Elle, The Meta Version
So longs rounds of meta seems to be what all the cool kids are doing. And I…really want to be a cool kid, okay? Or something like that. In any case, I have a lot of head canon for Elle. Like, a lot. I’ll probably repeat myself and go on tangents and if it doesn’t make sense in places…I apologize. I’m kind of just freewriting as I go for now. Eventually, I’ll edit it better though. A lot of this is still under construction but I do plan to add on as I go.
EDITED: 5/12/2010
A Breakdown Of Elle’s Personality
I Am Not A Kitten Stuck In A Tree Somewhere
Elle’s Personality In Season Two
This is the first part of my personality section, which I’m basically breaking down into three parts. I’m starting here with her season 2 personality/behavior.
It’s stated canonly that she was diagnosed as a sociopath but from the first introduction to her in Fight or Flight (2x05) we see that this is simply untrue. Yes, she gets frustrated with Ricky for not giving her in the information about Peter and kills him with what seems like no remorse, but when we see her on the phone being reprimanded, we can tell it gets to her. It’s revealed that the person she is talking to her father, and as soon as he tells her to come home, she does. This sets up their dynamic as we see it later quiet perfectly.
I’ll get more into my thoughts on her relationship with Bob elsewhere but as the series shows more of her, it becomes clear that she’s desperate for her father’s approval. She gets shaken by the idea of him hurting her (when Noah talks about her memory modification in Cautionary Tales) so clearly she’s not a sociopath. Sociopaths don’t feel remorse or fear or the need of approval. They don’t care. But Elle does.
More than anything, in a lot of ways she’s just a giant spoiled child. She throws fits when she doesn’t get her way because she’s incredibly emotionally stunted. She does the things she does because it’s all she’s known how to be. She was trained from a young age that she needed to be a cold hearted company girl. She’s tried to force herself into that role but the shoe never fit quite right. There was always something a bit off. She’s petulant, and doesn’t know how to tell right or wrong because she was never taught how to. She will kill someone for doing something like lie to her because she literally doesn’t understand it’s wrong. She hurts people for fun in a similar fashion. Not to mention, it gives her a sense of control in her life, which is something she really doesn’t have considering how much of her life is dictated by the Company and her dear old Daddy.
She’s also a huge flirt, but again, it’s almost in a childlike manner. For all we see her flirting with Peter and Mohinder, we see her almost surprised when Peter kissed her, almost like she had never been kissed before. Or if she had, it wasn’t often. A lot of people play her off as the Company slut who was sleeping around as much as possible to substitute for Daddy’s love. I personally don’t see it that way. I do think she probably slept with Adam (hence his comment to Peter about being careful about her) but it was probably only once or twice. It seems pretty clear to me that in her interactions with men in both season 2 and season 3 she doesn’t have much actual experience. It’s just another part of her act, another show she’s putting on because she doesn’t want people to see what she’s like inside.
She builds these delusions about her interactions with people, and she buys into them well. She truly believes her father really loves her and believes in her even when he proves time and time again that he really just sees her as a tool, a means to an end. She honestly believed Peter really liked her, and was upset to find out he used her to escape.
When those said delusions are broken, she has a hard time coping with it. She usually responds in angry backlashes, because she doesn’t know how to respond, like when she chased after Peter and Adam. We especially see a more vulnerable side to her when Noah reveals her father experimented on her and wiped her memories. She searches her father’s office and computer, trying to find any files on herself, to find the truth. They’re all missing. It confirms her fear, and yet when she sees a chance to please her father (by capturing Sylar) she seizes it because no matter what, she wants his love and approval. That’s vital to her very existence. She doesn’t know how to be Elle if she’s not an agent or trying to please Daddy, so much so that she’s willing to let go of her search for the truth to keep up this delusion.
I Wish That I Was Bulletproof.
Elle’s Personality In Season 3
Now, for a lot of people, Elle’s drastic change in behavior in Season 3 was seen as completely OOC. I don’t fully agree, and that’s what I’m going to be addressing here, with the exception of the “Villains” episode which I’ll be addressing elsewhere.
