Heroes: Every Main Character's Powers & Abilities Explained (2024)

Heroes featured an incredible cast of powered people with a wide variety of powers and abilities. The series originally aired on NBC from 2006 to 2010, where it became a huge success and amassed a dedicated fanbase. This was partially down to the incredible characters and writing developed by creator Tim Kring, who were uniquely different from most other contemporary superhero stories.

While Marvel and DC featured superheroes who feel a moral obligation to save the world, Heroes created a cast of real-world powered people. Humans that had flaws equal to or greater than the powers they possessed. From drug addictions, to greed, and selfishness, these "heroes" were not the standard powered people in the media in 2006, and it made for an incredible series. In addition, their powers resembled comic book heroes, but they had some unique differences that made them stand out.

9 Peter Petrelli - Empathic Mimicry

Embracing Power

Starting with one of the most traditional "heroes" featured on the show, Peter Petrelli always felt he had a higher purpose. He worked as a hospice nurse and a paramedic, serving his community and helping those most in need. However, he also felt that he could do greater good for more people on a larger scale, and frequently dreamed about having powers. Of course, Peter eventually discovered that he is one of the most powerful characters on the show. Peter's power is known as empathic mimicry, or the ability to replicate other peoples' powers after coming into contact with them.

Peter's powers took time to develop, but he was able to develop his gift from only being able to use others' abilities while they were nearby, to recalling and using any gift he absorbed at will. In order to access these gifts, however, Peter had to recall the emotions and feelings associated with the people he absorbed them from. His ability also made him passively resistant to many other gifts, such as Matt Parkman's mind reading, and Hiro's ability to freeze time, which would not affect Peter.

8 Nathan Petrelli - Flight

The Reluctant Hero

Nathan Petrelli is the older brother of Peter Petrelli, and another gifted character featured prominently in Heroes. Nathan possessed the power of flight, which he was able to use to fly at supersonic speeds, and while carrying other people. This power appeared to be completely natural and easy for Nathan to use, as he had no adverse effects from his gift, and could use the ability with precision. However, it was revealed that Nathan's gift was synthetic, and he was not born with powers.

Despite this, Nathan came from a family of powered people, which helped to prepare his DNA to adapt and comfortably use powers when he was given them. Nathan was not aware that his parents gifted him powers, but he also felt great shame about his gift. Nathan did not wish to use his ability to help others initially, as he had aspirations to climb the political ladder and did not want the drama of being revealed as an evolved human.

7 Claire Bennet - Immortality

Bennet's Extraordinary Healing Abilities Shows Her Importance

Claire Bennet is the biological daughter of Nathan Petrelli, and she also inherited powers naturally. While she was raised in a home where Noah Bennet, one of the most prominent members of the mysterious company, was her adoptive father, she was not aware of her powers until she was a teenage girl. At which point, she discovered her remarkable healing abilities and began to put them to the test. Claire quickly discovers that her powers go beyond simple healing, and she is able to recover even after dying.

This ability affects every part of her body, from her organs, to her limbs, meaning that she is unable to become drunk, she can regenerate entire body parts from a small toe to an entire arm, and her body's healing factor keeps her from getting ill. She also has a high pain tolerance due to her body's rapid recovery, which quickly heals her body before the pain can be prolonged. However, if Claire is injured or killed by a large object, such as a branch, which remains in her body, the healing factor doesn't activate until the object is removed.

6 Hiro Nakamura - Space-Time Manipulation

The Journey of a Hero, Hiro Nakamura

Hiro Nakamura is another character who displays a disposition toward being heroic. Rather than use his ability for personal gain or pleasure, as his friend Ando encourages him to do, he seeks to use his gifts for good. Hiro is a huge comic book fan, and has a strong sense of morals and heroics that he seeks to live by. When he uncovers he has the ability to manipulate space and time to his will, he is incredibly excited about his new powers.

However, while his gifts manifest as him being able to teleport, or travel through time, it is integrally tied with both space and time together. This initially leads to Hiro struggling to control one aspect of his powers without triggering the other. During his efforts to teleport, he frequently jumps through time as well. However, when he masters his gifts, he is able to stop time, isolate specific areas or objects, rewind time, and teleport to any location, becoming one of the most important characters in Heroes.

5 Niki Sanders - Enhanced Strength

A Tale of Split Personalities and Superhuman Strength

Niki Sanders is one of three identical triplets who were synthetically injected with powers shortly after their birth. The girls were then separated and raised in different environments. Niki was placed with the Sanders family, and a sister by the name of Jessica who she grew very close to. However, her adoptive father was abusive and accidentally killed Jessica when she was a child. Out of the stress and trauma of her upbringing, Niki developed a split personality, with an alternate persona named Jessica after her deceased sister.

