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Over the course of television history, plenty of shows have emerged to great success and showed huge promise, only to peter out as quickly as they arrived, but few of these cautionary tales are as infamous as Heroes. After a debut season that revolutionized the superhero genre and forged a path for the MCU, a blend of narrative confusion and real-world strikes forced Heroes season 2 down a path the show would never quite recover from.
Contrary to popular belief, Heroes seasons 3 and 4 regained some of that original magic, and even short-lived revival Heroes Reborn had moments of quality. Alas, that difficult second season really did a number on the show's relationship with viewers.
One of Heroes season 2's many disappointments was the show's lead protagonist, Milo Ventimiglia's Peter Petrelli. Across season 1, viewers watched Peter grow in confidence and purpose as he learned how to harness the various powers absorbed from others via his empath ability. In a dramatic finale, Peter was still struggling to wield his arsenal of gifts, leading to a giant nuclear explosion triggered by the absorption of Ted's volatile power.
After Heroes' season 1 ending, Peter Petrelli's character stood at a crossroads. The first option was for Heroes to show Peter training diligently in season 2, until such time that he could manage his vast set of powers and avoid another near-miss in the middle of New York City. The second option was to keep Peter weak, never quite able to replicate specific powers whenever he liked.
Neither of these options looked especially attractive. If Peter mastered his abilities, he'd be the most ridiculously overpowered character in the entire series, quashing any sense of threat or danger from future villains. If Peter remained unstable, Heroes would just be repeating his season 1 arc all over again. Suddenly, giving one character all of the powers didn't seem like such a good idea.
Heroes Tried A String Of Failed Solutions To Solve Its Peter Problem
How do you solve a problem like Peter Petrelli? Heroes attempted a few different solutions without success. Season 2 began with the worst of them: that classic TV trope of amnesia. Without his memories, Peter only had access to a few random superpowers out of the many collected throughout season 1. By having Peter fall in love and lose interest in rediscovering his past, Heroes then gave itself an excuse to drag out the memory trope even longer, but from the perspective of viewers who had grown attached to Ventimiglia's character, season 2 Peter felt like a stranger. Initial frustration over Heroes pulling the amnesiac card quickly turned to indifference over this new-look Peter.
When Heroes could keep Peter separated from his memories no longer, a new plan was hatched to make Peter an unwitting villain in the back half of season 2. More interesting than the excursion to Ireland, it still felt like Heroes was leading Peter backwards.
Early in season 3, Heroes found yet another way to keep Peter's overwhelming strength from ruining the show: put him inside someone else's body for a while and introduce a version of Peter from the future who's a bit of a tool. It was the best solution yet, but by this point, Heroes' treatment of the character was becoming transparent. When season 3 decided Peter Petrelli's powers should be permanently removed (by his own father, no less - nice touch), it almost came as a relief.
Heroes Figured Peter's Powers Out Eventually, But The Damage Was Done
It took Heroes until the midway point of season 3 to find a permanent fix for Peter Petrelli being an overpowered show-killer, as "Dual" ended with Milo Ventimiglia's character injecting himself with Mohinder's serum and gaining a limited version of his original power. After this, Peter could only absorb one power at a time. Cue cheers and fanfare.
It was the ideal solution. Peter still felt special compared to the regular heroes, and his power still functioned as the antithesis to Sylar's more brutal way to collect powers. More importantly, Heroes retained the original meaning of Peter being an "empath." The original power functioned as a metaphor for Peter's knack of emotionally connecting to other people and wanting to fight their corner. Each connection Peter made during Heroes season 1 contributed to his strength. That deeper meaning still stood, even after Peter could only borrow one power at a time.
Sadly, it wasn't enough. By this point, it had already been a season and a half since Peter went New York nuclear, and as fate would have it, there would only be another one-and-a-half seasons until Heroes was given the chop completely. All the intrigue and charm Peter Petrelli had in Heroes' debut season had faded, so even if season 4 represented a marked improvement on all fronts, it came too late.
The handling of Peter Petrelli wasn't the only reason Heroes fell so dramatically from grace after its first season, as there were issues with almost every other main character too. Still, it's curious to think how Heroes' fate might have changed if Peter had been stripped of his powers following the season 1 finale's massive explosion, then developed the ability to absorb one superpower at a time at the very start of season 2. Peter could have become the heroic anchor Heroes desperately needed; the face of the series instead of constantly being pushed aside because his glut of powers was proving inconvenient.
Superheroes have, of course, taken off in a much bigger way since Heroes premiered in 2006, and it's interesting that other franchises have encountered similar problems. The MCU introduced Brie Larson's really-rather-strong Captain Marvel shortly before the decisive battle against Thanos, and the franchise has since been forced to explain her absence every time a major new villain shows up. Even before Super-Carol came along, every MCU solo movie and TV show post-2012 was forced to reckon with the question "why hasn't anybody called the Avengers yet?!"
So, while it could be said that Heroes wrote itself into a corner by creating a character who sponged up superpowers just by standing near other characters with powers, it seems like the burden of overpowered heroes is simply a curse the genre must always contend with. Unfortunately, Heroes only figured out a solution after the show's fate had been all but sealed.