The Elle we saw in season two was hard and fierce, but by the end of the season we saw more and more cracks into that façade. Season 3 starts off with her father dying, her powers turning on her, and her getting fired from the only job and life she has ever known, a life she has given up everything for. It’s no wonder that she finally shatters.
The first time we see her after her dismissal at Primatech she’s at the Bennet house, where she had broken in looking for Noah. She is a complete wreck. She can’t control her powers anymore, and if you read the comics leading up to this episode, it’s highly implied that the cause of this is psychosomatic as opposed to something being physically wrong with her like she and Claire assume.
The power malfunction is a large manifestation of her guilt and mixed feelings over her father’s death. Her father was cruel, and did unthinkable things to her (that she can’t remember) but he was still her father. She doesn’t know how to function without him because she’s relied on him and the Company to tell her what to do for her whole life. The idea of actual freedom terrifies her (as we see in the episode Villains, which I’ll talk about more later) and that’s probably why she’s so quick to work with Sylar at Pinehearst, because it would give her a sense of purpose.
But before that, she’s weak, and lonely, and desperate. She talks about wanting to give up her power if it means to stop hurting which should be a big sign at how shaken she was by the events in The Butterfly Effect. On top of mourning her father and feeling lost and a lone she also has an incredible amount of guilt. She feels like it’s her fault because she helped create Sylar. Maybe if she had had the strength to leave the company, she could have saved her father. I also, honestly think part of her is somewhat glad her father is dead considering everything he did to her, and she feels guilty about that too, because no matter what, he’s her father and the only family she’s ever known. How can she hate him, even with everything he’s done to her? Her whole delusional system is broken, and she can’t help but blame herself, and she just wants out. We see her vulnerable and suicidal, begging for Sylar to kill her.
When Sylar forgives her, it’s almost like an absolution of sin and suddenly, all that pain and anger and guilt is gone because he tells her it’s not her fault and she’s all too eager to believe him. This is again where she sees that she functions a little differently from normal people by how quickly she forgives herself, and him. She just wanted an answer that didn’t leave her at blame, in doubt. And because he helps her with all that, she becomes her new focal point. He becomes Daddy number II in a way, someone she would do anything and everything for. And once she has that purpose, someone to live for, we see a lot of her old playfulness and snarkyness come back. She’s convinced they don’t need anyone but each other. I’m being very brief here because Gabriel/Sylar is going to get his whole section here.
She trusted him absolutely, just like she had with her father and because of that, she ultimately died. She didn’t see his betrayal coming because she was so sure he loved her, so desperate for his love, for anyone’s love.
And ultimately, I think that’s a big part of why she didn’t fight back. Because she really thought he wouldn’t fight back. Also, he was pretty much all she had left at that point, and she had been on her own before, and it had totally sucked. She didn’t want to go through that again, didn’t know how to function on her own. So if he didn’t want her then she was better off dead. That’s my firm belief to why she didn’t fight back like she did the first time he killed her. She was tired and defeated and someone can only take so much. Everyone has limits, and everyone gives up. Considering that just a few episodes before, she had been begging him to kill her, it’s not a stretch to think that some of those suicidal wishes would still be there, under the surface. And him rejecting her would the catalyst to bring them back up once more.
Take The Future, Past, It’s Fine. But Now Is Mine.
Elle’s Post Death/Resurrection Personality
And now for post-death Elle which only exists in RP form, but…I still have a lot of thoughts and feelings about. The way I see it, Elle getting a second chance at life would make her seriously reevaluate her life. Before she had mostly lived to please others, whether it be her father, the Company, Sylar, or etc, etc. And all it got her was pain and betrayal and eventually death. I see it as a catalyst for her trying to finally take more control of her life, do these on her terms.
She doesn’t want to rely on anyone get too close again because she knows how that goes. Trusting and loving only leads to pain, so what’s the point in trying? I can see her having casual relationships and friendships, but nothing too close. Because she’s still so angry at what Sylar did to her. And more than that, she’s angry at him. She bought into his talk about a home and a family, everything she had always secretly wanted, and then he threw it in her face.
