The Mistake that 🅺🅸🅻🅻🅴🅳 a Franchise 

Hey there, folks! So I made my video on the first season of Heroes a while back. There, I had said I would cover the second season - so here it is, my video on the second season! Currently, I don't really plan to discuss the rest of the show, but I hope you enjoy this one. Also thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's video. Go to strms.net/hellofresh_lowart, use my code POGLOWARTFREE, and receive one free breakfast item per box while subscription is active. Anyway, thanks for watching! Have a good one!

The amount of times they nurfed Hiro because he was overpowered and made him a child or lose his memories is wild

They had a PERFECT long-term set-up after season 1, with Peter needing to recruit, organize and earn the trust of other heroes faster than Sylar could track down and kill them. And they threw it all away.

1. They overpowered Sylar, portrayed him as an irredeemable psychopath, and then tried to redeem him. 2. They kept making Hiro powerless and infantile to depower him. 3. They had Peter and Claire meet in a romantic boy-meets-girl scenario only to later reveal they were related. 4. They killed off Nikki and then created the character of Tracy so that Ali Larter could remain on the show. 5. They made normal humans like Mohinder and Ando superhuman for no good reason. 6. They kept killing off Nathan and bringing him back like a cartoon character. 7. They created plotlines that went nowhere and were discarded after only a few episodes. 8. They introduced characters that served no purpose and were quickly discarded. 9. They had no continuity, direction, or story logic. 10. They knew nothing about the medium or genre they were working in.

For me it was 2 things: 1) The loss of the family unit. Matt no longer had a family. Nathan no longer had a family. The sort of mundane plots were obviously not interesting to the writers anymore. But that was kind of what made the show unique and interesting. 2) Loss of Bryan Fuller, who went to work on Pushing Daisies. A LOT of what people liked about the show came from him. The dark wit, the heartfelt emotional beats. And I think after Fuller came back the show got kinda good again. The episode he wrote when he came back was good at least. (Cold Snap? I think it's called) One other problem I think the show had was that it was SO hesitant to kill any character they thought was popular, or that they needed. But so willing to kill characters they didn't care about. (Like Bob, who I thought really carried a lot of the show in the second year)

We did eventually see that virus epidemic storyline in a different superhero series few years later. And it was pretty inFamous. 2.

If they put the show on hiatus during the strike, perhaps the thing would've had a better season. Hell, it could've been picked up for more seasons. I don't remember other serial shows off-hand during the strike, as most shows on air were mostly self-contained episodes.

Back in the day i thought the main problem was the constant reseting of the themes or personality of the main characters. Nathan and Peter kept arguing each other only to change their minds at the end of the season to face evil toghether. Every season they hinted they would get all together and act as a group only to then walk away and go each other their own way. There´s a season Matt (the telepath police officer) has a relationship with a speedster girl, who then dies but it´s ok, he finds out his ex wife had a child so he goes back to her. It´s like they needed to keep the characters at level 1. Peter was one of the most powerful characters yet he kept screwing up until he looses his powers and then he starts acting smarter. Even when he gets his powers back and he can only copy one power at a time, he uses very efectivebly and then he starts a relationship with the deaf woman and that´s it, the story is about them, he doesn´t do much anymore.

It never occurred to me at the time how similar Heroes was to Marvel's New Universe line of comics back in the '80s. An astronomical event happens and people all over the world develop super powers, even one becoming a serial killer. Lots of really dark storytelling (Pittsburgh gets vaporized, the fallout from it starts mutating even more people, international conflicts build up until it ends in a nuclear war that's averted at the last minute). I always thought Heroes was only made to last for 13 episodes. The first 13 moved along at a good pace, but since it was such a success so early the network wanted it to go a full season, and the next 13 episodes were fairly plodding and dull, as if they hadn't prepared to get a full season order. It never managed to get back to the same quality of that first half-season. So much potential screwed up by what felt like constant network interference.

I still mourn this show :(

Basically they became directionless, big bad villians were beaten way too soon and not in a satisfying way, it felt like a never ending drama with no goal or purpose.

The way Heroes went belly up was astonishing to a very casual fan like me. One day it was everywhere and the next, it..... wasn't.

But how did they learn from all these mistakes and then completely drop the ball with Heroes Reborn?

TLDR: The problem was giving Bryan Fuller his own show. Coincidentally, go watch Pushing Daisies.

What does it say about me that I clicked on the video to find out what show this was, and 2 seconds in I recognized the footage?

