Eric Doyle

Eric Doyle
Portrayed by	David H. Lawrence XVII
First appearance	The Butterfly Effect
In-story stats
Known ability	Puppet master
Alias	The Puppet Man
Gender
Date of birth	September 14, 1968
Place of birth	Omaha, NE
Residence	Eric Doyle's apartment
Occupation	Owner of Doyle's Marionette Theatre
Significant other	formerly Meredith Gordon
Parents	Unnamed father (deceased), unnamed mother (deceased)
Child	None
Other relatives	Ned (uncle)

Eric Doyle is an escaped prisoner from Level 5. He has the ability to control a person's physical actions.

Character History

The Butterfly Effect

Elle accidentally knocks out the Level 5 power grid with an electrical outburst, inadvertently giving the Primatech Research prisoners the chance to escape. While Knox, the German, Jesse, and the others escape, Eric is running after them.

Angels and Monsters

Meredith looks through some of Noah's files with Sandra Bennet and becomes worried when she finds Eric's file. She notes that Eric doesn't live too far, and since Claire has lied about where she went, said she'd check there first. Sandra tries to follow her, but Meredith stops her, as it's too dangerous. Later, Meredith is sitting at dinner with Eric, moving exactly as he does, thanks to his ability to control another's actions. He tells her to eat, then demands a kiss. Meredith tries aggressively to tell him off, but he shuts her mouth by snapping his fingers closed, and they kiss. They sit back down, and Eric seems very pleased with himself.

Graphic Novel:Doyle

Eric is thrown into a cell on Level 5. Noah Bennet enters and describes three "suicides"--Marcus Wilde, Stephen Taylor, and Tristan Rivers--caused by Doyle. Eric demands a lawyer, but Bennet tells him he's not the police. Two years later, an agent named Michael chats with Eric while bringing his meal. They discuss the differences between "us" and "them", and Michael speculates that Bennet let Sylar kill Eden. When Elle's electrical outburst knocks out the power, Eric's cell opens. Michael tries to stop the escaping prisoner, but Eric uses his power to force Michael to kill himself with his own lasers.

Dying of the Light

While they eat, Meredith tells Eric that she will never love him. Eric uses his ability to make Meredith break a wine glass and place the sharp edges against her throat. Later, he makes her dance with him on the stage of his marionette theater.

Sandra Bennet calls him to his front desk to arrange a fictitious birthday party, hoping to distract him while Claire sneaks into the theater through the back door. When Claire accidentally knocks something over while opening the door, Eric captures both her and Sandra and sits them down at a table with Meredith. He makes his three prisoners play a variation of Russian roulette in which the gun will be spun to decide who will fire it at whom. Meredith begs Eric to release them, promising to love him. However, Eric does not believe her and continues the game. First, Eric makes Claire spin the gun. When the barrel points between her two mothers, Eric tells her to choose which to fire at. When she refuses, he toys with her by making her aim at each one after the other. When she fights to not pull the trigger, he uses his ability to pull it for her, firing the gun at Meredith. The hammer lands on an empty chamber. Next, he makes Sandra spin the gun. It ends up pointing at Claire. Without Eric's control, Sandra pulls the trigger repeatedly until the gun fires the bullet, hitting Claire. When Claire is shot, Eric releases her from his control. He is then knocked out by her.

Noah is called to inject him using a pneumatic syringe, keeping him under control.

The Eclipse, Part 1

As Claire Bennet enters Level 5, Eric stands up in his cell, grinning at her.

Heroes Evolutions

primatechpaper.com has an Assignment Tracker 2.0 profile for Eric (file: C019; password: EDwvar70p). His personal history reads:

Eric Doyle was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He was orphaned at five when his parents died in an auto accident and was raised by his uncle, Ned, in San Diego, California. Eric shunned his new home and the Southern California lifestyle in favor of an elaborate imaginary world revolving around a set of crude finger puppets that his birth mother had made for him. Ned, an avid outdoorsman, clashed frequently with his nephew over Eric's desire to "play with dolls."

One day, during one of Ned's frequent attempts to force Eric to enjoy the beach, Ned gave his nephew's ragged finger puppets to his dogs as chew toys. Watching the last keepsakes of his childhood destroyed sent Eric into rage, causing his power to manifest for the first time: Eric forced his uncle to swim away from shore and drown in the Pacific.

Afterward, Eric experimented eagerly with his power while waiting to be arrested for Ned's murder. But the police investigation concluded that Ned had been caught in a riptide while beachcombing. The escape emboldened Eric in the months ahead. Left with his uncle's house and assets, Eric opened a moderately successful marionette theater, entertaining children with intricate shows but clashing constantly with parents and business relations. Behind the theater operations, Eric carried out an increasingly more brutal pastime: the kidnapping and torture of those whom he felt had slighted him.

Eric Doyle met Claire Bennet's birth mother, Meredith Gordon, at an antique flea market, where Meredith was admiring a rare 19th century marionette. In Company interviews, Eric claims he fell in love at first sight and felt that he and Meredith were meant to be together. But despite Meredith's initial politeness and Eric's increasingly desperate attempts -- including abduction and manipulation -- he was unable to make her love him, to his deep frustration. The Company made its initial bag and tag of Eric at this point, and Meredith survived.

The case file also includes a psychological profile:

The subject's traumatic loss of his parents at a formative age, accompanied by the abrupt transition to an unsympathetic environment and caregiver, resulted in persistent feelings of anger and frustration toward society. Psychological interviews reveal classic anti-social tendencies and an aversion to casual human interaction. In substitution, the subject projects a highly developed fantasy instinct onto his perceptions of the world, and any cognitive dissonance encountered as a result is channeled into his repressed frustrations and sense of rejection. Because of this acute disruption in emotional development, the subject possesses many of the psychological characteristics of a pre-pubescent child.

The subject's ability has become the primary outlet for his childhood feelings of loss and powerlessness, leading to a chronic psychological dependency. The subject has also developed a number of accompanying defense mechanisms, such as a radical perception of justice and vengeance that validates virtually any action against any given victim.

Evolved Human Abilities

Eric has the ability to control the physical actions of other people, essentially making them move like puppets under his control.

According to his assignment tracker file at primatechpaper.com, Eric's control index is 80%. His data analysis shows his biological level at 35, cerebral at 75, elemental at 20, and temporal/spatial at 25.

Cranial imaging

Notes

• Eric owns Doyle's Marionette Theatre.

Trivia

• According to his assignment tracker profile, Eric is 5'6" and weighs 250 pounds.

See Also

• For other uses of Doyle, see Doyle (disambig).