#samson gray

"I'm just thinking he'll have some answers... That's all."

Big Bad Wolf!Samson

Was Samson Gray at Coyote Sands?

This theory started when I first saw the boy in the middle during the first 1961 flashback, wearing glasses as he played catch. He reminded me of the younger bespectacled Gabriel we’d seen only a few episodes earlier. And then I wondered: what if that’s his father?

Chronologically speaking, it works–Samson is definitely old enough to have been detained with the rest of the young Company founders. (John Glover was born in 1944, one year after Malcolm McDowell, who played the elderly version of Daniel Linderman.)

Some notes:

While digging up the bodies at Coyote Sands, Peter comes across a baseball glove–possibly the very same baseball glove that the young boy was holding. We don’t see such obvious connections to any other unnamed extras at Coyote Sands; for example, Noah finds a jewelry chain, but we never see someone wearing it during Angela’s flashbacks. Why does the boy playing catch get emphasis?

Sylar was apparently following in his father’s footsteps when he began killing other posthumans for their abilities. However, Sylar only knew about other posthumans–or even his own ability–due to Chandra Suresh’s research. How did Samson learn about posthumans? It could have been through Coyote Sands research, both into abilities and the rather obvious tendency for them to run in families. 

Finally, there’s the tiny snow globe of the Taj Mahal that Gabriel finds in Samson’s house. Why the Taj Mahal? The props department could have used a snow globe from any number of places... and they chose one from Chandra Suresh’s home country. Did Samson pick it up while trying to track down one of the few survivors who might know the names and locations of posthumans to hunt down?

It would be absolutely typical of Heroes to have Chandra Suresh, after having his memory of Coyote Sands wiped, run into a descendant of one of his former patients. I mean, just look at Angela’s introduction to Chandra’s son: showing up with her son’s corpse. 

In that vein, Mohinder and Sylar’s brief “partnership” could have been paralleling a similarly parasitic relationship with their fathers.

Many of the biggest antagonists were Coyote Sands survivors (Daniel Linderman, Bob Bishop, Adam Monroe, and Samuel Sullivan). It would fit the pattern and give Samson instant backstory that we're already familiar with if Samson were also a Coyote Sands survivor.

Some Behind The Eclipse quotes about Samson (bolding mine):

“We’re not going to see Mr. Glover again this volume [Fugitives].  But there are big plans for him.  Stay tuned.”

“As far as Samson Grey’s other abilities, well – let’s just say we haven’t seen the last of him just yet.  There’s more to be learned about the Sylar’s father.”

To be fair, here are some obvious flaws in this theory:

Based on his glove, the boy seems to be right-handed, and unlike his ambidextrous son, Samson seems almost exclusively left-handed.

You’d think that the Company would keep better track of Coyote Sands survivors and their descendants; Gabriel doesn’t show up on their radar until he’s already killed someone.

Coyote Sands wasn’t supposed to have any survivors. Not that this mattered to Adam Monroe, Arnold, Alice Shaw, the Sullivan family, or the four Company founders that survived it.