By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
Before the MCU, superheroes on television were few and far between. Sure, we had Smallville, but that was it. Until 2006 when Heroes premiered on NBC and it conquered pop culture. “Save the Cheerleader. Save the world.” is still the greatest tagline in television history. All four seasons of the groundbreaking series are now streaming on Netflix, which is good, because it’s an iconic show, and bad, because all four seasons are streaming when you only need the first one and a half.
Save The Cheerleader. Save The World.
Heroes starts with the “grounded” take on superpowers that annoyed comic fans until Tony Stark emerged from the cave in his Mark 1 armor. For the first season, we follow everyday people slowly learning they have superpowers following a mysterious eclipse. There’s Hiro (Masi Oka) the salaryman in Japan who can manipulate space/time, Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) who mimics the powers of others, Claire (Hayden Panettiere) the high school cheerleader who regenerates like Wolverine, and Sylar (Zachary Quinto) the evil villain who rips open brains to learn how they work, allowing him to gain the powers of others.
Season 1, dubbed “Genesis,” tells a complete story from the simple beginning to the climatic final episode with a knock down drag out fight between Sylar and the heroes trying to stop him. Season 2, “Generations,” picks up later and starts to reveal more about the world and how powered individuals have been around since long before the eclipse. Created by Tim Kring, who started his Hollywood career as a writer for Knight Rider and Misfits of Science, the first two seasons were peak television for 2006. Then the writer’s strike happened.
The Missing Season
The WGA strike cut short Season 2 at 11 episodes, forcing the team to drop storylines, and adjust their plans for Season 3. By then, the world of Heroes had grown to the point of becoming unwieldy with too many characters, organizations, and subplots to devote television time to everyone. If anything, the superhero show became more like the comics of the time.
Amazingly, Heroes Season 3 and 4 may have been narrative kryptonite to audiences, the show was so popular, that it went from a high of 16 million viewers down to 4.5 million, which is a steep drop, but 4.5 million was nothing to sneeze at. It was still popular enough that in 2015, five years after cancellation, it came back with the miniseries Heroes Reborn.
Heroes Reborn Went Back To Basics
Marketed as a back to basics approach, Heroes Reborn has “evols” or “evolved people,” are again, running after being blamed for a terrorist attack. It’s as if the writers read Marvel’s Civil War event and thought that was the greatest story of all time. On the bright side, Tim Kring went into with the plan of telling a complete story, so it sidesteps the biggest issue with the original series.
If it’s been awhile since you’ve watched Heroes, fire it up and give it a weekend binge on Netflix. If you want to keep it going, you can catch Heroes Reborn for free on AppleTV.
