The sad death of Hayden Panettiere in August brought "Heroes" — one of her most famous roles — back into the public consciousness.
As resurrecting cheerleader Claire Bennet, she became the face of a show that burned so brightly during its zeitgeist-grabbing first season that it sparked hours of watercooler chats as it brought superheroes to primetime. In that pre-streaming age, when network TV shows still dominated the conversation, the NBC series was — in the months following its September 2006 debut — the thing everybody was talking about.
But unlike many of the creatives who've since found success in the superhero space, "Heroes" creator Tim Kring was no comic-book nerd. "The idea of the dialog bubbles always bothered me," he admitted to Wired. He did have some genre experience, mostly thanks to a stint writing for David Hasselhoff and his talking car in "Knight Rider", but back in 2006 he was best known for ratings-grabbing crime procedural "Crossing Jordan".
So when NBC — a network that had been suffering in the ratings — went on the hunt for a must-watch hit to rival "Lost" and "24, it turned to Kring. "I was the right guy at the right time," he told IndieLondon.
"I wanted to do a show that addressed some of the larger issues that I felt all of us were facing. Between terrorism and global warming and diminishing natural resources, the world is out of balance. I started to think about wanting to make a statement about that, and the average cop show, or law show, or medical show didn’t seem to have the foundation to deal with those issues and the scope and breadth that I wanted. So I thought about ordinary people making a difference in the world and what could incorporate a message of hope, and that led me to this idea of ordinary people waking up to discover that they were extraordinary."
While superheroes have since become the dominant force in pop culture, they weren't yet there in 2006. With "Iron Man" and the Marvel Cinematic Universe still two years away, the genre was still finding its feet on the big screen, the critical and commercial success of "Spider-Man" and "Batman Begins" often tempered by the less beloved likes of "Fantastic Four" and "Catwoman". Doing convincing superheroes on a network TV budget — even a generous one — also seemed risky. The nearest thing to a test case was "Smallville", a Superman prequel that famously kept the Man of Steel grounded.
Kring was well aware, too, that entering the comic-book space was something genre newbies shouldn't take lightly. He subsequently packed his writers' room with superhero-literate staff — who named themselves 'the League of Heroic Scribblers' — to make sure he didn't do anything crazy.
"Heroes" was superpowered storytelling that ditched the Spandex, capes and alter-egos — a smart move that meant the producers didn't have to dodge costumes or character names that might inadvertently overlap with Marvel or DC's copyright. But more importantly, the show was the story of ordinary people who suddenly realize they're extraordinarily gifted, waking up with abilities that — like the characters in Pixar's "The Incredibles", released two years earlier — reflect their personalities and situations. Police officer Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) was able to read other people's minds, while prisoner DL Hawkins (Leonard Roberts) developed a handy penchant for walking through walls.
Crucially, "Heroes" was as much about these gifted few not using their superpowers as it was about them flying/using superstrength/teleporting (delete as appropriate). "That's the real secret of comics in the first place," said Jeph Loeb, the comic book writer and "Smallville" and "Lost" veteran that Kring had added to his team. "Peter Parker's dilemma is infinitely more interesting than Spider-Man's." Writers' room member Bryan Fuller, who went on to co-create "Star Trek: Discovery", would describe the show as "'Magnolia' meets 'X-Men'".
The ensemble was large and disparate, from the aforementioned Texas cheerleader, to an aspiring politician in upstate New York and an office worker in Tokyo. Early on in that first season, the characters are kept intentionally separate — a choice reflected in the writers' room, where an individual scripter would stick with a single character through multiple episodes. Fuller, for example, shaped cheerleader Claire's arc.
"The haiku-type of storytelling was effective when characters had very separate storylines," Kring told AV Club in 2010. "My idea was for them to stay apart for as long as possible. The network wanted them to be together on the second episode, and we really fought that. Once characters start crossing, you can do fewer stories."
Although thousands of miles apart, the nascent heroes' stories are gradually drawn together by a single mission to avoid global apocalypse by averting an explosion at Kirby Plaza (a nod to legendary comic-book artist Jack Kirby) in NYC. "Save the cheerleader, save the world," became the show's extremely catchy tagline.
They're not alone on their journey, however. Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) is a geneticist on a mission to understand what's turned these people super, and there are more sinister agents on their tail, too. Power-stealing serial killer Sylar (a pre-"Star Trek" Zachary Quinto) is bumping people off, while a mysterious guy in horn-rimmed glasses (aka HRG, aka Noah Bennet, aka Claire's dad — played by Jack Coleman) was the face of a sinister agency trying to keep supes under control.
Although derivative to anyone who'd ever read a comic, "Heroes" captured a moment. That first season — or "Volume", to use the show's parlance — was a ratings hit for NBC, picked up numerous awards nominations, and launched multiple careers. Panettiere would go on to star in "Nashville" and "Scream", Milo Ventimiglia (power-mimicking Peter Petrelli) was one of the leads in the long-running "This is Us", and ILM VFX-whiz turned actor Masi Oka (teleporting Hiro Nakamura) became Hollywood's go-to geek for a while.
A spin-off show, "Heroes: Origins" was planned (but ultimately aborted), and Kring and co had the foresight to set up 9thwonders.com (the title inspired by the comic written by clairvoyant artist Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera) in the show) as a pre-social media destination for fans to get their "Heroes" fix.
But season one was as big as "Heroes" got. Unlike "Lost" — which has since become shorthand for a show that asks question after question without giving any answers — that first year had neatly wrapped up most of its important storylines. Despite Kring's best intentions, however, it wasn't great for the future of the show.
Volume Two's arc subsequently had to start more-or-less from scratch, but took too long to establish where it was going, leading to significant backlash from the fanbase. "The message is that we’ve heard the complaints — and we’re doing something about it.” Kring responded in Entertainment Weekly.
Kring had originally intended to refresh the cast for each season, but the popularity of many of the lead characters meant that was never going to happen. The season also suffered as a result of Hollywood's 2007-08 writers' strike, which led to a planned 24-episode run being cut down to 11, and interest in the show continued to wane until it was finally cancelled after season four. A 2015 reboot (for which Kring returned) also struggled to set the world alight. It was an ignoble end for one of the last network genre shows to truly capture the zeitgeist before cable and streaming eclipsed traditional channels the pop-culture hive mind.
Twenty years on "Heroes"' legacy is dragged down by the memory of the series it became, but that first season still stands up as one of the best superhero stories of the 21st century. Sometimes a great idea is only enough to sustain a single season, and there's no shame in that — "Heroes" wasn't the first show to outstay its welcome, and it won't be the last.
'Heroes' is available to stream on Netflix in the US and the UK. You can also buy or rent the show on Prime Video.
