If you have watched the now canceled TV series Heroes, you are very familiar with the character Sylar. He started out as the main villain on season 1 but his character evolved and changed over the course of the show. He is sort of the opposite of the main hero in season 1, Peter Petrelli. Both of them have the ability to copy other specials powers, Sylar just kills people to do it while Peter does it through empathy.
In season 1 Sylar mostly just travels around murdering other specials in order to steal their powers. Gaining more and more power, becoming important, that is Sylar's main purpose in life during this time.
After season 1 I think the writers thought about their situation, coming to the conclusion that both Sylar and Peter have been made much to powerful so they had to come up with some way to tone them down. With Sylar they made him lose his abilities. During all of season 2 he is just an ordinary man trying to figure out how to recover his lost abilities. He still kills plenty of people along the way in his journey and at the very end of the season recovers his powers.
In season 3 we see Sylar's biggest weakness, he is mentally weak and easy to manipulate due to his mommy issues. Unfortunately I think the writers made a mistake with Sylar that season. They let him finally take Claire's power and another specials ability to shape change. Now you can't even shoot or stab him in the back of the head to kill him (the only way to stop someone with that ability) because his shape shifting power lets him move that spot. They made Sylar way to strong, so instead of getting into any battles he mostly just drives around learning about his past.
He comes across his real Dad ( Sylar was adopted by his uncle) and finds out he has the exact same starting power as himself, the ability to take the powers of others. We pretty much see Sylar's fate here, to become bored and alone. I didn't really like how Sylar jumps from being a bad guy to a good guy to a bad guy so much in this season. Like with a lot of other characters on the show during this time, his behavior seems to change on a dime.
In the 4th season, since Sylar is so powerful and they can't do much else with him, he pretty much just travels around some more trying to find some kind of meaning to his life. He eventually becomes trapped in his own mind, in his own personal hell, by Matt Parkman. Since no one can physically beat Sylar anymore this is pretty much the only way he can be defeated. During his time in his own mind (which felt like 5 years for him) he, with the help of Peter, becomes a good guy once again. Peter forgives Sylar for murdering his brother Nathan (at the end of season 3) and they go off to stop the new bad guy.
Sylar is a good character but it seems like they mostly kept him around after season 1 just because he is popular. It is interesting that he is the only main bad guy who actually repents and changes his ways but they shouldn't have had him switch back and forth so dramatically multiple times. I also don't think he should have gotten Claire's power as that just makes him unbeatable in a fight (especially with Peter losing all of his powers).
I thought Sylar in season 2, being depowered was fine. I simply wouldn't have let him get his old powers back, just start him over with a clean slate in season 3. They also should have killed him during the 4th season (if not earlier). They could have used the same redemption story line and had him sacrifice his life to save Peter, making up for his murder of his brother.
If the show had gone on I am not really sure what they would have done with him since he is basically invincible and has unlimited power. I just think it would have been better to tone him down (by leaving him mortal he still has to worry about being killed and can be defeated) and keep him a little more consistent in his behavior but overall he is still used pretty well throughout the show. I also understand that they wanted to keep him around because he is a fan favorite. Having him give up his own life for the greater good, after having done so much evil, would have been a great exclamation point on his redemption story.
Sylar is a great villain, just used to much. Like Jaws or Norman Bates, the less you see of him the better. Leave some things to the imagination. Filling in the blanks with your own mind is always better than being shown every little detail.
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