December 31st, 2006
Tim Kring Previews “Heroes” in 2007
Comic book magazine Wizard recently did an interview with “Heroes” producer/creator Tim Kring about what’s coming up for our band of not-so-merry heroes in 2007. There isn’t anything I would classify as spoilers, but some interesting tidbit, including Hiro’s quest for that groovy sword of his, Ted Sprague’s return, and how the heroes became heroes in the first place. Kring doesn’t seem especially sure about that last one. Also, most interesting of all, is Kring’s reveal that Sylar is pretty much, well, Sylar the killer.
Here’s the full re-printed interview as transcribed from the magazine by moi:
WIZARD: So Sylar is in captivity…
KRING: Yes. Sylar has been captured by HRG, who was so clearly consumed with saving his daughter, Claire. He is full of vengeance and wants to kill Sylar. He’d rather see him dead. However, we get a sense that HRG’s working for people above him and is caught in the middle — he’s a pawn essentially. He’s under orders and they’re not his wishes. [His bosses are] trying to figure out what makes Sylar special, what makes him able to absorb multiple powers where most people only have one.
WIZARD: Claire is caught in a sticky situation, too, after the Haitian doesn’t follow HRG’s orders to erase her memory.
KRING: She will now be pretending not to remember anything while living under the same roof as her father, with her father believing she doesn’t recall [what happened that night].
WIZARD: Is there an underlying theme for the next half of the season, like “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World”?
KRING: Yes. Mohinder will seek out those on his father’s list to help them. The theme will be, “Are You on the List?”
WIZARD: And Hiro still has to prevent what happens to New York.
KRING: Hiro goes off on a new mission to find a sacred object that he needs in order to save the world, and that sacred object is a samurai sword. It’s going to be a very nice little arc of several episodes — “The Quest for the Sword.”
WIZARD: What’s going on with Matt Parkman?
KRING: Well, Matt has encountered HRG and the Haitian and is starting to remember what happened to him, so he’s going after them. He’s in Odessa, Texas, trying to figure the whole thing out. He’s the lowly beat cop who is uncovering a huge conspiracy that is way over his head.
WIZARD: You’re adding new characters to the second half of the season. George Takei, Sulu from “Star Trek,”, has been cast as Hiro’s father.
KRING: Yeah, that’s right. We’re adding Christopher Eccleston, too. He’s a new character with abilities. If they’re coming on, who else could we add?
WIZARD: What kind of abilities will Eccleston’s character have? Is he good or evil?
KRING: You know, good or evil, he’s ambiguous. I will say this much: Every hero needs a mentor and a Yoda, so he becomes that for Peter.
WIZARD: So he teaches Peter how to control his powers?
KRING: Yes.
WIZARD: If Peter has the ability to absorb other people’s powers, doesn’t that make him like Sylar?
KRING: Peter and Sylar are two halves of a similar coin. Both are able to absorb people’s powers, but in two very different ways. Peter’s is based on his empathy and his ability to connect with people and when he’s around them. Sylar actually has to take your brain and do something with it.
WIZARD: What else will we find out about Sylar?
KRING: Sylar’s storyline is [a] much cleaner line than a lot of people think. He’s literally just a character who wanted to be special and he gets kind of f–ked up and becomes a serial killer. That’s all it is.
WIZARD: In the mid-season cliffhanger, we see Peter is responsible for the explosion in New York. Some people assumed Ted Sprague was going to be the cause of it.
KRING: Well, Ted still factor into it in a way because there has to be an explanation how Peter ahas absorbed enough power to do that. Peter’s got to figure out how to use his power because he’s overwhelmed. He gets more powerful and all jumbled up in a big mess. That’s where Chris is going to come in. Chris becomes a real character on the show. He’s starting with an arc, and we’ll see where it goes. He becomes an integral character to the plot for several episodes.
WIZARD: Does Peter have the power to retain the powers he absorbed?
KRING: He doesn’t think that he does, but that’s part of what the whole Yoda mission is, to figure out how to access the file cabinet actually in there.
WIZARD: An early version of the pilot had a terrorist storyline. Do you plan to address that in a future arc or did you totally scrap that?
KRING: It’s completely scrapped and in some ways, Ted Sprague replaced the character as a radioactive man.
WIZARD: Where is Ted?
KRING: Ted disappeared at the end of Episode Nine and doesn’t show up again until 12. He breaks out. He’s abducted and then he breaks out.
WIZARD: Is he on the run? Like a Bruce Banner-type who can’t stay in one place too long because he’s afraid the authorities will catch up to him?
KRING: Yes, exactly, but he’s actually more kind of on their tail. He’s hell bent on finding out what happened to him. Ted is a really fun character, but we drop him for several episodes while he’s out there in the wind.
WIZARD: Will we ever find out how everyone got their powers?
KRING: You know, there will be multiple theories that will arise, but I’ve always said — and it’s one of the things that sort of sets me apart from a lot of the comic book genre world — is that I’ve never been that fascinated by that part of the story. I posited a theory that it was evolutionary — mutations happen when the environment changes and becomes hostile. The ice age shows up and suddenly a hundred thousand species overnight develop fur. I mean, that’s just the way that nature has been. So my original theory was that we’re living in such a f–ked-up world and things are so awful that Earth needed to populate itself with people who were going to do something about it. That being said, we have an entire conspiracy theory that is going to run counter to that based on who HRG is working for and what they’re all up to. That’s going to run counter theory to that eventually, that maybe these people were not…
WIZARD: Not what?
KRING: It’s all there. You’ll see. So your previous question, I’m not going to give an answer to that because that becomes a really fun part of the show. I feel very comfortable that people right now should be taking the initial premise of the at its face value because they’ll have the most enjoyment if they do that.
