Sylar is one of my favourite characters.

I'm watching for the first time (not fully done yet. I'm in the middle of season 3)

Together with Hiro (for obvious reasons), Sylar is at the top of my list.

I just love how he's so incredibly nuanced.. a victim of growing up by the crushing expectations of his adoptive mother, feeling like he'll never be enough.. Then urged by the hunger to chase after mire and more power.

I love how Zachary Quinto portrays him! Sylar knows that he's doing bad things, but he embraces that evil, because it makes him feel powerful, important, and in control of others.

Even when he learns that he CAN take powers through empathy, he chooses to keep murdering people brutally, painfully, because their fear gives him great pleasure and satisfaction..

Sylar isn't Gabriel the watchmaker anymore, he is a force of nature that demands others to yield.. And that, for him, is reason enough to keep going on this path that (I can only assume) will lead to his own destruction.

Yet his story is still tragic in a way.. The hunger is a constant, an addiction of seeking a peak that just keeps rising any time he gets close to reaching it. The trauma of growing up with crushing expectations and the feeling of never being enough.. those things broke him and made him into what he has become.. And I think that's just amazing character building.

I feel his character is the most fleshed out (correct me if I'm wrong!) and I'd love anyone else's options.. Especially if you hate him, tell me why!!

Thanks for reading!