After Niki became a mother, and found herself trapped in precarious situations, her alternate persona, Jessica, became her protector, stepping to the front whenever Niki needed to be saved. Along with the partition of her mind, Niki also remained detached from her powers, which only manifested when Jessica was in control until Niki mastered them. As Jessica, she possessed highly enhanced strength to the point of being able to break through solid metal, tear doors off safes, and throw large men double her size around with ease.

4 Sylar - Intuitive Aptitude

A Gifted Watchmaker's Hidden Power

Gabriel Gray was a reclusive, but gifted watchmaker. From a young age, he had an obsession with understanding how things work, which helped him to excel in his work. However, as fate would have it, this unassuming talent was actually a hidden power which was unlocked by the underlying side effect, his "hunger." Gray shed his old life behind and adopted the name of Sylar, after the watch brand, and began seeking out other powered people.

Sylar's gift is known as intuitive aptitude, which allows him to quickly understand how things work and replicate the results of building or doing them himself. Sylar discovers that powers are linked to the brain, and through his insatiable lust for power, he begins to murder other powered people, to examine their brains and acquire their powers. Sylar is able to do this to great success, acquiring numerous abilities, and eventually developing the ability to acquire more power without the need to kill others. This gift was also inherited from his biological father, Samson Gray.

3 Matt Parkman - Telepathy

Exploring Telepathic Abilities in Heroes

Matt Parkman first appeared in Heroes as an ambitious, but underachieving cop. Having tried to qualify to become a detective on multiple occasions, he was frequently passed over for promotion, or failed to pass the training. However, Parkman's life changed when he uncovered his ability to read other peoples minds and hear their thoughts. Parkman was initially confused by his powers, but he was able to harness them to accurately focus on specific people and read their thoughts at will.

However, over time, the extent of his telepathic abilities was revealed to be far more powerful than he initially assumed. Parkman was able to search peoples' minds for specific information, manipulate their minds to hallucinate, control their actions, or even lock them within a mental prison. Parkman also inherited his gift from his father, but while his father chose to wield his powers for his own personal gain, Parkman tries to protect others.

2 Isaac Mendez - Precognition

The Art of Prophecy

Isaac Mendez is only an active part of the show during the first season, but his gifts are instrumental in setting events in motion and helping others to stop a nuclear explosion. Isaac was a young artist living in New York City. While he frequently relied on drugs and hallucinogenics to create his art, he began to see patterns in the images he created and what was happening in the real world. However, unlike most artists, his work came before the events that inspired them.

Isaac had the gift of precognition, and his art was the medium through which he was able to manifest his gift. He published comics and created large works of art that detailed numerous events outlining the existence and development of other powered people. These images were instrumental in guiding people like Hiro to travel away from home and find the other powered people, as well as informing the heroes on how they could act in order to stop catastrophic future events.

1 Mohinder Suresh - Enhanced Strength / Body Transformation

The Unintended Consequences of Genetic Enhancement

Mohinder Suresh had access to all of his father's research on gifted people after his father died. However, it took time for him to uncover the truth about synthetic powers. When he finally did discover the serums that could imbue normal people with powerful gifts, he chose to use one on himself, and began to see remarkable results. His strength, senses, and general proficiency all appeared to leap ahead, but he soon developed significant side effects.

Mohinder began to develop a scaly rash and powers that were more terrifying than tantalizing. His body involuntarily became somewhat insect-like, and caused him to get incredibly ill as it changed his internal organs. However, with the use of a perfected serum, he was able to rid himself of most of the powers and changes, aside from his enhanced strength. He was then able to use this super strength to perform incredible feats, though not quite as impressive as Niki Sanders in the later seasons of Heroes.

Heroes

TV-14

Heroes sees a number of people drawn to each other after a solar eclipse awakens incredible abilities in them. With their destinies seemingly intertwined, these evolved humans use their superpowers to influence the past, present, and future - for better and for worse. When a superpowered killer emerges who is stealing abilities from his victims, they must band together to stop him.

Cast

Hayden Panettiere , Santiago Cabrera , Jack Coleman , Tawny Cypress , Noah Gray-Cabey , Greg Grunberg , Masi Oka , Adrian Pasdar , Milo Ventimiglia , Zachary Quinto

Release Date

September 25, 2006

Seasons

4

Showrunner

Tim Kring