The Big Picture
- Heroes was a breakout hit in its first season, with a captivating premise and impressive ratings, but it failed to maintain its initial success as the series continued.
- The show's strength lay in its diverse and well-rounded characters, each with their own unique struggles and motivations, which made Heroes relatable and appealing to a wide audience.
- As the series progressed, it became burdened by convoluted plots and poorly executed character arcs, straying from its original charm and losing the interest of many viewers.
It's easy to forget about a show like Heroes. When it first started, it became a global phenomenon not unlike Lost, taking audiences by storm before even the likes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And yet, as quickly as Heroes began, it was suddenly gone. There's no denying we would've loved to see more of this fascinating and often complicated world, but as the show continued, it grew into a shell of its former self. What made Heroes great in the beginning didn't remain true until the end, and it's for that reason that the show should've probably ended after its first season.
Heroes
TV-14DramaSuperheroFantasySci-FiCommon people discover that they have super powers. Their lives intertwine as a devastating event must be prevented.
- Release Date
- September 25, 2006
- Creator
- Tim Kring
- Cast
- Adrian Pasdar , Hayden Panettiere , Zachary Quinto , Milo Ventimiglia , Sendhil Ramamurthy , Masi Oka , Jack Coleman , Greg Grunberg
'Heroes' Became An Instant Hit During Its First Season
In the beginning, the hype around Heroes was real. The series explores the concept of ordinary people with extraordinary abilities (or superpowers) in a world that has no idea they exist. With a premise like that, it's not hard to see why it was a breakout hit for NBC. The premiere "Genesis" debuted with 14.3 million viewers back in September 2007, which was a record high for the network at the time, and went on to peak with nearly 16 million tuning in for the ninth episode, "Homecoming," a landmark chapter in the series that featured the first clash between Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) and Sylar (Zachary Quinto). The hit superhero series was nominated for Golden Globes and Saturn Awards at every turn. Heroes showed no signs of slowing down during its 23-episode first season and was a hit with critics too. It was called everything from "one of TV's most imaginative creations" (via The Hollywood Reporter) to being named one of the top television programs of the year by the American Film Institute. To this day, the show's first season holds an 82% fresh critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 94% audience score. Even now, it's easy to look back on the show's beginnings fondly.
At a time when pretty much the only other superhero TV series airing was Smallville, Heroes did a wonderful job at introducing audiences to the impossible in a way that felt possible. While Smallville was a loose adaptation of the Superman story, Heroes was an original tale invented by Tim Kring meant to take a deeper look at the superhero genre outside the confines of capes, tights, and comic book continuity. In many ways, this blend of comic book aesthetics in a world not unlike our own is what made Heroes stand out as something different from a show like Smallville, honoring the genre while putting a fresh spin on it.
'Heroes' Thrived In the Beginning Because of Its Breakout Cast and Intricate Plot
Despite having countless episodes, Heroes was a serialized show that had more than enough characters to carry the story without ever feeling filler. Every episode was necessary for the sake of the plot, even if it just meant that one character or another was featured in the spotlight. Even the episodes that weren't as plot-heavy ended up being compelling character studies that helped us to better understand the motivation and drive of our titular heroes (and sometimes even the villains). Characters like Peter Petrelli, Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), Claire Bennett (Hayden Panettiere), and Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) all had their unique struggles to work through, conflicts that felt personal and relatable.
The beauty of Heroes was its diversity and commitment to highlighting well-rounded characters from all walks of life who somehow end up working together to save the world. Against all odds, Kring and company made a show that felt like it was for everyone, no matter your ethnicity, creed, or personal struggles. It was Heroes' commitment to examining all of these different sorts of people that made the series work in the beginning, and, in many ways, that's exactly why it continued as long as it did. And maybe even rightfully so. But the truth is, the longer Heroes went on, the more convoluted the series became, and by the time it was over, most people had no problem saying, "good riddance."
Season 1 Gave Our Favorite Heroes The Best Stories
Heroes was fresh, new, and exciting when it premiered. Superpowers were only the initial draw to get folks in the door, but upon showing up, you instantly connected to one of the major characters in the ensemble cast. Not only did every character have their own unique goals or comic book-inspired origin stories, but they also had real-world struggles that grounded them. Peter and Nathan (Adrian Pasdar) had a troubled sibling relationship, while Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) struggled to hold his job and marriage. Of all the seasons of Heroes, Season 1 is the only one in which each character deals honestly with the struggles of everyday life.
