Heroes Part 1- The Brilliance of Season 1 and Where it Should Have Ended
Save the cheerleader, save the world. In 2006, an auteur named Tim Kring presented audiences with a not-quite-new but unique take on the superpowered-people concept or people-wtih-abilities concept. Before Superman, the term superhero was first invented in 1917 to describe exceptional people or exceptional fighter pilots. Most comic book “superheroes” started being introduced in the 30s complimenting the arrival of comic books which evolved from comic strips. The term superhero being applied to costumed do-gooders/heroes wasn’t even applied with Superman, Batman, or Captain America when they first appeared in the late 30s. It wasn’t until 1941 when it was first used in Star-Spangled Comics, a DC title. Superman became the archetype. The standard. Just like ballet may actually have Italian roots, Russia’s version is the definitive just as Marvel and DC’s stories of comic book superheroes are the definitive. There’s been a Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Modern Age. At the start of the Modern Age we were given what is mostly agreed upon to be the most famous superhero deconstruction and satire- Watchmen. Since then there have been other satires, most famously TMNT, Invincible, and The Boys to name a few. While the Boys and Invincible first came out as graphic novels in 2006 and 2001 respectively, in the mid 2000s we already had the pleasure of the Spiderman films, X-Men films, Hulk, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Superman Returns, and Batman Begins. On the tv side of things it really was just Smallville. This is all live-action of course, cartoon series omitted since Heroes is live-action. Smallville had already been out for half its runtime when Heroes came onto the scene. I wasn’t paying attention to NBC when they first advertised Heroes but I knew of it. I honestly thought it was like a crime show where people with powers that work for a crime agency catch people with powers who don’t know how to use them or use them for ill hence why I thought exactly that when I saw Hiro and Ando trying to stop Sylar when he was he with his mother. Anyways, I digress. This is probably going to be a long one folks because I’m going to be talking about Heroes as a whole, the brilliance of the 1st season and its downfall in subsequent seasons. With that let’s get into it.
Right at the start Heroes starts off very strong. It’s got an opening crawl that tells you there are ordinary people with powers and abilities whose lives are going to intertwine and change. I don’t know how composers manage to capture just the right sounds for the music to compliment the tone of the show or movie but Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman did a superb job and by adding the voice of Indian singer L. Shankar who really actually is the star of the music. Notable scores that stand out are Claire’s theme which sounds innocent and pure, Mohinder’s theme which perfectly encaptures a mix of scientific obession/supernatural mystery/spiritual belief, and Sylar’s theme which sounds mechanical, cold, calculating and uncaring. I think what made it instantly hooking is that these characters are everyday people. A cheerleader, a police officer, struggling single-mother etc. On my last rewatch I felt like I was watching it again for the first time. The build-up and connectivity of the 1st season is phenomenal. Flawless? I don’t know but it’s damn near perfect. A 9/10.
Heroes season 1 is split into 3 arcs. Arc 1 is from episodes 1-11, arc 2 is episodes 12-17, and arc 3 is episodes 18-23. The first arc is the introduction to the characters and the subplot of save the cheerleader, save the world. The second arc is about Hiro on his ques to obtain the sword, Peter trying to get a handle of his abilities, and Sylar becoming more powerful. Arc 3 is setting up everyone to meet at Kirby Plaza for the climax. I compare Heroes season 1 to the Infinity Arc of the MCU in that it’s very well-connected and leads up to a more-than satisfactory climax. Of course if I had to be honest, Heroes season 1 is better in terms of quality. It may be an unfair comparison since the MCU is much more expansive but the funny thing is, and I just realized this, is that the Infinity Arc has 23 movies and Heroes season 1 has 23 episodes. Major coincidence? I think NOT. V from V for Vendetta doesn’t believe in coincidences. Sorry, I know I’m going to digress but why don’t we match them up just to see which one I actually like more overall:
Genesis = Iron Man
Don’t Look Back = Incredible Hulk
One Giant Leap > Iron Man 2
Collision = Thor
Hiros = The First Avenger
Better Halves = Avengers
Nothing to Hide > Iron Man 3
Seven Minutes to Midnight > Dark World
Homecoming = Winter Soldier
Six Months Ago = Guardians of the Galaxy
Fallout = Age of Ultron
Godsend = Ant-Man
The Fix < Civil War
Distractions = Doctor Strange
Run! = Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Unexpected = Homecoming
Company Man = Ragnarok
Parasite = Black Panther
.07% < Infinity War
Five Years Gone > Ant Man 2
The Hard Part > Captain Marvel
Landslide < Endgame
How to Stop an Exploding Man > Far From Home
The verdict is in. Heroes has 20. MCU has 17. It’s a close call which makes sense. Heroes season 1 in my opinion is more consistently quality. Anyways, back to Arc 1. Everyone has a role to play in this season but the most critical characters are Peter Petrelli, Hiro Nakamura, Isaac Mendez, Sylar, and Nathan Petrelli. Isaac is the one who connects everyone. His ability is to paint the future and I think it’s at the end of episode 1 where he paints a mural of an explosion blowing up NYC. The 3 characters least connected to the main plot are Niki and Micah Sanders, and D.L Hawkins. Peter is the most essential protagonist to the plot because his fate is connected to the bomb and with another who is connected to the bomb- Sylar. Before they save the world though, they need to save the cheerleader. While Peter is on a train, time is frozen by Future Hiro who tells Peter that he must save the cheerleader. Peter doesn’t know what that means but Hiro tells him to go see Isaac. When Peter meets Isaac formally, he sees paintings of Claire Bennet scared and being hunted by a shadowy, sinister figure and Claire’s head ripped off dripping with red paint. Peter finds out that her school is in Odessa, Texas and must get there. The sinister figure as everyone knows, is Sylar. Ya’ll remember the post I did about Sylar so we don’t need to go deeply into him. In short, lusting for Claire’s power of regeneration, Peter and Sylar got into conflict for the first time and Sylar was thwarted. He was thenceforth apprehended by Claire’s father Noah Bennet who specializes in apprehending powered people and incarcerated while Peter was interrogated by FBI agent Audrey Hanson and LAPD officer Matt Parkman now working with the FBI to find Sylar. What I love about the sub-arc is how dark and it can get and you really feel the stakes, especially when Noah Bennet pleads with Isaac to help him find Sylar and when Peter sees the paintings of Claire for the first time. We know something is going to go down. Will Peter actually die as foretold? Th the showdown happens. Episode 9- Homecoming. Claire breaks out of her house to attend homecoming and butts head with her former friend Jackie. They’re in the changing rooms alone when suddenly everything goes black. Out of nowhere a man attacks who he thinks is Claire and we see just how Sylar obtains new abilities- by slicing open people’s skulls with telekinesis. It’s left ambiguous exactly how he does this, the audience is first made to think he actually removes the brains and cannibalizes them. After seeing Claire heal, Jackie is left for dead. He chases after her and this is when Peter gets in his way. They both fall off the cavea and Sylar gets away but injured as Peter heals after assimilating Claire’s ability. Peter asks Claire “by saving you did I save the world?” to which she responds she doesn’t know, she’s just a cheerleader. The next episode shows what happened to the heroes six months ago and most importantly, Sylar’s origin story- discovering his ability of intuitive aptitude, he gains a uncontrollable hunger for knowledge and that combined with his wanting to special drives him to become an unrepentant murderer (eventually). The next episode is the final episode of sub-arc 1 and an important one. The reason why it is important is because we discover that Peter is the exploding man who blows up New York which he finds out in a dream. Isaac painted the picture of the exploding man when Bennet asked Isaac to help him and did it without the drugs. The season ends there before a hiatus in a cliffhanger.