I see her trying to find some normalcy in her life, trying to avoid jobs like working for the Company anymore, tired of just being a tool for people to manipulate. As her father left her money, she wouldn’t need a job, but I could see her picking one up just so she doesn’t go stir crazy. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, after all.
I see her really struggling with a lot of that built in callousness and general disregard for most people because she wants to prove she can be a better person on her own, but at the same time it’s so easy to fall into those old habits, to hide behind them. Safe.
I also see post-death Elle a little more self destructive, more prone to go out and get drunk or have casual relationships (but by no means sleeping with anyone willing, she still has standards) as an escape. Because she lacks the purpose she had in her life before. Even if they were bad purposes, they were something.
I think even though she’s very jaded at this point, she still wants that fairy tale ending, even though she tries to pass herself off as a realist. She wants to believe someone could love her, and that she deserves to be happy, but there’s this tiny voice in her head that tells her it’s not going to happen for her.
Not everyone gets happy endings. That’s for people like Claire, but I’ll leave my thoughts on their similarities and differences and why they’re clearly character foils for another section. Because I have a lot of thoughts on this subject.
Elle’s Power
It’s 6:58 Are You Sure Where My Spark Is?
Everyone in Heroes has a strong bond with their power, but Elle’s is probably one of the strongest we see in the series. I think a great deal of that has to do with the fact that she manifested at age six, which is one of the youngest manifestations we’ve seen in the series. She probably doesn’t remember her life without it, she doesn’t remember being normal. Life without her power is pretty much a foreign concept to her.
It’s very clear that when she first manifested she had very little control over this power, and her small body probably had a hard time with the electricity, forcing it out. This resulted in accidents like burning down her grandmother’s house, and blackout three counties. This was the original reason why she was taken in by the company, to learn how to “control” her power. But really, it was to push it and test it even more, to see just how much damage she could.
Unlike people who had ordinary lives before they discovered their powers, Elle has tight control over her electricity for the most part. She can make large blasts and small controlled ones like shooting a gun. She even knows how to push it out of her body in self defense, like when Sylar tried to kill the first time on Level Five.
Her power is one of her favorite parts of her, probably because it was the only part of her she was ever praised for, growing up. When other people have her power, it seems to make her want to connect to them even more as well. I’m a firm believer that part of the reason she liked playing with Peter was because he could spark back. And she was more than happy to show and train Sylar with her power. You would think she wouldn’t want to share it with people, but it’s the part of herself that makes her special, and when she sees it in other people, it makes them special too.
But at the same time, her powers also came with a price. Water made It pretty much impossible for her to use her powers without hurting herself which led her to be unable to enjoy things like pools, long baths, rainy days and a lot more. It also created a liability in situations when people knew/found out about the weakness, like when Noah hosed her down and placed her feet in the dog bath to keep her from fighting back during A Cautionary Tale.
There isn’t an aspect in her life that Elle doesn’t like to incorporate her powers in. She even sparks people when she kisses them, and then doesn’t understand why they don’t enjoy it as much as she does.
The fact that she was so connected to her powers made the fact that they turned on her in season 3 an even bigger betrayal. Her power was the one thing in her life she could always rely on, no matter what, and after her father dying, being fired and someone she had once cared about trying to kill her, the last thing she could deal with. The fact that she was willing to give up her power just to stop her pain speaks volumes, because later, when the eclipse comes, she freaks out. As much as she likes to entertain the idea of being normal and having a normal life, her power is part of her, and it’s not something he doesn’t really know how to cope without in her life.
As I mentioned before, I strongly believe that her powers are very tied into her emotions, probably the strongest example in the show of a power being like this. She started overloading after all this stuff happened to her, and as I said, again, I believe it to be psychosomatic, meaning a problem dealing with her feelings and emotional well being as opposed to being a physical problem. So when Sylar, “fixed” her, it had little to do with his power, and all to do with the fact that he gave her sympathy and comfort in the moment when she needed it the most.
We also see her powers manifesting itself in her anxiety when she’s on the plane with Claire. Yes, it’s heightened by the fact that she already had been overloading but it isn’t hard to imagine that things like that had had happened before, to lesser degrees.