James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Universe: Everything We Know About the Much Anticipated Takeover
A new world of DC adaptations is just around the corner.In a way, Heroes mixed the inspirational element of DC's superheroes with the relatable factor of Marvel's to make something that could've transcended them both. Season 1 is a nearly perfect example of how to tell an exceptional story over the length of an entire full season without boring your audience. While it's true that we cared about some characters more than others, everyone mattered when the series began, and everyone had interesting material to work with. Even Sylar, the season's "big bad," was a complex character, with understandable motivations despite his violent and sociopathic nature. Unfortunately, many characters like Micah Sanders (Noah Gray-Cabey) fell to the wayside in subsequent seasons, usually resulting in them being written off entirely as they no longer fit into the ever-growing nature of the story.
The mix of the extraordinary with the ordinary is really what set the first season of Heroes apart. Subsequent seasons became more and more outlandish, with even more time travel, more shady organizations, and more superpowered threats, to the point where the show effectively lost the ordinary element that made it special. But that first season reveled in the ordinary, mixing it seamlessly with the fantastical in a way that made it all feel natural and even believable. Because there was so much about this world we didn't know, the world of Heroes felt so big. And then it was small.
As The Series Continued, It Became Bogged Down by Bad Character Arcs and Convoluted Plots
Before the MCU,Heroes united a group of superpowered people from around the world together to save it. By "How To Stop An Exploding Man," the entire main cast had found themselves in New York City to stop Sylar (and then Peter) from turning it into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. After an eerie warning from the future, mixed with prophetic comic books and paintings, Heroes set itself up for a single-season story––and many of us wish it had remained so. This wasn't surprising though, as Kring initially envisioned Heroes as more of an anthology series, following different groups of people every season. "The networks fall in love with certain characters, the audience falls in love with certain characters, the press falls in love with certain characters, they don't want to see those characters go," Kring explained at a Screenwriter's Expo back in 2008. While it would've been tragic had Heroes continued this way without fan favorites like Claire, Hiro, or Peter, it might've saved NBC's former star from ultimately going out with a whimper rather than an explosive bang. Season 2 suffered deeply from the 2007-08 WGA strike, with only 13 episodes in the second volume, while Season 3 split the story in half, mucking up character arcs with out-of-character decisions, false redemption arcs, and hitting the same beat over and over again. That and lots of amnesia.
By the time Season 4 rolled around, most fans weren't interested in Heroes anymore, and the show was pushed to the sidelines. While the later seasons introduced some interesting characters and scenarios along the way, the same recurring mistakes overshadowed all of that progress. How many finales have to end with Nathan on the literal brink of death? How many post-apocalyptic versions of the future have to appear before we realize that maybe interfering is part of the problem? Year after year, Heroes' main characters hit those same beats, and in the process, we grew tired of what we loved about the show early on. That's without mentioning the tragedy that was Heroes Reborn, which likewise repeated many of these same mistakes.
‘Heroes’ Often Failed To Impress, but Season 1 Was Excellent
Sadly, Heroesoften failed to live up to its own hype. Each volume tended to build to some sort of climactic showdown between our favorite characters and that arc's main antagonist, which was usually Sylar, only for the series to not show much of the battle. The Season 3 finale "An Invisible Thread" was infamous for this, cutting away from the battle between Peter, Nathan, and Sylar just as it began. After waiting literal years for this fight, we only enter the scene in the aftermath. To say it was underwhelming would be an understatement. But Season 1 delivered on its promise, that if our heroes saved the cheerleader, they would also save the world. Even the comic book prophecies foretelling a brief battle between Sylar and Hiro were honored, and although the show didn't end with a big-budget showdown over New York, it ended the way it always intended to. Most didn't feel that the first season finale was underwhelming because everyone was where they were supposed to be, and each character had completed their respective journeys they'd embarked on at the beginning of the show. It was satisfying because our characters were satisfied, even if it meant that Peter and Nathan Petrelli made the ultimate sacrifice.
Later seasons could've learned a thing or two from the first, which was so intricately woven together that taking out a single episode would confuse things. More than that, Heroes tried to get too big, hoping to top what they had done before. The problem was, that it removed the show from its more grounded roots, and as a result, the show continued to make promises it couldn't keep. There's no denying that Heroes has some merits to it as a four-season series, but the truth is that the show's first season has rightfully remained the most fondly remembered. Saving the cheerleader did save the world, but not even that could ultimately save Heroes from itself.
Heroes is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