YES! When I got the DVDs back in the day and watched the BTS footage and commentary on the nixed ending (this was after the show was already over), I was so sad! Yeah season 2 hadn't been great, but a solid second half could have pulled a lot of the weaker elements together in a way that made at least some of them better in hindsight, getting payoff for things instead of just brushing them aside. Genuinely sad for what could have been, because at the least it couldn't possibly have been worse than season 3 and spider Mohinder...

I think you are right on this one. I remember watching the third season with my parents and that was about the time we'd all had enough. I didn't realise there was an alternate ending. I think that one would have been way better. Also, I kind feel that they messed up Sylar. Ali Larter showing up so many times as different variants of the same character was weird too. I like Tim Kring creations a lot. Compared to many things, there is quite a degree of writing ability there. I just believe on this particular series, they were always working on the seat of their pants with the story, rather than having a grand plan, and that rather did for the show. Making stuff up on the fly is dangerous to the flow of a story. Another series of his where he was executive producer, called Touch, is amazing. I strongly recommend it, It's only 2 seasons but it wraps up in a very satisfying fashion. Albeit, there is a tragedy that happens in there that knocked me for six towards the end. You'll know what I'm talking about if you watched the series. I feel this series could have gone longer but cancelled early so they tied it off nicely. He was also an Executive Producer for Beyond. Another series I really enjoyed, that one too, finished rather prematurely. It could have gone longer but petered out a bit too soon. I was disappointed by the cliffhanger that was left on. Treadstone was a bomb unfortunately. I liked the whole Jason Bourne series, I even liked the Jeremy Renner Bourne Legacy film but Treadstone was a bust. Tim Kring was once again an Executive Producer on this. I think Heroes was his magnum opus, he tried to relight with Heroes Reborn but it just didn't catch fire. I think the general audience weren't in for another collapse. It was a lightning in a bottle moment that he wasn't able to capture again, and fumbled while he had it. He might have been better to spin off some the memorable characters into their own series, rather than kill them off with Sylar.

The WB/DC really dropped the ball when Hayden was younger, she would’ve been an amazing Supergirl

Sylar broke the game. Never make unkillable super villains'. All of the stuff after that, regardless if there were other mistakes, makes for a terrible story. Save the cheerleader became 'shoot, now we need something new'.

Knuckles and Heroes within a month, Lowart fans eating good.

Main problem: They effectively wanted a soap opera with super powers as their gimmick.

Heroes first season was just perfect. Even they changed plan for season 2 it was good too. But saddest thing is second half of the season cancelled and they just jump to season 3.

Ngl the Heros and Archie sonic videos have been amazing

The description of season 2 virus issue made me immediately think "Wait...the show just becomes the 4400....which was, quite frankly, X-men the tv show"

I dont think hero changed ever history, but it always happened. Even the princess is telling him he is the kensei of legends. Also i dont think hero was a weak point, a bit silly, but the actor can make it fun. And they did have him try to change fate of a love interest for example. And he was nerfed too at the end, he was fine. But yeah the virus idea could have been very interesting , and even if hiro got back to change things, seeing things play out even then could have been interesting, introducing characters and how they, whatever bsremember i guess an alternate tragic timeline?! Why?

Fantastic video, really interesting views and thoughts. Also a nice way for me to go back to the lesser parts of the series without having to watch it all 😂 I actually really want to hear what you have to say for 3 & 4

"Save the cheerleader, save the world." They built that up so hard but when the time came it was a total letdown, and that's the moment when I started checking out of the show pretty hard.

I enjoyed the first season well enough, but some things never made any sense. Like how Hiro had any idea he actually had powers when they hadn't manifested yet. He just believed really hard. Also, what was the significance of the eclipse? It seems to coincide with some of the characters getting their powers, but then it's revealed that other people have gotten powers before and it's been a known thing(by some groups and organizations) for decades, if not longer. It was fun enough to watch, but there were just too many plot holes and unexplained things and that bothered me. I wasn't sad to see it go.

Wasn't the second season when the writers strike happened as well? Edit: Ah yes, this season was when the writers strike happened. Glad that was covered

Your Analysis is good... Heroes wasn't the hero we needed. The ever evolving/devolving powers, the impermanence of death, and how many times can the Government discover that the Heroes exist and then forget them so they can discover them again... not to mention the dropped story lines, etc. all collect to make this one of the most 'I wish it were as great as it obviously could have been' experiences of my life... at least for me. (And that is said being someone who watched from the first scene of the first episode to the last painful scene of Reborn, having run a successful Heroes RPG, etc.!)

