The New Heroes Revival Can Finally Fix Its Two Biggest Mistakes
Here’s why the impending Heroes comeback could finally address some frustrating plot holes.
Although it’s been almost 10 years since Heroes: Reborn tried to revive the ambitious TV superhero series, it looks like the basic concept of this beloved (and controversial) series is getting a second life. As revealed by Deadline, the creator of Heroes, Tim Kring, is pitching a new series, that would follow a different group of evolved humans (evos), and would be “set years after the events of the original series.”
Unlike the in-development Babylon 5 reboot, this new hypothetical take on Heroes (currently titled Heroes: Eclipse) isn’t a reset button at all, but a kind of sequel series to the existing continuity laid out in the first show (2006-2009) and the revival, Heroes: Reborn (2015). And so, if Heroes does make a comeback in the form of a sequel series, then it’s a good time to walk back the biggest problems from its past. And that comes down to basically two issues: Claire’s way-too-powerful blood, and Snuffleupagus-style characters who don’t exist at all. Retro Heroes spoilers ahead.
The Linderman problem
Which version of this guy was even real?
Even diehard Heroes fans will admit that various plot holes in the show’s third season range from mind-boggling to downright silly. Perhaps the biggest issue of all of these was the moment in which Nathan — having been shot by his brother — is healed by a ghost of Linderman, the latter of which is really not a character at all. Turns out, the ghost version of Linderman was just an illusionary figure created by Maury Parkman. While all of that sounds pretty hard to follow in general, the biggest issue here is that if the ghost Linderman wasn’t even a “real” thing, then Nathan’s revival makes close to zero sense, even within the loosey-goosey worldbuilding of the show.
Make no mistake, this is a big Heroes plot hole, and there are massive Reddit threads devoted to it, which are still going, 10 years later. The lesson here for the next Heroes series? Don’t give super-healing powers to characters who may or may not actually exist. Like, imagine if Wolverine’s healing powers were only in his head, how could we ever accept anything that happens in the X-Men, ever?
Claire’s blood
Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere) strikes a pose for Heroes Season 1.
Speaking of super-healing, the other big elephant in the Heroes room is easily Claire’s super-blood. Throughout the run of the original show, Claire’s very special blood is coveted by all sorts of characters, from villains to allies. In Heroes: Reborn, we learned that she passed on her regenerative powers to her son Nathan, while her daughter, Malina, gained some elemental powers.
Here’s the thing: Claire is arguably the best character in the original Heroes, meaning a reboot/sequel without her powers or talking about her legacy will be weird. So, Heroes: Eclipse will have to deal with something about Claire’s super-power blood, but it will also have to figure out how to not have the entire show be only about that.
This isn’t to say that making Claire and her regenerative blood central to Heroes was a mistake, per se. But, in the wider world of other genre shows where characters also have super-blood, revisiting any of Claire’s powers in the new Heroes could feel less than original. As it stands, Claire’s powers were slightly lopsided in terms of usefulness in the classic show. Any new version of Claire, or her regenerative powers in the new series, could threaten to overshadow, or eclipse, the entire new series. To put it another way: Heroes: Eclipse needs literal new blood, both in the form of new powers and brand-new characters without ties to the 2006 line-up.
