Claire Bennet

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Claire Bennet
Portrayed by	Hayden Panettiere
First appearance	Genesis
Information
Ability	Healing factor
Gender	Female
Age	15[1]
Occupation	High School student
Parents	Adoptive parents: Sandra Bennet Mr. Bennet Biological parents: Meredith Gordon Nathan Petrelli
Siblings	Lyle Bennet (younger adopted brother), Simon and Monty Petrelli (younger half-brothers)
Relatives	Peter Petrelli (biological uncle), Angela Petrelli (biological grandmother)

Claire Bennet is a fictional character in the NBC drama Heroes, portrayed by Hayden Panettiere. She is a 15-year-old^[1] cheerleader who attends Union Wells High School in Odessa, Texas. Her life changed drastically when she discovered that she possessed the power of spontaneous regeneration. Claire is the only character to appear in every episode portrayed by the same actor.

[edit] Character history

[edit] Beginnings

Six months prior to the start of the series, Claire was preparing to become a cheerleader at her high school and living an active but normal life. Jackie Wilcox, another cheerleader, befriends Claire and helps her join the cheerleading squad. Though Claire is "popular" like Jackie and other squad members, she tries not to "be a bitch," unlike Jackie.

In the pilot episode "Genesis," set several months later, Claire has discovered her power. As a result, she has become worried and frightened. To help cope and test her powers, Claire confides in Zach, a high-school classmate who videotapes Claire testing her regenerative power by attempting to injure herself. Zach thinks Claire's power is the "coolest thing to ever happen in [their] town"; Claire believes it makes her a freak and is afraid of it being discovered. Her younger brother, Lyle, also discovers Claire's powers after finding the tape Zach filmed. Claire swears him to secrecy.

Despite wanting nothing more than a normal life, Claire has been through her share of harrowing experiences. In the pilot episode, she saves a man from a burning train wreck. The credit for the rescue is later claimed by her friend Jackie. Wishing to avoid publicity, Claire grudgingly stays silent while Jackie takes the credit. Also, a burgeoning romance with Brody Mitchum, a quarterback from the school's football team, goes horribly wrong when a drunken Brody tries to date rape Claire. The encounter ends after she is "killed" when he knocks her down on a pile of wood, a branch impaling the back of her neck, embedding itself into her skull. Claire later revives on the autopsy table when the branch is removed. She manages to escape when the coroner steps out of the room. Brody is stunned to see Claire alive at school the next day, but is led to believe he misremembered the incident due to his drunken state.

Discovering she is not the first girl Brody assaulted, Claire decides to take revenge. She asks Brody for a ride home and then to drive his car. During the drive, she confronts him about his behavior, but Brody is unrepentant and indicates he'll continue assaulting girls. Claire then purposefully crashes the car into the wall of a building at high speed. They're both taken to the hospital, even though Claire is uninjured due to her powers. When her father comes to visit her, Claire breaks down and tells him of Brody's assault. Her father says he'll take care of it. When Claire approaches Brody in his hospital room later, he has amnesia to the point of not knowing his own name.

Having sustained no injuries, Claire is quickly released from the hospital. After several requests from Claire, Mr. Bennet has arranged for Claire to meet Hank and Lisa, a couple that is presented as her biological parents. She tries to subtly pump them for information about her superhuman power, but they seem unaware of anything abnormal about Claire.

[edit] "Save the cheerleader, save the world"

After the first four episodes of the series, a story arc called "Save the cheerleader, save the world" began. Claire's ultimate fate was implied to be tied to the fate of the entire world. A future version of Hiro Nakamura told Peter Petrelli: "Save the cheerleader, save the world." In a painting Peter finished for Isaac Mendez, a cheerleader is seen dead, with her brain removed from her skull. Isaac also experiences a vision of Claire being chased at her school. The episode "Seven Minutes to Midnight," shows Mr. Bennet telling Isaac that Sylar will kill Claire at her school's homecoming game, and he needs Isaac to help him prevent the crime by completing a painting of Claire being murdered.

