100 Kick-Ass Female Characters: #56
56. Angela Shaw Petrelli, as seen on Heroes, portrayed by Alexa Nikolas and Cristine Rose
Heroes was a wildly uneven show. The first season was spectacular (save the finale, which was the very definition of anticlimactic), the second season was aborted due to the writers' strike and never got a chance to fix itself, the third season was downright befuddling, and the final season I never even finished watching because I had no idea what the hell they had done to the characters I once loved. No character got out of the series unscathed, the victims of bad writing, confusing characterization, and downright ridiculous plot twists, but one of the few who maintained her badassery throughout the series was Petrelli family matriarch Angela.
When we are introduced to Angela in the pilot, she is the pampered widow of Arthur Petrelli, who recently died; her son Nathan is irritated with her acting out (shoplifting socks she could more than afford to buy) while son Peter tries to help her through her pain. It isn't until the final arc of Season 1 we find out that not only does Angela know all the "secrets" everyone is trying to keep (her sons have superpowers, Claire is really her granddaughter, she is a board member and founder of Primatech) but is, in fact, the architect behind much of it. She was okay with Peter detonating over NYC per Linderman's plan because she believed the twisted ideology of it all; she played with the lives of those around her as if they were chess pieces to be moved. As the series progressed (and declined) we saw a softer side of Angela (her internment at Coyote Sands, the murders of her parents, the mental decline of her sister Alice) but she was still the same woman who tried to murder her husband and engineered many of the troubles the characters they experienced.
What makes Angela such a great character is she literally is the one pulling all the strings. After an adolescence which saw her parents brutally murdered as well as (she thought) her sister, Angela transformed her sense of helplessness (and relatively passive power, which was visions) into a world where she calls the shots. By uniting with like minded (and slightly deranged) people, Angela was able to make certain she was never victimized again (until Season 3 but the less said about that, the better.) But she is also the embodiment of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Angela wanted to live a life free from harm and persecution, and, in trying to do so, successfully alienated herself, not just from those she loved (Nathan, Peter, Claire) but at times her humanity. You can only play god with so many people's lives before you forget you're just like them, and that was a balance Angela could never quite master. In any given scene, Angela could be both villain and hero.
And that is a kick-ass dichotomy most female characters don't get.
Heroes was a wildly uneven show. The first season was spectacular (save the finale, which was the very definition of anticlimactic), the second season was aborted due to the writers' strike and never got a chance to fix itself, the third season was downright befuddling, and the final season I never even finished watching because I had no idea what the hell they had done to the characters I once loved. No character got out of the series unscathed, the victims of bad writing, confusing characterization, and downright ridiculous plot twists, but one of the few who maintained her badassery throughout the series was Petrelli family matriarch Angela.
When we are introduced to Angela in the pilot, she is the pampered widow of Arthur Petrelli, who recently died; her son Nathan is irritated with her acting out (shoplifting socks she could more than afford to buy) while son Peter tries to help her through her pain. It isn't until the final arc of Season 1 we find out that not only does Angela know all the "secrets" everyone is trying to keep (her sons have superpowers, Claire is really her granddaughter, she is a board member and founder of Primatech) but is, in fact, the architect behind much of it. She was okay with Peter detonating over NYC per Linderman's plan because she believed the twisted ideology of it all; she played with the lives of those around her as if they were chess pieces to be moved. As the series progressed (and declined) we saw a softer side of Angela (her internment at Coyote Sands, the murders of her parents, the mental decline of her sister Alice) but she was still the same woman who tried to murder her husband and engineered many of the troubles the characters they experienced.
What makes Angela such a great character is she literally is the one pulling all the strings. After an adolescence which saw her parents brutally murdered as well as (she thought) her sister, Angela transformed her sense of helplessness (and relatively passive power, which was visions) into a world where she calls the shots. By uniting with like minded (and slightly deranged) people, Angela was able to make certain she was never victimized again (until Season 3 but the less said about that, the better.) But she is also the embodiment of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Angela wanted to live a life free from harm and persecution, and, in trying to do so, successfully alienated herself, not just from those she loved (Nathan, Peter, Claire) but at times her humanity. You can only play god with so many people's lives before you forget you're just like them, and that was a balance Angela could never quite master. In any given scene, Angela could be both villain and hero.
And that is a kick-ass dichotomy most female characters don't get.