I believe Peter is alive. The only question for me is: will he have a scar or not?

I am not sure if Sylar is alive. I really hope he is dead, but I'm thinking he may not be.

It might be interesting if the writers had set it up that he went boom because he was confronted with too many powers in his midst at once. Not unlike when he acquired Matt's and Ted's powers.

But I don't think that's the direction that the writers wanted to go in.

I kinda take it for granted that Peter is alive. This series often won't spell out thing if they made it clear enough. In "5 years after" it was clear that Peter could survive being ground zero for a nuclear explosion. Surviving the splat from a 50,000 foot fall seems trivial compared to that-especially given TK and flying abilities both to break the fall.

In terms of the explosion having come from overuse of powers, in the dream sequences about Peter exploding when it was first revealed that Peter was the exploding man, I think they hinted that was true. From the writers point of view, th e nice thing about "overuse" causing explosions it is a nice vague limitiation. They can let him use as much power as the plot requires, but no more. The vagueness can even be canonical. No one can figure out exactly how much power use it takes to trigger an explosion, but heavy use of multiple powers always carries that risk. Can the writers really resist the convenience of that?

The genetic trace thing for Sylar makes me think he actually did eat and assimilate that first guy's brain, before figuring out that consumption was unnecessary.

Since that explosion was so way beyond anything Ted himself ever did even when shot, I think an overload chain reaction among Peter's various powers with each augmenting the next might be at least partly at fault. I wonder if his being in physical proximity to so many powered people at once (and both Sylar and Hiro have TONS of power) means his own native power is scanning/absorbing from everyone at once, starts building up to a ka-boom, and it just looks like Ted's power going haywire because that one is radiant energy-based?

The reason I think Ted's power is key here. Peter ALWAYS has all those powers. (Though in all fairness he did get a bunch of new exposure all at once: Nikki, DL, Molly, Nikki+DL's kid...) Ted's power always did seem more unstable and less under control than most of the power the Heroes have. I think it interacts with Peter's other powers in a particularly nasty way.

In terms of the explosion having come from overuse of powers, in the dream sequences about Peter exploding when it was first revealed that Peter was the exploding man, I think they hinted that was true.

I disagree that an "overload of powers" has anything to do with Peter's explosion. I think Ted would have had just as big of an explosion at Claire's house if she hadn't managed to sedate him.

The only "hint" that your theory is correct came from the characters themselves -- I think Peter believed that his explosion would come from an overload. But the characters have been wrong before. Remember that Matt & Ted both thought that their powers were given to them by HRG as part of an experiment.

But the hint was from Peter's dreams. And in turns out that the power Peter got from his last patient was *prophetic* dreams. Now it is also true that those *prophetic* dreams need to be parsed very carefully-lots of stuff that is not literally true. So it is not a slam dunk. But it is a reasonable interpretation of a semi-reliable source of information. I wonder if the writers have made up their minds on this ye.

What in his dreams specifically hinted that it was his powers overloading (as opposed to being unable to control his pick-up from Ted)?

Yeah, but I would imagine the pick-up from Ted bears some responsibilty for the response to overload being an atomic explosion. Especially since atomic man powers seem to be some of the least controllable powers in the heroes verse.

In terms of limitation on Peter's power: the whole "exploding man" thing could be that limitation if the writers want. If Peter overuses his powers, Peter goes boom.

That smakes perfect sense to me--Peter was on the verge of overloading once or twice before (and during) his time with Claude. I actually expected *that* to be the bomb, and not one (or more) people getting Ted's power.

Since that explosion was so way beyond anything Ted himself ever did even when shot, I think an overload chain reaction among Peter's various powers with each augmenting the next might be at least partly at fault.

Oooh. Yeah. This.

As for the dreams coming true: Well, Claude wasn't standing there laughing at him in the finale like he was in the dream. (...or was he??)

We didn't see Claude, but he could have been there!