Heroes Is Coming Back Again To Remind Us Of That Perfect Season 1
A Heroes sequel series is officially in development, with the original show’s creator, Tim Kring, set to write each episode. Heroes: Eclipsed begins years after the original series as “new evos are being awakened and discovering powers that will change their lives.” The show will see a few familiar villains return alongside new bad guys who join forces to stop the next step in human evolution.
A Fresh Set Of Heroes Characters
Fortunately, a new group of heroes will be on hand to save the world. The premise for the Heroes: Eclipsed series is similar to the 2015’s Heroes Reborn.
Also created by Kring, the story took place years after the original show and featured a fresh set of characters with extraordinary abilities. The show also features actors from the flagship offering, such as Jack Coleman, Sendhil Ramamurthy, and Masi Oka.
Heroes: Reborn Tried It Once
Despite the varied success of Heroes: Reborn and subsequent seasons of the flagship series, Heroes Season 1 (known as “Genesis”) was an incomparable masterpiece.
Premiering on NBC in 2006, it was particularly well-received by viewers and critics. The story follows a group of ordinary people who gradually realize that they have special abilities.
Original Heroes Cast
The main Heroes series characters include Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), who gains the abilities of other evolved humans; Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), a high school cheerleader with rapid cellular regeneration; Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), a Japanese office worker who can bend the time/space continuum, and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), a politician who can fly.
Ali Larter played Niki Sanders, a single mother with a dangerous alter ego named Jessica. Greg Grunberg appeared as Matt Parkman, a telepathic police officer. Jack Coleman played Noah Bennet, a mysterious man with connections to The Company.
And Sendhil Ramamurthy played Dr. Mohinder Suresh, a geneticist, on a quest to understand the origins of superpowers.
The Looming Threat Of Skylar
The narrative threads of these and other characters gradually intertwine as they grapple with their roles in a larger, interconnected story.
Central to the Heroes series was the looming threat of Sylar (Zachary Quinto), whose insatiable hunger for power drove him to hunt down and kill those with special abilities to steal their powers.
As the season progressed, the characters were drawn together by fate and circumstance. Hiro Nakamura’s quest to save the world led him to seek out Peter Petrelli and Claire Bennet. Meanwhile, The Company emerged as a shadowy force manipulating events behind the scenes. Ultimately, it was the collective efforts of these “heroes” that culminated in a showdown with Sylar.
Heroes Had Great Start, But Declined
The first season of the Heroes series was nominated for several Primetime Emmy awards, including Outstanding Drama Series, and the cast was featured in Time Magazine’s Person of the Year issue under “People Who Mattered.”
However, the show’s quality declined significantly after the first season, with many fans and critics citing Season 2 as particularly disappointing.
Recapturing The Magic?
The show’s creators had initially planned for Heroes to be an anthology series, with new characters each season, but the first season’s success led them to keep the same cast for subsequent seasons.
This decision, combined with the impact of the Writers Guild of America strike in 2007, resulted in a shift in the show’s writing and storytelling, which was less cohesive than the first season.
Despite its decline in quality, the first season of Heroes remains a standout example of how to successfully introduce a superhero universe with amazing characters and stories in series form. Recapturing that magic in the upcoming sequel series will be no easy feat.
Source: Deadline
