Heroes Reborn: An Open Letter

Dear Heroes,

When I heard you were coming back, I got really excited. I saw some of your trailers a while back, and was just really thrilled to be going back to a universe I had truly missed. The months went by, and now you’re finally here and we get to spend some time together.

But that’s when things got awkward. During the second half of your two-episode premiere, I found myself checking my watch and wondering how much longer I had to be in your company. I hate the fact that I felt this way, but we can’t help what we feel. The heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wants good television programming. Now look, I’m not saying you didn’t give me good television this time around, I’m just saying that I see you slipping into familiar tropes; things that didn’t work out between me and you, and you and other audience members before.

I don’t want to get into too much detail, because I know a lot of people out there who haven’t rekindled their relationship with you yet may want to read this letter before they spend some time with you too.  So here goes.

Why are you still building your universe by shrouding everything in so much mystery? I get why that was the case the first time round, and it worked really well, because we were being introduced to a brand new world, and piecing things together one by one made the journey exciting, and as if we were living through the eyes of your Heroes. But now that all of the details about them are public knowledge, what’s the point of driving the mystery element home so hard?

You may not know this, but there’s a really famous and effective narrative technique called dramatic irony, and I think you really need to use it a bit. It’s okay to keep some things a mystery, but you really need to give us some kind of payoff, or most of us are probably going to hit the road.

The reason we’re being so picky about this is that the last time it happened, you ended up not paying off all your mysteries in a way that satisfied us, your audience. You had this amazing build-up and then the climax just kind of fell on its face.

Part of that original buildup is why I love all your characters- we got to spend so much time with them and struggle with them as they learnt how to live with their powers, but I can’t deal with another round of this, not to that degree, because I know there’s a chance you will probably not pay it off … again. And I’m just not willing to take that risk.

Another thing that really bothered me was the video game integration. At face value I guess it’s kind of cool, if you’re twelve, but I really don’t see where you’re going with this. I don’t want to be condescending, but when it first happened, the words that popped into my head were “Go home Heroes, you’re drunk”. Once again, I hope you offer us a little bit of exposition on this matter, so we have some idea of the stakes.

And speaking of stakes, you also have to understand that you can’t just make us care about characters because they are Heroes. You have to show us who they are, not what they are to make us care. So give us a better look into their lives, their human struggles. They are humans before they are Evos, so please make us believe that’s true.

In essence, I think you’re obsessed with your own mysterious story, and you’re so self-absorbed that you forget it can easily frustrate your audience beyond a point where they can tolerate this bullshit, especially because of what happened before.

So Heroes, I hope you get your shit together soon. I’m going to give you another shot for now, and I hope you prove me wrong.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen.