When “Heroes” first premiered in 2006, the comic book-inspired NBC drama made waves worldwide. Audiences were drawn to the serialized story that followed a large cast of characters from all over the globe, most of whom manifested their own super-powers along the way. Created by Tim Kring, the series was something of a tribute to the superhero genre, one that grounded itself in the strict reality of the post-9/11 era. There’s a lot to love about “Heroes,” especially in the show’s first season, but as the novelty began to wear off, the series faltered. Plotlines and characters were dropped without any further mention, seasons were broken up into multiple “volumes,” and many of the things we loved about the show in the first place began to feel like crutches that were only allowing the narrative to hobble along.

But there was one character who always seemed to get the raw end of the deal. After his initial arc in the first season, Zachary Quinto’s Sylar — who was nearly played by Christopher Eccleston — was vastly overplayed. Quinto himself was fantastic when he first appeared in “Seven Minutes to Midnight,” but by the second and third seasons, we’d grown a bit tired of the character. So what ever happened to Sylar? How did his “Heroes” story end? And what became of him during the “Heroes Reborn” sequel series a decade later? Well, if you’ve been wondering how the “Heroes” original big bad turned out, just keep reading.

When Sylar is first introduced on “Heroes,” he’s presented as a super-powered serial killer who steals the abilities of those who can likewise do incredible things. He’s described as a “monster” by Molly Walker (Adair Tishler), and as a threat by everyone else at the mysterious Company. Noah Bennett aka H.R.G. (Jack Coleman) is especially afraid of Sylar — not because of his power, but because of what he’s been prophesied to do to Bennett’s daughter, Claire (Hayden Panettiere). Claire can heal, of course, but who wants to see their little girl cut open in the process? But underneath his villainous exterior, Sylar is actually just a watchmaker named Gabriel Grey. 

Convinced by Dr. Chandra Suresh (Erick Avari) that he is special due to his “intuitive aptitude” ability, Gabriel is shown to understand the mechanics of a person’s super-powers simply by studying them in action. In general, he “understands how things work,” and as a result, he also knows how to remove one’s superpowers from their brain. Becoming the serial killer Sylar, Gabriel hopes to amass as many super-abilities as possible in order to be seen as “special.” To say that Sylar is a bit unbalanced would be putting it kindly.

In many respects, Sylar is the exact opposite of Milo Ventimiglia’s Peter Petrelli. Peter’s “empathic mimicry” ability allows him to copy the abilities of others because of his genuine care for people, while Sylar’s “intuitive aptitude” is a more mechanical way for him to take the powers (and lives) of others rather than simply mirroring them. This is why, at the end of the first season, Peter is the only one who can theoretically defeat Sylar, since they’re so evenly matched.

After Season 1 of “Heroes,” the show didn’t quite know what to do with Sylar. Future seasons attempted (with little success) to humanize the character through de-powering him or pushing him into potential romantic situations. For a while, he flirts with a redemption arc after losing his powers, but when they return, he quickly resumes his old ways. In Season 3, the show floats the idea that Sylar might be Peter’s long-lost brother, but that turns out to be a ruse. Unsurprisingly, he resorts to violence in response. Time and again, Sylar proves himself as “Heroes” most recurring villain, and time and again he’s left aimless.

It isn’t until the fourth and final season that the writers took Sylar in a different direction. In the penultimate episode, “The Wall,” Sylar is imprisoned in his own mind by Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg), later joined by Peter. Because Sylar had previously killed Peter’s brother Nathan (Adrian Pasdar), the two spend years working out their differences — though only hours in the real world — until both Sylar and Peter are changed. After this existential experience, Sylar decides to be a hero, and helps Peter and the rest of the cast defeat the latest big bad.

“Brave New World” presents a new Sylar who holds a more optimistic outlook on life. Hoping to redeem himself in the eyes of the world, the former criminal admits to Peter that it felt better to save a life than to take one. Sylar is no longer the villain we all knew, though, due to “Heroes” abrupt cancelation, we never got to see if this heroic streak really stuck.

A few years after “Heroes” ended, NBC brought the show back for a single-season rebrand called “Heroes Reborn.” The project was very hit-or-miss, but what irked fans the most was the lack of cast members who returned. Milo Ventimiglia and Hayden Panettiere were nowhere to be found, and Zachary Quinto also didn’t return for the reunion. But just because Sylar didn’t make his way back to “Heroes” doesn’t mean we don’t know what happened to him after the fact. In addition to a quick mention in “The Needs of the Many,” Sylar returns officially in the tie-in ebook “Save the Cheerleader, Destroy the World” by Keith R.A. DeCandido. 

In this story, we learn that Sylar joined up with Peter and a few other heroes in what’s called the “Petrelli Movement.” With Evos being exposed to the world by Claire at the end of the original series, Sylar and Peter fight to save innocent members of their designation from experimentation and persecution. The last we’ve heard from Sylar is that he and Peter were forced to use invisibility to hide from the world, which had grown to hate their kind in a very “X-Men”-inspired manner. Since this story takes place before “Heroes Reborn” itself, we are left to assume that during the events of the series, Sylar is still in active hiding, playing the hero from the shadows.

Following his groundbreaking role on “Heroes,” Zachary Quinto has been busy. In 2009, the actor replaced Leonard Nimoy as Spock in the rebooted “Star Trek” film series helmed by J.J. Abrams, which doubled as his feature film debut. He returned as the Vulcan hero in “Star Trek Into Darkness” and “Star Trek Beyond,” with a fourth film yet unmaterialized. Quinto continued to appear in various major motion pictures, including “Hitman: Agent 47,” “Snowden,” and “Margin Call,” but has mostly stuck to smaller, independent productions in recent years. That is, aside from voicing Lex Luthor in the DC Comics animated features, “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” and “Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One.”

As with “Heroes,” Quinto has had a bit more luck on the small screen. The actor was featured in four seasons of the acclaimed “American Horror Story” — “Murder House,” “Asylum,” “NYC,” and “Delicate” — and went on to appear in episodes of “Girls,” “Hannibal,” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” In 2019, Quinto landed a new leading role as Charlie Manx on the AMC vampire drama “NOS4A2,” based on the Joe Hill novel of the same name. After that was canceled, he continued to lend his vocal talents to shows like “Big Mouth.” He is currently the star of NBC’s latest medical drama, “Brilliant Minds,” where he plays a neurologist named Dr. Oliver Wolf. A far cry from Sylar, to be sure.

Earlier this year, Tim Kring announced that he’s working on a secondary “Heroes” revival series — tentatively titled “Heroes: Eclipsed” — for NBC, which has garnered wary interest from fans. “Heroes Reborn” wasn’t anything to write home about, and the lackluster way the original series ended left a bad taste in the mouths of many. Even the prospect of seeing some of our favorite characters grace the small screen again isn’t enough to warrant more “Heroes,” but it does beg the question: Could Sylar return? Well, it seems unlikely.

Back in 2015, when “Heroes Reborn” was in the works, fans wondered if Quinto would return as Sylar. Instead, the actor made it clear that “Heroes” is a chapter he’s not interested in revisiting. “I’m not going to go back,” the actor explained in an interview with Buzzfeed. “It was such a meaningful experience for me … I just felt like I didn’t want to go back to it.” Instead, Quinto has been more interested in advancing his career in bold new directions rather than returning to the show that first put him on the map. After all, he made 60 episodes of “Heroes” as Sylar, and, after the character’s impromptu redemption arc, what more could really be done?