Theory:Mr. Petrelli

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The following fan theories are about Mr. Petrelli.

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Theories

Theory	Citations	Notes
Mr. Petrelli has a power related with probability.	None.	• He kept winning in the card games. (War Buddies, Part 2).
Mr. Petrelli has the power of immortality.	Angela Petrelli states that Mr. Petrelli thought he was invincible. (Don't Look Back)	+ Angela's comment suggests that he was in some way resistant to death, but as he is (most likely) dead, he was clearly not immune to injury. Perpetuity would explain both these facts. - Petrelli knew Linderman had the healing power, so any physical injury could always be healed. Perpetuity isn't necessary and is likely not the case, since he seems to have eventually died.
Mr. Petrelli has no powers	None	+ In War Buddies, Mr. Petrelli displays no powers. - The photo shown in (The Kindness of Strangers) showed Mr. Petrelli in the presence of a group of people who have all proven to have powers. + Kaito and Angela have never been shown to definitively have powers - Linderman told Nathan that Mr. Petrelli had a power.
Mr. Petrelli is not dead.	None	+ They show has gone on for some time since the announcement of his death with excruciating labor not to provide evidence that he's dead. There has been no reference to his body, his funeral, or his grave. Nobody is known to have seen him dead. When TV shows do that with characters it's only for one reason, to hold out the possibility of surprising the audience with the shocking news that the character is still alive.
Mr. Petrelli is not dead, but in hiding from Mr. Linderman, possibly as a part of the Witness Protection Program. He faked a suicide, possibly with the help of Nathan to protect his wife and family and so not to be put into a position either against his son or against Mr. Linderman.	Peter did not sense his own father's passing, like Charles Deveaux's or Nathan's accident. Their mother stated that Nathan was the one who found his father dead.(Genesis), (Six Months Ago).	• Since Peter's father supposedly committed suicide after Nathan's accident, he had already experienced his first vision. - This theory requires that nobody other than those in on the fake suicide had seen Mr. Petrelli's body, an unlikely scenario that has not been indicated in the show. + Unless, of course, somebody like Candice created an illusion of Petrelli's corpse. Since Candice works for Linderman, it would only be feasible for it to have been her if Linderman himself was involved in the death-faking, although there could well be other illusionists out there. - It is highly unlikely Candice would have had anything to do with such an event, since she, according to Thompson, was just developing when they had Matt in custody. - While Nathan tells Peter that their dad is dead from a heart attack, Angela Petrelli told Peter in the hospital not only that his father suffered delusions of grandeur and had committed suicide, but that he had attempted it several times before. If his death was faked, those previous attempts are no longer explained. + It could be that the previous attempts at suicide were genuine, and that they were exploited to add weight to the claim that he had committed suicide.
Mr. Petrelli died and has become Uluru.	None	• Linderman tells Nathan that his father possessed great power. Angela Petrelli tells Peter that his father thought he was indestructible. It has been suggested that Uluru is indestructible. Molly Walker says there is someone even more dangerous than Sylar pointing to a new villain, as per the paintings by Isaac Mendez this is most likely Uluru.
Linderman orchestrated Mr. Petrelli's death to look like a suicide.	None.	• Linderman clearly has enough power to do such a thing, and he benefited from Mr. Petrelli's demise in that Nathan switched from being about to sue him to being a "candidate in his pocket." - It is implied that his father's death was one of the main motivations for Nathan to begin working with the FBI to bring Linderman down.
Mr. Petrelli was killed because he was about to reveal company secrets to the public.	None.	• Children with powers are sometimes placed with surrogate families until their powers manifest. It is possible that Mr. & Mrs. Petrelli were given Peter and Nathan and were told to raise them as their own until their powers manifested. Over this time, they had normal lives and grew to regard the Company agents as their parents, and in order to continue his protection of Peter and Nathan, Mr. Petrelli was prepared to go public. He was killed by the the Company to prevent this. Mrs. Petrelli's behavior toward Peter after his semi-failed attempt to fly also can therefore be interpreted as her desire to keep her "favorite" son from being exposed.
Mr. Petrelli did not have delusions of grandeur. His suicide was a way to make Linderman's healing power public.	Linderman has healing power. Mr. Petrelli decided to report the truth, but Linderman denies everything about his healing powers. Linderman states he might be delusional. (War Buddies, Part 5)	• Petrelli pushed Linderman going public about his healing power by committing suicide, forcing him to heal him. Previous attempts were covered up by the media and one time, Linderman just refused to heal him, thus indirectly killing. + Although Linderman said that Petrelli was delusional, it was clear that he wasn't (at that time). - It was stated by Angela Petrelli that Mr. Petrelli had major depressive disorder. She went on saying that this disorder can start from delusions of grandeur--thinking you're invincible or indestructible. (Don't Look Back) - Linderman claiming that Petrelli was delusional could have merely been a reference to Petrelli's illness.
Mr Petrelli faked his death, for the plans of the company to come to pass.	None.
Isaac painted the death-scene of Mr. Petrelli in the 8 of 8, not Noah Bennet.	In the portrait of "The Twelve" shown in the episode "The Kindness of Strangers", he is shown with horn-rimmed glasses and short cut hair similar to that of Mr. Bennet	+ In the picture of Group of twelve, Mr. Petrelli is shown wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and with a similar profile as Noah. - Petrelli is already dead. - Claire is behind the victim, kissing an unknown figure, making it more logical that the dead man in the painting is Mr. Bennet, not Mr. Petrelli. + The predictions in the paintings were thought to refer to "The Twelve"'s deaths minus one. Mr. Bennet is not one of The Twelve.
Mr. Petrelli is Kensei	None.	+ File:Kensei-Petrelli Profile Comparison.jpg Taking a profile picture of David Anders and blurring it to a similar level, their features are similar enough to be the same person. - While this picture shows that Kensei and Mr. Petrelli both possess the ability to turn left. It also shows that they look nothing alike. + Regeneration may run in the Petrelli family from him to Claire. + The logo of Mr. Petrelli's law firm is the same symbol as Kensei's crest. - Kensei has the power to heal himself. However, Dallas did not heal himself during the Vietnam War. - It seems odd that Kensei would barely age (or regress in age) for close to 400 years, and then begin aging between the Vietnam War and the time that the picture of the Group of twelve was taken. - In the graphic novels when Linderman first meets Mr. Petrelli he has no knowledge of special abilities and freaks out when Linderman heals him when Kensei already went through that with Hiro in the past and was told there are others like them. This would make it unlikely that they are the same person.
Mr. Petrelli is West's capturer	None.	+ He is also shown to wear horn-rimmed glasses.
Mr. Petrelli is Mr. Bennet's biological father	Noah Bennet's father needed glasses. (Company Man) Mr. Petrelli needed glasses and apparently wore a horn-rimmed version. (The Kindness of Strangers)	+ All of Mr. Petrelli's sons (if you include Noah) are named after prominent Biblical characters.
Mr. Petrelli is the Hooded killer	None.	• He might have faked a suicide to cover-up for going into hiding. + He is one of the Group of twelve, and likely has a 'great' power. + Angela Petrelli then has a valid reason to save/protect the hooded killer. She is also the only one who is aware of the way Mr. Petrelli died (heart attack/suicide/DID NOT die.) - This would take the final living number (before Kaito died) back to 10, breaking a possible link to the number 9. • that number 9 doesnot mean much. Kaito could have been wrong with the number of people from Group of 12 he thought were alive. + Before he dies, Kaito says "Of all of them, I never expected it would be you" (or something to that nature). This could be because he thought Mr. Petrelli was dead.