20 Years Ago, ‘Heroes’ Tried Something New — Then The Genre Changed Forever
The year 2006 might have been the only time when something like 'Heroes' could have been the success it was.
The year 2008 was a landmark for superheroes. That's when both The Dark Knight and Iron Man hit theaters; the former gave superhero movies an unprecedented level of prestige while the latter launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe which, along with its many would-be imitators, would dominate pop culture for the next decade. However, two years earlier, a different superhero property was the biggest thing in the genre. And, somewhat amazingly, the TV show Heroes had no connections to DC or Marvel. It came out at the exact moment that a completely original superhero IP could captivate audiences — especially with a tagline like "Save the cheerleader, save the world."
Heroes premiered on NBC September 25, 2006, 20 years ago today. For context, 2006 was a bit of a low point for superhero movies. The first two X-Men movies and Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, which really launched the era of superhero films, had already come out; the disappointing third installments of both trilogies would come out in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Batman Begins came out the previous year, and The Incredibles (which is maybe the best superhero movie ever made) opened in 2004. Other than that, there were a bunch of attempts at blockbuster superhero movies that didn't quite work, like Catwoman, Fantastic Four, Hulk, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and Superman Returns, the last of which has one great scene going for it but not much else. The genre was still figuring itself out and 2008 would be the year when it all snapped into place. In 2006, though, there was a lane for Heroes to take everything by storm.
Starting a superhero universe from scratch and making it stick with audiences is no easy feat, and yet that's what Tim Kring did with Heroes. The series followed a group of individuals as they slowly came to grasps with their emergent superpowers. These included Milo Ventimiglia as Peter Petrelli, who has Rogue-like powers to copy other abilities; Masi Oka as the exuberant time-traveller and teleporter Hiro Nakamura; Ali Larter as Niki Sanders, a woman with super-strength and a split personality; and the late Hayden Panettiere as Claire Bennet, a cheerleader with regenerative abilities. As they gradually come together, they learn of a catastrophic future they must prevent from coming to pass and a creepy serial killer who is targeting people with powers and stealing them for his own (Zachary Quinto as Sylar).
The first season of Heroes is tremendously engrossing television. Freed from pre-existing lore or IP, it instead develops a detailed, complex new fiction with conspiracy, twists, and a propulsive series of cliffhangers that make catching the next episode as urgent as grabbing a new issue of a comic book might be. It is a testament to Heroes' storytelling that it was able to indulge in some of the superhero genre's more zany tropes, like alternate timelines, hidden organizations, and very niche superpowers, while still being accessible to mainstream audiences more than a decade before the MCU made sure that the average Joe was familiar with the concept of a multiverse.
Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura in Heroes.
Perhaps Heroes could have continued to grow in scope and popularity to the point where the Heroes universe felt like a viable alternative to DC or Marvel. Sadly, that's not what happened. After successfully launching a superhero universe, the show struggled when it came to know how to expand it. The second season of Heroes, which was admittedly cut short by the 2007 WGA writers' strike, is a step down from the quality of the first season. The next season was worse. A show that had once seemed so fresh and exciting quickly got bogged down in its own mythology. Many superhero stories that came before and since have done.
At the same time the shine was coming off of Heroes, Iron Man and The Dark Knight were revolutionizing the genre on the big screen. Heroes limped along to a fourth season before ending as IP superheroes dominated the box office. When NBC made a revival series in 2016 titled Heroes Reborn, it was a failure. An attempt to reboot it again in 2024, which would've been called Heroes: Eclipse, has seemingly stalled out. Perhaps part of the reason for this is ironic; once an original creation — an anomaly in the superhero world — Heroes was now just another dusted-off IP. Only now, though, it was less interesting or valuable than other pre-existing properties.
The protagonists on Heroes managed to save the world when they saved the cheerleader in the first season, but the TV show didn't change the world. The superhero franchises with the most history and name recognition were the biggest, and in the late-2010s and 2020s when other superhero shows like The Boys and Invincible started airing, they were based on comic books. The Heroes model for the genre could have only achieved success exactly when it came out: a time when superhero movies and shows were popular and audiences wanted more, but before the genre had formalized what it was going to become.