This next arc really doesn’t have one overall sub-plot but it forwards the journeys and character development of the characters significantly. In this arc Claire finds her biological mother Meredith Gordon who has the ability to create and manipulate fire. We also find out Nathan is Claire’s biological father. Hiro is on his journey to obtain Kensei’s sword because he believes it will help him focus powers but will actually serve a purpose later. Peter learns to control his powers through the mentoring of Claude Rains, a man who can become invisible. Knowing that Peter can absorb abilities he believes Peter to be the exploding man. Syalr begins killing more victims after escaping Bennet’s custody and fools Mohinder by calling him and pretending that he was one of the victims he killed. The MVP of this arc is Bennet and the sins of his past catch up to him. Parkman and Ted Sprague (who actually has the exploding abilities) find Bennet and confront him about the nature of his work. His family now knows what he does and Parkman and Sprague want answers. As Sprague holds the family hostage angry, he threatens to blow up the house and kill everyone there. Somehow, one of Bennet’s coworkers named Thompson, intervenes and shoots Sprague almost causing him to detonate until Claire sedates him. Coming out of the wreckage with her skin missing she heals and Thompson sees this much to Bennet’s horror. Claire was only an assignment and was handed to Bennet as a baby as a surrogate daughter and to be handed back once she manifested her ability which happened six months prior to the main timeline. The grunt that Thompson is immediately asks when he can expect Claire but Bennet the clever man that he is, made a plan for the Haitian to take Claire and go into hiding. He also tells Thompson that the Haitain knew of her ability the whole time and kept it a secret Bennet pretended that he didn’t know that Claire was being hidden for her safety. This episode is another good turning point.
The final sub-arc of Heroes season 1. Claire meets all the Petrellis including her grandmother Angela Petrelli. Peter goes to see Mohinder again to see him for help to run into Sylar again after Mohinder tried to kill Sylar and failed. The noob that Peter is gets impaled by glass telekinetically shot into his cerebellum and dies. Mohinder manages to knock Sylar out and takes Peter with him to the Petrelli residence while Sylar finds Isaac’s address. Thompson discovers that Bennet has gone rogue and conspired to take the company down resulting in his apprehension and being sentenced to die. One of the key elements of this arc is Nathan finding out that his presidency has been foretold in a painting and he’s manipulated into believing it’s his destiny by Angela Petrelli and the mobster Daniel Linderman. He’s hesitant at first to accept this knowing that Peter is the exploding man but is assuaged when he sees Peter heal. The MVP episode of this arc is Five Years Gone which shows a dark future after Sylar exploded. Micah and D.L are dead. Parkman is more aggressive and morally grey. Bennet is helping refugee people with powers. Hiro is an outlaw for operating outside of the law which hunts and persecutes powered individuals and Sylar has become president by taking Candice Wilmer’s power of illusion and killing Nathan. Now Hiro knows what he must absolutely do to save New York. Using Isaac;s power, Sylar sees a painting of him taking Ted’s power which he does and Peter takes it as well. Now it’s left ambiguous who the bomb really is. Sylar, the madman that he is, smiles devilishly as he says boom when he looks out at NYC igniting his hands as he does so. The showdown happens in Kirby Plaza where Sylar and Peter stand off. Were it not for Niki’s intervention, Sylar could’ve handled Peter easily but luckily Peter turned the tables by punching Sylar repeatedly with super-strength. Hiro then shows up and stabs Sylar through the abdomen and the villain is felled…..or is he? He should have stayed dead. More on that in the continuing post. Nathan flies down and takes Peter up into the sky himself and sacrifices himself in a very emotional payoff and great character journey for Nathan. He was never a villain. There are moments when he does come off as selfish but compared to Peter, who isn’t? We did see moments where he cared about his loved ones. He was a man trying to figure out what exactly the right thing was. “The future isn’t written in stone”. That’s what he said to Claire before he saved NYC. Nathan Petrelli was a true hero right then and there.
Heroes season 1 is a work of art. A masterpiece of tv storytelling. I don’t know what drugs Tim Kring was on but it was the good kind. The man was inspired. Inspired by comic-book storytelling. No one really knows why it went wrong. Maybe it was the writers strike. Maybe season 1 was way too damn good to be followed. That’s my vote. Too good to be followed. How do you top that? Heroes has great characters. Great tension. Great stakes. I probably should leave it here to be honest and let the rest of the show be because we all know how it goes but perhaps it is important to talk of the good and the bad and write something up so people can have something they can come back to that’s permanently recorded. With that, YA-TA!