NBC’s Heroes to Return in 2015
I enjoyed the first season of NBC’s superhero drama Heroes — quite a bit, actually. It was smart and fun, and had a genuinely original take on the ensemble superhero idea. It didn’t hurt that it had a very talented and diverse cast, either, including Hayden Panettiere, Ali Larter, Masi Oka, George Takei, and Zachary Quinto as the sinister supervillian Sylar. Now, I haven’t seen Seasons 2 through 4. I understand the cast expanded a bit — adding Kristen Bell, Zeljko Ivanek, and Malcolm McDowell, among others — and, as usual, the show received a lot of fan criticism for losing its way. Fans. They love you, until they don’t.
Regardless, I was surprised and pleased to read on the CNN website this morning that NBC is bringing back Heroes next year:
NBC helped kickstart the superhero TV trend in 2006 with Heroes, an X-Men-ish action-drama about a group of people with superhuman powers. Now the network is bringing back the show for a 13-episode event series to air in 2015. Original series creator Tim Kring is on board to run the show. Titled Heroes Reborn, the project is billed as a stand-alone story; the characters have not yet been announced.
The announcement has already generated buzz and backlash in the fan press. NBC has also announced they will introduce the new characters and storylines in a digital series before the mini-series airs. Until then, enjoy the 20-second teaser promo that ran during Olympics coverage.
They really, really lost their way. The best advice I’ve heard about the series is to watch the first season and then pretend the show got canceled and no more episodes were ever made. I wish I’d heard that advice before I slogged through two more seasons on Netflix hoping for the magic to return.
The first season is a sublime work of art.
As my great-uncle the minor Cubist painter used to say, it takes two people to create a masterpiece: one person to paint it, plus a guy with a shotgun to shoot the artist before he adds the one brushstroke too many that ruins it. Where, O Heroes, was your guy with a shotgun?
I’d really like for the magic to be back. Maybe the reason this new run is so short is that they finally found the right sniper.
John, like you, I watched the first season and enjoyed it tremendously. So much so, I was excited when season two came along, but then I lost all interest, to the point I can’t be excited about Heroes Reborn. I might give the new show a chance if the wife is interested, or if I suddenly start hearing good things about it, but man, they drove the original show into the ground so deep and so quickly.
Wow, I’m really getting the message that the later seasons aren’t worth my time.
A pity, because I’d love to see what Kristen Bell and Malcolm McDowell bring to the material. Maybe I’ll just sneak a peak…
No. Best to take your advice Sarah, and stop watching at the end of Season 1.
To some extent I think Heroes was collateral damage of the writers’ strike. If you watch the deleted scenes from S2, it looks like they might have been going to take the show to a very different (and much darker) place, but then they ended up having to radically shorten the season and change the ending.
Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t just stick with Sarah’s advice, John.
Joe,
I didn’t think of that… and you’re probably right.