Elle’s History
I Was Just A Little Girl But I Can’t Look Back
Elle’s backstory and childhood
So, I’ll be adding to this as more of the comic comes out, but basically, I’m glad I waited a little on this section as the new comic that came out clarified things a little bit.
Eleanor Zoe Bishop was born in about 1983 or so, and for my purposes….she has my birthday, April 14th as I think Aries really fits her personality. Yes, I’ve given her astrological sign thought, don’t judge me. Or do. In any case, from what I can gather, at some point, her parents got a divorce, her Dad went to have his exciting Company life and Elle went to live with her mother where she had a fairly normal life in Ashland, Ohio. This all changed when she when she turned six and accidently burnt her grandmother’s house down when her powers manifested.
After that, things turned more strained between Elle and her mother. Elle was bratty, like most young children, and the fact that she was filled with electricity she couldn’t control (and probably hurt her) didn’t help things. When her father sent her a Super Nintendo for her on her eighth birthday she got angry at the game and during her temper tantrum accidently caused a blackout in three counties in Ohio.
After this she was shipped off to Primatech to live with her father, because her mother didn’t want to deal with her anymore. Nice, right? As soon as she arrives her father forces her to sit down and wait, which pretty much sets the tone for their relationship. He tries to send her back to her mother, but she doesn’t want to deal with her anymore, so Bob is stuck with Elle, so to speak. Elle at this point seems to be mostly a sad, moody child, which makes sense considering neither one of her parents want her much at all. Bob is at a loss of what to do with her, he clearly has no idea how to be a father. So he takes the advice of one of the company doctors, Dr. J Zimmerman and ends up treating her more like a regular prisoner than a daughter.
She’s hooked up to machines and experimented on, repeatedly pushed to her limits. Like a normal little girl she cries and asks her dad to stop, but he tells her to be stronger. This clearly shapes her attitude later on in life. During one such an experiment, her father turned a straw into gold and they learned, hey gold conducts electricity rather well. But…not in a good way at all. Clearly, Bob survived this incident, but it was bound to put even more strain on their relationship. Especially considering Elle ran off, and Noah Bennet was sent after her.
Well until they put the next section of this comic up, I’ll expand on this, but for now, there’s little else know about Elle’s childhood. We know she was experimented on even more, and that the memories of most of it were wiped from her mind. She acted out from this, and was wrongfully diagnosed as a sociopath because she was never taught how to properly discern right from wrong. It’s also quite possible that she acted out because that was the only time her father seemed to pay attention to her. Sometime while she was at Primatech, her mother died which only cemented her dependence on her mother, and ruined her chance to ever have a normal life again.
My Bones Are Tired, Daddy
Elle’s Trial and Tribulations As An Agent Pre-Series
A lot of this will be drawn from the comics and comments made in the series about Elle’s not so successful career as an agent. This will also include her involvement in the episode “Villains”.
We Kill The Lights And Put On A Show
Season Two
What happened to Elle in season 2. Pretty self explanatory.
You Can’t Keep Faking That You Don’t Feel This Anymore
Season Three
What happened to Elle in season 3. Again, pretty self explanatory.
Other People And Relationships
Midas Is King And He Holds Me So Tight
Bob Bishop aka Daddy
Elle’s very complicated and twisted relationship with her father. There’s…so much to say here.
And Still You Call Me Codependent, Somehow You Lay The Blame On Me
Noah Bennet
Noah is a lot of things in Elle’s life, partner, guardian, lecturer, and the father she always wanted. She always wanted someone to love her the way Noah loved Claire.
You Know I Could Be Just Like You
Claire Bennet
Just like Sylar is Peter’s character foil, Elle is Claire’s and I’ll be talking a lot about them here because really, their similarities and differences and how that effects their interactions with one another fascinates me.
And Underneath We’re Not So Tough, Love Is Not Enough
Gabriel Gray/Sylar
There’s going to be a lot of talking here as well because both Elle and Sylar were huge influences on one another’s life, and their interactions are what led to her eventual death. I’m a firm believer that they did love one another in the best way they could, but sadly, all these other factors kept interfering and ultimately, they were both too fucked up to keep a healthy relationship, no matter how hard they tried.
Not With My Coin Operated Boy
Peter, Adam, Mohinder and Elle’s Sexuality
This is where I’m going to jumble up Elle’s lesser relationships and her sexuality in general.
I may also...add other sections to this, when I think of them
EDITED: 5/12/2010
A Breakdown Of Elle’s Personality
I Am Not A Kitten Stuck In A Tree Somewhere
Elle’s Personality In Season Two
This is the first part of my personality section, which I’m basically breaking down into three parts. I’m starting here with her season 2 personality/behavior.
It’s stated canonly that she was diagnosed as a sociopath but from the first introduction to her in Fight or Flight (2x05) we see that this is simply untrue. Yes, she gets frustrated with Ricky for not giving her in the information about Peter and kills him with what seems like no remorse, but when we see her on the phone being reprimanded, we can tell it gets to her. It’s revealed that the person she is talking to her father, and as soon as he tells her to come home, she does. This sets up their dynamic as we see it later quiet perfectly.
I’ll get more into my thoughts on her relationship with Bob elsewhere but as the series shows more of her, it becomes clear that she’s desperate for her father’s approval. She gets shaken by the idea of him hurting her (when Noah talks about her memory modification in Cautionary Tales) so clearly she’s not a sociopath. Sociopaths don’t feel remorse or fear or the need of approval. They don’t care. But Elle does.
More than anything, in a lot of ways she’s just a giant spoiled child. She throws fits when she doesn’t get her way because she’s incredibly emotionally stunted. She does the things she does because it’s all she’s known how to be. She was trained from a young age that she needed to be a cold hearted company girl. She’s tried to force herself into that role but the shoe never fit quite right. There was always something a bit off. She’s petulant, and doesn’t know how to tell right or wrong because she was never taught how to. She will kill someone for doing something like lie to her because she literally doesn’t understand it’s wrong. She hurts people for fun in a similar fashion. Not to mention, it gives her a sense of control in her life, which is something she really doesn’t have considering how much of her life is dictated by the Company and her dear old Daddy.
She’s also a huge flirt, but again, it’s almost in a childlike manner. For all we see her flirting with Peter and Mohinder, we see her almost surprised when Peter kissed her, almost like she had never been kissed before. Or if she had, it wasn’t often. A lot of people play her off as the Company slut who was sleeping around as much as possible to substitute for Daddy’s love. I personally don’t see it that way. I do think she probably slept with Adam (hence his comment to Peter about being careful about her) but it was probably only once or twice. It seems pretty clear to me that in her interactions with men in both season 2 and season 3 she doesn’t have much actual experience. It’s just another part of her act, another show she’s putting on because she doesn’t want people to see what she’s like inside.
She builds these delusions about her interactions with people, and she buys into them well. She truly believes her father really loves her and believes in her even when he proves time and time again that he really just sees her as a tool, a means to an end. She honestly believed Peter really liked her, and was upset to find out he used her to escape.
When those said delusions are broken, she has a hard time coping with it. She usually responds in angry backlashes, because she doesn’t know how to respond, like when she chased after Peter and Adam. We especially see a more vulnerable side to her when Noah reveals her father experimented on her and wiped her memories. She searches her father’s office and computer, trying to find any files on herself, to find the truth. They’re all missing. It confirms her fear, and yet when she sees a chance to please her father (by capturing Sylar) she seizes it because no matter what, she wants his love and approval. That’s vital to her very existence. She doesn’t know how to be Elle if she’s not an agent or trying to please Daddy, so much so that she’s willing to let go of her search for the truth to keep up this delusion.
I Wish That I Was Bulletproof.
Elle’s Personality In Season 3
Now, for a lot of people, Elle’s drastic change in behavior in Season 3 was seen as completely OOC. I don’t fully agree, and that’s what I’m going to be addressing here, with the exception of the “Villains” episode which I’ll be addressing elsewhere.
The Elle we saw in season two was hard and fierce, but by the end of the season we saw more and more cracks into that façade. Season 3 starts off with her father dying, her powers turning on her, and her getting fired from the only job and life she has ever known, a life she has given up everything for. It’s no wonder that she finally shatters.
The first time we see her after her dismissal at Primatech she’s at the Bennet house, where she had broken in looking for Noah. She is a complete wreck. She can’t control her powers anymore, and if you read the comics leading up to this episode, it’s highly implied that the cause of this is psychosomatic as opposed to something being physically wrong with her like she and Claire assume.
The power malfunction is a large manifestation of her guilt and mixed feelings over her father’s death. Her father was cruel, and did unthinkable things to her (that she can’t remember) but he was still her father. She doesn’t know how to function without him because she’s relied on him and the Company to tell her what to do for her whole life. The idea of actual freedom terrifies her (as we see in the episode Villains, which I’ll talk about more later) and that’s probably why she’s so quick to work with Sylar at Pinehearst, because it would give her a sense of purpose.
But before that, she’s weak, and lonely, and desperate. She talks about wanting to give up her power if it means to stop hurting which should be a big sign at how shaken she was by the events in The Butterfly Effect. On top of mourning her father and feeling lost and a lone she also has an incredible amount of guilt. She feels like it’s her fault because she helped create Sylar. Maybe if she had had the strength to leave the company, she could have saved her father. I also, honestly think part of her is somewhat glad her father is dead considering everything he did to her, and she feels guilty about that too, because no matter what, he’s her father and the only family she’s ever known. How can she hate him, even with everything he’s done to her? Her whole delusional system is broken, and she can’t help but blame herself, and she just wants out. We see her vulnerable and suicidal, begging for Sylar to kill her.
When Sylar forgives her, it’s almost like an absolution of sin and suddenly, all that pain and anger and guilt is gone because he tells her it’s not her fault and she’s all too eager to believe him. This is again where she sees that she functions a little differently from normal people by how quickly she forgives herself, and him. She just wanted an answer that didn’t leave her at blame, in doubt. And because he helps her with all that, she becomes her new focal point. He becomes Daddy number II in a way, someone she would do anything and everything for. And once she has that purpose, someone to live for, we see a lot of her old playfulness and snarkyness come back. She’s convinced they don’t need anyone but each other. I’m being very brief here because Gabriel/Sylar is going to get his whole section here.
She trusted him absolutely, just like she had with her father and because of that, she ultimately died. She didn’t see his betrayal coming because she was so sure he loved her, so desperate for his love, for anyone’s love.
And ultimately, I think that’s a big part of why she didn’t fight back. Because she really thought he wouldn’t fight back. Also, he was pretty much all she had left at that point, and she had been on her own before, and it had totally sucked. She didn’t want to go through that again, didn’t know how to function on her own. So if he didn’t want her then she was better off dead. That’s my firm belief to why she didn’t fight back like she did the first time he killed her. She was tired and defeated and someone can only take so much. Everyone has limits, and everyone gives up. Considering that just a few episodes before, she had been begging him to kill her, it’s not a stretch to think that some of those suicidal wishes would still be there, under the surface. And him rejecting her would the catalyst to bring them back up once more.
Take The Future, Past, It’s Fine. But Now Is Mine.
Elle’s Post Death/Resurrection Personality
And now for post-death Elle which only exists in RP form, but…I still have a lot of thoughts and feelings about. The way I see it, Elle getting a second chance at life would make her seriously reevaluate her life. Before she had mostly lived to please others, whether it be her father, the Company, Sylar, or etc, etc. And all it got her was pain and betrayal and eventually death. I see it as a catalyst for her trying to finally take more control of her life, do these on her terms.
She doesn’t want to rely on anyone get too close again because she knows how that goes. Trusting and loving only leads to pain, so what’s the point in trying? I can see her having casual relationships and friendships, but nothing too close. Because she’s still so angry at what Sylar did to her. And more than that, she’s angry at him. She bought into his talk about a home and a family, everything she had always secretly wanted, and then he threw it in her face.
I see her trying to find some normalcy in her life, trying to avoid jobs like working for the Company anymore, tired of just being a tool for people to manipulate. As her father left her money, she wouldn’t need a job, but I could see her picking one up just so she doesn’t go stir crazy. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, after all.
I see her really struggling with a lot of that built in callousness and general disregard for most people because she wants to prove she can be a better person on her own, but at the same time it’s so easy to fall into those old habits, to hide behind them. Safe.
I also see post-death Elle a little more self destructive, more prone to go out and get drunk or have casual relationships (but by no means sleeping with anyone willing, she still has standards) as an escape. Because she lacks the purpose she had in her life before. Even if they were bad purposes, they were something.
I think even though she’s very jaded at this point, she still wants that fairy tale ending, even though she tries to pass herself off as a realist. She wants to believe someone could love her, and that she deserves to be happy, but there’s this tiny voice in her head that tells her it’s not going to happen for her.
Not everyone gets happy endings. That’s for people like Claire, but I’ll leave my thoughts on their similarities and differences and why they’re clearly character foils for another section. Because I have a lot of thoughts on this subject.
Elle’s Power
It’s 6:58 Are You Sure Where My Spark Is?
Everyone in Heroes has a strong bond with their power, but Elle’s is probably one of the strongest we see in the series. I think a great deal of that has to do with the fact that she manifested at age six, which is one of the youngest manifestations we’ve seen in the series. She probably doesn’t remember her life without it, she doesn’t remember being normal. Life without her power is pretty much a foreign concept to her.
It’s very clear that when she first manifested she had very little control over this power, and her small body probably had a hard time with the electricity, forcing it out. This resulted in accidents like burning down her grandmother’s house, and blackout three counties. This was the original reason why she was taken in by the company, to learn how to “control” her power. But really, it was to push it and test it even more, to see just how much damage she could.
Unlike people who had ordinary lives before they discovered their powers, Elle has tight control over her electricity for the most part. She can make large blasts and small controlled ones like shooting a gun. She even knows how to push it out of her body in self defense, like when Sylar tried to kill the first time on Level Five.
Her power is one of her favorite parts of her, probably because it was the only part of her she was ever praised for, growing up. When other people have her power, it seems to make her want to connect to them even more as well. I’m a firm believer that part of the reason she liked playing with Peter was because he could spark back. And she was more than happy to show and train Sylar with her power. You would think she wouldn’t want to share it with people, but it’s the part of herself that makes her special, and when she sees it in other people, it makes them special too.
But at the same time, her powers also came with a price. Water made It pretty much impossible for her to use her powers without hurting herself which led her to be unable to enjoy things like pools, long baths, rainy days and a lot more. It also created a liability in situations when people knew/found out about the weakness, like when Noah hosed her down and placed her feet in the dog bath to keep her from fighting back during A Cautionary Tale.
There isn’t an aspect in her life that Elle doesn’t like to incorporate her powers in. She even sparks people when she kisses them, and then doesn’t understand why they don’t enjoy it as much as she does.
The fact that she was so connected to her powers made the fact that they turned on her in season 3 an even bigger betrayal. Her power was the one thing in her life she could always rely on, no matter what, and after her father dying, being fired and someone she had once cared about trying to kill her, the last thing she could deal with. The fact that she was willing to give up her power just to stop her pain speaks volumes, because later, when the eclipse comes, she freaks out. As much as she likes to entertain the idea of being normal and having a normal life, her power is part of her, and it’s not something he doesn’t really know how to cope without in her life.
As I mentioned before, I strongly believe that her powers are very tied into her emotions, probably the strongest example in the show of a power being like this. She started overloading after all this stuff happened to her, and as I said, again, I believe it to be psychosomatic, meaning a problem dealing with her feelings and emotional well being as opposed to being a physical problem. So when Sylar, “fixed” her, it had little to do with his power, and all to do with the fact that he gave her sympathy and comfort in the moment when she needed it the most.
We also see her powers manifesting itself in her anxiety when she’s on the plane with Claire. Yes, it’s heightened by the fact that she already had been overloading but it isn’t hard to imagine that things like that had had happened before, to lesser degrees.
Elle’s History
I Was Just A Little Girl But I Can’t Look Back
Elle’s backstory and childhood
So, I’ll be adding to this as more of the comic comes out, but basically, I’m glad I waited a little on this section as the new comic that came out clarified things a little bit.