In the episode "Homecoming," Claire was elected homecoming queen after her friend Zach campaigned for her, persuading all of the school's "unpopular" students (who outnumber the "popular" ones) to vote for her. Claire punches fellow cheerleader Jackie after Jackie taunts Zach about his sexuality. Claire's father grounds her, ostensibly for punching Jackie, but really intending to keep her out of harm's way by preventing her from fulfilling Isaac's "prophecies." Zach persuades Claire to sneak out her bedroom window and go to the game anyway.

Claire and Peter Petrelli following Sylar's attack.

At the game, Claire meets Peter, but since he saw the newspaper article where Jackie took credit for the fire rescue, Peter believes Jackie is the cheerleader he is there to save. An argument between Claire and Jackie in the school locker room is interrupted when the lights suddenly turn off and Claire hears someone approach. Claire tells Jackie to run, but Sylar catches them and cuts Jackie's scalp telekinetically. Claire is thrown against a wall without a second thought when she attempts to intervene. Claire, splattered with blood, quickly recovers from her broken bones, gets up, and runs away from Sylar, who realizes he has made a mistake as Jackie dies from massive blood loss. In the hallway, she finds Peter and the two of them flee the building. Claire takes Peter's advice to run toward the stadium full of people, but then turns back to find him laying in a pool of blood. She is then astonished to see him heal himself just like her. As Claire goes to get help, she runs into the arms of her relieved father, who says the police will handle things at the school. He also says she is lucky to be alive, leading Claire to admit that her survival is not due to luck.

When the story continues in "Fallout," Claire's father informs her that he has always known about her powers and has done things he is not proud of to protect her. He tells her Sylar has been taken care of, but warns Claire not to tell anyone about her powers, claiming there are others who would want to harm her. Claire recovers the remaining video tapes depicting her powers from Zach and destroys them. She warns Zach not to tell anyone about her healing abilities. Claire and her father are interviewed by law enforcement officials, but Claire tells them both she and Peter must have been "just lucky" to have survived Sylar's attack. Claire later meets with Peter alone and is fascinated to meet someone who also has powers like her own. She tells him he is "totally [her] hero." Claire later discovers that both her brother and Zach no longer remember what they've seen regarding her unusual healing abilities. Claire panics and calls her father, extremely frightened. Mr. Bennet reassures her that he remembers and everything will be alright. The Haitian then appears out of the shadows and covers Claire's mouth with his hand. He tells Claire that Mr. Bennet sent him to wipe her memory of the preceding events, just as he has wiped the memories of Brody, Lyle, and Zach. The Haitian even states that he had to mindwipe Claire's mother "so many times" in the past. However, the Haitian then said that there is a reason Claire must remember and asks her if she can keep a secret.

[edit] Back to abnormal

Two weeks later in "Godsend," Claire is struggling with being alone again since the Haitian did not wipe her memory. In front of her father, she pretends that she does not remember anything the Haitian was supposed to erase. She tries to reconnect with Zach, but between his lack of memory and resentment over the way their friendship ended in grade school, he's not interested. Desperate, Claire meets with the Haitian to discuss her options and the state of things. She mentions "save the cheerleader, save the world," wondering what it means and if she's even "saved." The Haitian states that she has been saved for the time being. He also rebuffs her request to see Peter, stating he is being watched by her father. She asks the Haitian to give Zach his memories back, as she does not want to be alone, but he tells her he cannot. Before leaving, the Haitian also tells Claire "my power, your power; that's God," and recommends she respect her abilities more, rather than see them as an affliction. Eventually, Claire takes Zach back to the spot where they filmed "attempt number six." After redoing the same stunt from "Genesis," she now says into Zach's camera, "This is Claire Bennet, and as far as you know, that was attempt number one."

In "The Fix," Claire and Zach search for information on her biological mother, telling Mr. Bennet that they have been grudgingly partnered together on a biology project for school. Their search leads them to Meredith Gordon, a woman reported to have died in a fire along with her eighteen-month-old daughter. They believe Claire to be Meredith Gordon's reportedly-dead daughter. When Claire contacts several people with the surname "Gordon," she finds a woman who identifies herself as Meredith. The woman is shocked to hear that Claire survived and is revealed to possess the ability of pyrokinesis. In "Distractions", Claire and Meredith meet, sharing their powers with each other. Later, Meredith telephones Claire's biological father, who is revealed to be Nathan Petrelli, informing him that their daughter is still alive.

