Claire Bennet
| Claire Bennet | |
|---|---|
| |
| Portrayed by | Hayden Panettiere |
| First appearance | Genesis |
| In-story stats | |
| Known ability | Healing factor |
| Gender | |
| Age | 17 |
| Residence | Claire Bennet's home |
| Occupation | High School student |
| Parent | Unnamed adoptive mother and Mr. Bennet ("Horn-Rimmed Glasses") (adoptive father); unknown biological parents. |
| Sibling | Lyle Bennet (younger brother) |
Character history
Genesis
Claire's story opens with her school classmate, Zach, videotaping her climbing up to an 80-foot height and jumping off. After falling to the ground, Claire brushes herself off and re-locates her dislocated right shoulder. Turning to the camera, she says, "That was attempt number six." It's not entirely clear if this is a reference to test her powers, or if it is actually the number of suicide attempts she has made to escape the stress from school and expectations from everyone around her. She lists her attempts as breaking every bone in her body, stabbing herself in the chest, and shoving a steel rod through her neck. She confesses that she fears being seen as a freak by her friends, right before rescuing someone from a semi-truck/train accident and then fleeing without injury.
After coming home, she attempts to tell her mother about her abilities during dinner, saying, "I walked through fire and didn't get burned." Claire's mother doesn't comprehend, believing her daughter's statement to be metaphorical. Later, Claire mentions to her mother that she knows she is adopted and asks about her "real parents." Her father comes home, and turns out to be the man with the horn-rimmed glasses, who has been encountering Mohinder Suresh in India and New York.
Don't Look Back
Claire talks with her father about her adoptive parents. He is very protective of her, yet also seems understanding and the discussion ends on good terms, though not to Claire's satisfaction. At school, authorities are trying to find out who saved the man from the fire in the first episode. Another cheerleader eventually steps up to take the credit, though Claire does find out the man, still in bad shape, is grateful to be alive. Out on the school football field, Zach tells her he cannot find the tape. Shocked motionless, Claire is accidentally tackled by a training player, suffering a broken neck in the process, but recovers quickly without her injury being noticed.
After she comes home, Claire's adoptive father says he's in the process of finding her biological parents, admitting that her earlier comments convinced him. After Claire leaves, her adoptive father reveals that he is in possession of the missing tape, which means he also knows of her regenerative abilities.
One Giant Leap
Claire's father notices her attraction to the quarterback of the football team before an away game. The team, cheerleaders and other students hold a bonfire after the game. Claire and the quarterback wander off to the privacy of nearby bleachers. When things get too sexual for Claire she tries to stop it, but the quarterback attempts to rape her. As she tries to get him off and get away, she is knocked down on a pile of wood and a branch embeds itself through the back of her neck into her skull, apparently killing her. At the end of the episode, the branch is removed and her eyes revert from glazed over back to their original color as she gasps and coughs for air. Looking around, she notices the severity of her current situation: she is on an autopsy table with the skin of her entire chest laid open for the examination, exposing her ribcage. She reacts, understandably, with "Holy..." and the scene ends before she can finish the sentence.
Collision
Claire's body begins to heal itself after the coroner pulls the tree branch out of her head. The coroner notes that the naked body of a "Jane Doe" washed up on a river bank and the teenage girl appears to have been the victim of a (possibly accidental) homicide. When the coroner steps out of the room for a moment, the now regenerated Claire sits up, gets off the autopsy table and steals a lab coat from the cupboard. She sneaks out a side entrance as the coroner returns and is flabbergasted by the missing body. Claire sneaks in the front door of her home just in time to hear her mother call her to the breakfast table. Claire goes upstairs and changes into a clean shirt, but neglects to wash off her dirty feet. Her father sees the grit on her bare toes and asks her if she has been out all night. Claire lies that she played poker with her friends and says "nothing happened." Her father suspects that she is lying and says they will have a "throw down" about her staying out all night when he returns home. Claire's mother calls from the kitchen that waffles are ready and her brother is sent to tell her to come to breakfast. After he leaves, Claire sits on the staircase and bursts into tears. Later, at school, the quarterback spots Claire in the hallway and is stunned into speechlessness. Claire's friend Zach questions her about her attempted rape and murder the previous night. Claire said even if she wanted to report the attempted rape, she doesn't have a mark on her. Later, another girl approaches Claire and said she saw Claire go off with the quarterback the previous night. She says she was also sexually attacked by the quarterback. Claire later waits in the stands for the quarterback to finish football practice. She pretends not to remember what happened and asks the quarterback for a ride home. She asks him to let her drive. In the car, they converse about what happened the night of the bonfire and Claire says she remembers his attack on her. The quarterback says she "wanted it" and she should get over it. Claire realizes he plans to keep assaulting girls and he replies that there is nothing she can do about it. Claire replies, "I can do this," and deliberately crashes the car into a wall at high speed.
Powers and abilities
Claire possesses a powerful healing factor which allows her to instantly recover from any injury. While she is able to take physical damage and recover swiftly, she also shows no visible sign of pain from burns or even compound fractures. Although, she did grimace when her hand was damaged during her retrieval of a class ring from a running garbage disposal. She has not yet reached a limitation in her powers. Along with the injuries stated above, she suffered an injury in the second episode where her neck was turned around 180 degrees. This would be fatal for most humans, even other instant self-healers or otherwise durable characters. Indeed, between her tolerance for pain and seemingly unlimited healing potential, Claire is somewhat similar to the X-Men character Wolverine. Panettiere herself even loosely compared Claire to that same character when explaining her powers during an interview. Apparently, Claire cannot heal herself if a foreign object is left in the injured area. The Oct. 9th episode was billed by a TV Guide article as a extreme test of her powers. True to this claim, she was apparently killed, only to revive when the object which had killed her was removed. This is true of other characters with healing factors can still heal incorrectly, incompletely or not at all if certain conditions are not met, just like normal humans. For example, in the first episode, the bones of Claire's ribs were sticking up at one point. After a comment from Zach to brought this to her attention, Claire had to move them around a bit before they would heal properly.
The third episode also prove that her healing powers seem to restore her to health even from the destructive biological processes that happen to bodies immedaitely upon severe trauma or death. (brain death, lividity of blood in the tissues and coagulation of same, et al.) Despite suffering a fatal puncture wound in the base of her brain, and having been clinically dead for what was most likely hours, Claire returned to life fairly quickly. She also shown no apparent sign whatsoever of the normally irreversible destructive processes that would undoubtedly have occurred in her body. Still, as stated before, there were still limitations. Her upper torso had still been spread open from the classic "V-Cut" made in the chest of autopsy subjects and she will likely have to close the flaps of skin back into place manually before they heal.