One of the things we saw in the finale was the return of the cockroach. I've got a copy of the pilot script that includes those wonderful sketches by Tim Sale of cockroaches kind of taking over the page. It was nice to see that paid off a bit when the cockroach was crawling around on the manhole cover in the finale. Is there anything you can reveal about the significance of cockroaches in "Heroes?"
Well, because I was dealing with an evolutionary theme, I became fascinated with this factoid I read about cockroaches being possibly the pinnacle of evolution because they were so capable of adapting and existing in really troubled times. Throughout all the various ice ages and climate changes and meteors hitting the earth, the cockroach just basically kept surviving and doing so beautifully. They are so perfectly genetically engineered. So, for me, it became the embodiment of this idea of evolution. It harkened back to the original speech that Suresh gives at the top of the pilot when he was talking about this exact idea. It was very important to me to make this last episode feel like a book end to the pilot. So, if you noticed, I started with the exact same narration, we went back to the actual music queues that were used in the pilot. They were woven through at the very begining, they were woven into the scene with Richard Roundtree and were woven into the final moments with Claire and her Father, the exact theme that was used at the top of the pilot. And going back to the Eclipse as well. This was all my way of telling the audience this was all of a piece and there was a plan here. That this, as a volume, was a complete volume and to help people feel like they finished the first novel in this continues saga.
And there's also the juxtaposition between the survivability of cockroaches and the possible survival of Sylar as he may have dragged himself down that manhole. Right. It's talked about in the very beginning of the pilot. One of the lines was that a cockroach could remain alive headless for weeks at a time, which a cockroach can do - a fact I always found amazing! [laughs] So, this idea that we just watched this guy die and clearly somehow dragged himself into a manhole is exactly the signal that perhaps this character is still alive.