In the episode "Unexpected," Claire finds that her mother is showing signs of temporary memory loss, at one point even forgetting who Mr. Muggles was, only to revert to her normal self a few minutes later. Later on, Claire's mother collapses while in the kitchen and is rushed to the hospital. When Mr. Bennet arrives, Claire is unable to suppress her anger against him any longer and admits to knowing about the repeated memory wipes that Mr. Bennet has done on her mother. After this, the family returns home, where they are confronted by Ted Sprague and Matt Parkman.

In "Company Man", Claire and her family are held captive by Sprague and Parkman. After a botched attempt to free the family by Mr. Bennet, Claire and her father convince Matt to shoot her to get Sprague's trust. She attempts to free her family after she regenerates, but is captured by Sprague in the attempt. After Sprague is shot and his radiation powers go violently out of control, Claire uses her regenerative powers to get close enough to tranquilize him. However, Claire is seen healing from severe radiation burns by one of Mr. Bennet's superiors, who insists that Claire be turned over to their employers. In the end, Claire is given to the Haitian, who is to keep her safe from Bennet's company.

In "Parasite", she was supposed to go with the Haitian to flee the country but manages to slip away from him by stealing his passport at the airport. She then goes to Peter Petrelli's apartment, finding his mother, Angela Petrelli, instead. Angela reveals that not only is she Claire's grandmother, but that she and the Haitian have been corresponding for some time in order to protect Claire.

Claire's meeting with her grandmother will lead to finally seeing her father face-to-face in ".07%".^[2]

[edit] Powers and abilities

Claire can spontaneously regenerate any tissue in her body, allowing her to recover from any injury within seconds to minutes. She also rarely shows visible signs of pain after being injured, since she fails to notice several broken ribs on one occasion and does not complain when her head is twisted 180 degrees ^[3]. She did, however, grimace when her hand was damaged during her retrieval of a class ring from an active garbage disposal and when her brother fired a staple into her hand. Series writers Joe Pokaski and Aron Coleite would only comment that she "feels pain, but not the way most of us do."^[4] Claire's ability has not been shown to have any definite limit thus far. Between her tolerance for pain and seemingly unlimited healing potential, Claire's portrayer, Hayden Panettiere has compared Claire to the X-Men character Wolverine, although she is "less hairy and without claws" according to Panettiere.^[5]

Only once has Claire's healing ability not come to her aid. The episode "One Giant Leap" shows Claire to have been "killed" after being accidentally stabbed through the lower part of her brain by a branch. The branch remains in place for what must have been several hours, since an autopsy is begun over the period. During the autopsy, the branch is removed, and Claire automatically begins healing a few seconds later.

"One Giant Leap" also shows that Claire's healing powers can even undo the normally irreversible destructive processes that happen to bodies immediately upon severe trauma or death (brain death, lividity of blood in the tissues and coagulation of same, et al.). Despite having been dead for several hours as previously explained, Claire was able to revive completely. In "Company Man", she is able to survive being shot in the chest by Matt Parkman, (regenerating within a couple minutes), and the immense radiation given off by Ted Sprague after he is shot.

Although there is an allusion to Claire's discovery of her ability as a young child in "Godsend", the episode "Six Months Ago" is the earliest demonstrated instance of the healing ability. While wrestling over a cheerleading outfit with Jackie, Claire accidentally lacerates her hand on some broken glass. Though the wound does not heal instantly, it is healed completely just a few hours later when her father asks to look at it.

[edit] Trivia

• Claire's MySpace site^[6] lists one of her favorite films as Unbreakable, which also features an indestructible character.
• A scene in the episode "Genesis", in which Claire puts her hand into an activated In-Sink-Erator garbage disposal, provoked Emerson Electric Company, manufacturer of the In-Sink-Erator, to sue NBC for pecuniary damages.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Claire Bennet's MySpace page