar to make things interesting again?

Another perspective: perhaps the problem is not that the SuperVillain is so big and bad… maybe the Heroes are not as heroic/mighty as they could/ought to be. If you have a dragon to slay, you need experienced adventurers who’ve proven themselves. Save the princess, kill the bad guy on dungeon level 5, save the world

BUT… he needs to be written out in a finale. Like it or not, he is the shows de-facto villain. Ditching him in a pre-finale episode raises the ‘what next?’ question, because if you can easily take down Sylar then really… is Samuel going to be that hard to kill? There’s also the issue of Sylar being so cockroach like in cheating death that they’ll have to think outside the box in dealing with him.