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All About Sylar, Brilliant Minds Star Zachary Quinto's Character on Heroes
Before Zachary Quinto played a doctor interested in how brains work on Brilliant Minds, he played a supervillain interested in how brains ... work.
The upcoming medical drama Brilliant Minds is not the first time that Zachary Quinto starred in a TV show on NBC. In the late 2000s, Quinto played the villain Sylar on the aptly named superhero drama Heroes. And, as the actor explained to Jimmy Fallon during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show, the connections between the two series go beyond sharing a network.
“The catalyst of the show Heroes, if anybody doesn’t know, is that a solar eclipse really awakens people to their own powers, and then the series explores what that means,” Quntio explained. "We started shooting Brilliant Minds on April 8, which was the day of the solar eclipse. So it’s a full circle moment.”
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There are some similarities between the two characters Quntio played, too. On Brilliant Minds, he’s Doctor Olivier Wolf, a brilliant, unorthodox neurologist who wants to better understand how the brain works so that he can help his patients. On Heroes, Sylar was a supervillain who wanted to understand how the brain worked… because he was killing other people with superpowers and physically examining their exposed brains in order to steal their abilities. So, maybe they’re not that similar after all.
Still, Quntio’s new role has people understandably thinking about Sylar, even if Dr. Wolf seems like a much nicer guy. Ahead of Brilliant Minds’ premiere on Monday, September 23, here’s a brief explainer of who Sylar was on Heroes.
Sylar made his debut in the first (and best) season of Heroes, although for the first several episodes he appears only in the shadows, and indeed Quinto wasn’t actually playing him until Episode 7. He’s the main villain of the season, a psychopathic serial killer who is hunting down people with superpowers because his own ability lets him replicate those powers once he’s seen inside their brains. Eventually, it’s revealed that Sylar’s real name is Gabriel Gray. The son of a watchmaker, Sylar was driven to evil because his mother insisted he was special, and when he gained his superpowers he was further motivated by an "evolutionary imperative" to become stronger and obtain more powers.
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The main plot of Season 1, also known as Genesis, has all the other main characters eventually coming together to stop Sylar and avert a nuclear catastrophe in New York City, after first stopping Sylar from killing Claire (Hayden Panettiere), as her power of regeneration would’ve made Sylar invincible an impossible to stop.
Sylar is bested in the season finale but he isn’t killed, and he continues to be a major threat in for the rest of Heroes’ run. However, an ongoing thread in the show, which got fairly convoluted following the near-perfect first season, is Sylar grappling with the villain he’s become. Season 2 has Sylar attempting to regain his powers following the events of the first season finale, but by Season 3 he’s attempting to understand his own craving for killing and trying to track down his father. It’s a very inconsistent process, though.
Season 3 ends with Sylar being brainwashed into believing he is Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), who he had killed following a resurgence of his hunger, a mental breakdown brought on by his shapeshifting abilities, and a series of betrayals and tangled character relationships too complicated to explain in depth here.
The fourth and final season of Heroes opens with Sylar living Nathan’s life and essentially believing himself to actually be the late Petrelli, but it’s not too long before his true personality starts manifesting within his head. When he eventually fully gains control, he sets out to do some villainy but finds himself changed by the experience and he’s unwilling to kill. He’s still a decidedly bad guy, though, and it’s not until he’s trapped within his own mind for what feels like three years (in reality it’s about 12 hours) that Sylar fully accepts and understands himself, finally able to reject his cravings and demons.
In the series finale, Sylar acts like — and calls himself — a hero, bringing his long, complex arc to a close.
You can watch Heroes now streaming on Peacock.
If all that sounds a little complicated, please know that it’s even more complicated (but enjoyable) to watch play out watching Heroes beginning to end. Presumably, Brilliant Minds won’t be quite as wild as Heroes, but it will still feature Quinto as a man interested in brains.
New episodes of Brilliant Minds premiere on Mondays on NBC at 10/9c and are available to stream on Peacock.
