Claire Bennet, played by Hayden Panettiere, is my favorite female character on Heroes. She's plucky and courageous and she has a great power. I thought her character arc in season 1 was much better than it has been so far this season.

Last season she was the pivot around which all the other story arcs revolved. This year she seems sort of shunted off to the side. I'm also not crazy about the fact that the storyline has her responding positively to West, instead of treating him like the creepy stalker that he is. I'm hoping, though, that her story will improve when Heroes comes back from hiatus (if it comes back).

One of the other reasons I'm particularly interested in Claire is how her story ties into that of the Petrellis, since she's Nathan's daughter. The entire Petrelli family, including Claire, are my favorite characters on the show and it is their story that I'm most invested in. I really liked that they remembered these ties at the beginning of season 2 when they had Claire call Nathan because they were both still worried about Peter and whether he was alive or not. Sadly, they've done very little with it since then, but now that Peter remembers who he is, hopefully we'll see more Petrelli and Bennett family interaction.