Sylar only knows some shit about Nathan and perhaps a couple of his mannerisms, but he doesn't know Nathan even as well as Noah does.

To be fair, Sylar's base power is knowing how things work, including people. Under the circumstances, I'd say Sylar would have an intimate knowledge of what makes Nathan Nathan.

That being said, I have no idea where that particular coin is going to land.

That's a good point. His decisions won't necessarily be the decisions Nathan would have made. But is that more identity changing than if, say, Nathan had lived and radically changed his world-view based on a near-death-experience epiphany? I don't know.

Sylar isn't trying to impersonate Nathan, he thinks he is Nathan. Nathan's memories will have meaning for him, not necessarily the meaning that they would have for Nathan, but some meaning. Ultimately, I think the differences in choices that Sylar makes will make the people around him (Peter, Claire, etc., who don't know he's not the real Nathan) react to him differently than they would to Nathan and break the illusion that Matt's got him in, but I hope it doesn't happen too fast, that we get to see Peter and Sylar!Nathan, for example, having a similar relationship to what Peter and Nathan might have had if ieverything had really happened the way Peter believes it has.

if my next door neighbor thinks she is me, she still isn't me. Even if she knows some of the things I know.

What makes us us is what I referred to before: my core personality and how I would make decisions. How I would respond to the unknown.

I don't believe there is any superpower than can recreate the essence of who we are. My gut response to things would be different from my neighbors. She doesn't have my cognitive wiring, my experiences, my DNA, my knowledge.

BTW, if he has Nathan's memories, how does he not have the memory of Nathan dying?

BTW, if he has Nathan's memories, how does he not have the memory of Nathan dying?

Matt can implant new thoughts as well as whatever he did with wiping Sylar's memory out (and transferring Nathan's?), so he could have over/rewritten the outcome of the fight with Sylar.

Nathan had a conciousness and that died with him. No matter how perfectly Sylar can recreate Nathan, that conciousness can never be revived.

Is it bad that my thought is - whatever. Adrian Padsar's still on my TV.

If lovin' Adrian Pasdar is wrong...

Sooner or later Nathan!Sylar will find out the hard way that he can't just fly, no matter whether Matt's mindfix holds up or not, and that's going to lead to questions.

I'm really sad that Nathan is dead, but I'm looking forward to what Pasdar can do with the role now.

Is it bad that my thought is - whatever. Adrian Padsar's still on my TV.

Yes indeed, although I didn't always like the way Nathan was written. This was a very uneven season. I love so many of these people that I can only hope they do right by them the next time around.

Nathan had a conciousness and that died with him. No matter how perfectly Sylar can recreate Nathan, that conciousness can never be revived.

There's two assumptions here: 1.) that your (and, to be fair, my) assumption of what is consciousness jibes with the idea the fiction is going to explore. While there's been a sleight spiritual overtone to some of the story so far, we've seen little to nothing to indicate that there's any "afterlife" in the "Heroes" narrative. For all we know, on "Heroes," we are our memories, and that's that. That being said, I kinda doubt, but the idea needs to be put on the table until the story tells us something else. (And as it's heroes, it's possible that the truth is that we're neither our spirits, nor our memories, but rather we are, every one of us, a labradoodle named Daisy.)

And B.) This is, for all intents and purposes, a comic book. And if there's one thing a comic book can do, it's revive a dead consciousness. I'm placing my bets now on a Nathan ressurection by some means by the end of the season.