Eleanor Zoe Bishop was born in about 1983 or so, and for my purposes….she has my birthday, April 14th as I think Aries really fits her personality. Yes, I’ve given her astrological sign thought, don’t judge me. Or do. In any case, from what I can gather, at some point, her parents got a divorce, her Dad went to have his exciting Company life and Elle went to live with her mother where she had a fairly normal life in Ashland, Ohio. This all changed when she when she turned six and accidently burnt her grandmother’s house down when her powers manifested.
After that, things turned more strained between Elle and her mother. Elle was bratty, like most young children, and the fact that she was filled with electricity she couldn’t control (and probably hurt her) didn’t help things. When her father sent her a Super Nintendo for her on her eighth birthday she got angry at the game and during her temper tantrum accidently caused a blackout in three counties in Ohio.
After this she was shipped off to Primatech to live with her father, because her mother didn’t want to deal with her anymore. Nice, right? As soon as she arrives her father forces her to sit down and wait, which pretty much sets the tone for their relationship. He tries to send her back to her mother, but she doesn’t want to deal with her anymore, so Bob is stuck with Elle, so to speak. Elle at this point seems to be mostly a sad, moody child, which makes sense considering neither one of her parents want her much at all. Bob is at a loss of what to do with her, he clearly has no idea how to be a father. So he takes the advice of one of the company doctors, Dr. J Zimmerman and ends up treating her more like a regular prisoner than a daughter.
She’s hooked up to machines and experimented on, repeatedly pushed to her limits. Like a normal little girl she cries and asks her dad to stop, but he tells her to be stronger. This clearly shapes her attitude later on in life. During one such an experiment, her father turned a straw into gold and they learned, hey gold conducts electricity rather well. But…not in a good way at all. Clearly, Bob survived this incident, but it was bound to put even more strain on their relationship. Especially considering Elle ran off, and Noah Bennet was sent after her.
Well until they put the next section of this comic up, I’ll expand on this, but for now, there’s little else know about Elle’s childhood. We know she was experimented on even more, and that the memories of most of it were wiped from her mind. She acted out from this, and was wrongfully diagnosed as a sociopath because she was never taught how to properly discern right from wrong. It’s also quite possible that she acted out because that was the only time her father seemed to pay attention to her. Sometime while she was at Primatech, her mother died which only cemented her dependence on her mother, and ruined her chance to ever have a normal life again.
My Bones Are Tired, Daddy
Elle’s Trial and Tribulations As An Agent Pre-Series
A lot of this will be drawn from the comics and comments made in the series about Elle’s not so successful career as an agent. This will also include her involvement in the episode “Villains”.
We Kill The Lights And Put On A Show
Season Two
What happened to Elle in season 2. Pretty self explanatory.
You Can’t Keep Faking That You Don’t Feel This Anymore
Season Three
What happened to Elle in season 3. Again, pretty self explanatory.
Other People And Relationships
Midas Is King And He Holds Me So Tight
Bob Bishop aka Daddy
Elle’s very complicated and twisted relationship with her father. There’s…so much to say here.
And Still You Call Me Codependent, Somehow You Lay The Blame On Me
Noah Bennet
Noah is a lot of things in Elle’s life, partner, guardian, lecturer, and the father she always wanted. She always wanted someone to love her the way Noah loved Claire.
You Know I Could Be Just Like You
Claire Bennet
Just like Sylar is Peter’s character foil, Elle is Claire’s and I’ll be talking a lot about them here because really, their similarities and differences and how that effects their interactions with one another fascinates me.
And Underneath We’re Not So Tough, Love Is Not Enough
Gabriel Gray/Sylar
There’s going to be a lot of talking here as well because both Elle and Sylar were huge influences on one another’s life, and their interactions are what led to her eventual death. I’m a firm believer that they did love one another in the best way they could, but sadly, all these other factors kept interfering and ultimately, they were both too fucked up to keep a healthy relationship, no matter how hard they tried.
Not With My Coin Operated Boy
Peter, Adam, Mohinder and Elle’s Sexuality
This is where I’m going to jumble up Elle’s lesser relationships and her sexuality in general.
I may also...add other sections to this, when I think of them