That's what we say about Metroid: Other M

Honestly, it is my humble opinion that just due to the medium, television, and further now to series streaming, was and is still not entirely equipped for the task of keeping the energy and overall story cohesiveness with a large ensemble cast that will keep people engaged long enough for a proper saga style narrative- as well as the aforementioned conflicting real world interests ie. writers' strikes, network brass decisions, actor issues, etc. This is why Game Of Thrones fizzled as well as Heroes in my opinion. Juxtapose these with the literature that inspired them-some mention XMen for Heroes, but I tend to also think of (both involving GRR Martin, oddly) the SOIAF series for GOT, and the Wild Card anthology for Heroes. In particular, Wild Cards worked (and afaik still does) BECAUSE of its anthology nature combined with different authors adding to the lore. Print, as well as comics/graphic novels, tend to do a much better job in this area.

Sorry for being off topic but thought I'd ask on the newest video, what's the music used in the first Archie Knuckles video when Locke is on his deathbed? With the piano.

Speaking of "Heroes", does anyone remember "flashforward"? Whatever happened to that one?

You know, I was waiting for this or the Archie videos, and I got SUPER excited seeing this one in your videos list BTW, the choice to use Tunic's soundtrack was perfect. Another well done video

If you havent seen the show Pantheon you should check it out. It's really great for much of it but the story in its development is crazy and I'd really want to hear your thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed this vid. Heroes were such a huge part of my growing up. So much nostagia. S01 was just intoxicating..

I have had this discussion with my friends years ago. I still feel they should have just introduced a multi-verse to explain the constant recons in Heroes. It mostly worked out for the show Fringe, and definitely worked for the CW show Flash.

The writer's strike is what killed the show.

Loved that first series, all the characters, the whole thing.

Variety! Hooray! 🎉

Hey... this isn't Sonic!

Excellent video, you got my subscription 😊

They ripped off X-Men so much but did it the worst ways

You should of gave this video a different title and thumbnail.... I been WAITING for this... Love you work, almost missed it

I like how in season 2 when main dude was in Ireland, took his girlfriend to a horrible alternative future were a virus decimated earth, left her there and never spoke about her again. They missed a chance to have her criminal family hunt him down for revenge.

I still remember that season 2 was at the moment of the screen writers strike , many tv shows were butchered at that time and this one was no exception.

I loved this show. I was obsessed with Noah...he was just so cool. So of course I was happy to see him come back to life.

Tunic music used! pog!

I love your videos man

let's goooo!!!

One of the more subtlely messed up aspects is that Peter's girlfriend gets left in that alternate timeline and the show (and Peter) just forgets about her. And when that timeline doesn't happen I guess she's wiped from existence. And the show just never acknowledges it.

15:54 Spider-Man: Everybody gets one!

The writers should have bought in a third character that had both peter, his father and sylar's abilities; who had a better handle and understanding on his powers but was traveling the country copying others abilities that were good and stealing/stripping powers from those who were bad that were misusing them to harm others, making him an orphan x/ the equalizer/ the beekeeper/the man with no name/ the mentalist type of character that would help Peter petrelli become a fellow badass like him and together face off with the likes of sylar and others like them, If they had taken the time to think creatively like that i'm pretty sure the series would have lasted a lot longer that It did! 💯🔥😁😉👍

"the" mistake....then proceeds to elaborate on every mistake

Very nice breakdown :)

They unfolded everything in the first season. Once the curtain was pulled back what was going to keep us interested in Season 2?

This was a great break down.

The big problem with Heroes is that it never changes, it never evolves. It keeps promising some great cataclysm, again and again, but nothing ever happens. When the third season began with yet another warning of something gone wrong in the future I just noped out. It started good, but it never knew where to go with what it had. So it just got stuck in a loop.

A lot of these were not aired because of sports shows showing on the channel that it came on and they lasted so much longer than they were supposed to, we would see the first 15 minutes of the show and then it would cut to the news.

I'm not one for reboots usually, but a true anthology series reboot of heroes would be so cool.

I am so darn out of the loop with anything related to superheroes that I don't even know what this show is; I'm watching this video purely because it's a Lowart video, to be honest... x)

Imo the most blatant thing they did that annoyed me even as a kid was how they kept resetting characters like Hiro and Peter. Season one is really the only one i remember.

Tunic rocks. That is all. ❤

I remember the writers in a DVD commentary talking about how they "had to" hard nerf peter because his powers made it "too hard" to write problems that were impossible for him to solve. Obviously they gave hiro the same treatment

That would have been a much better ending to season two

The writers strike killed this franchise.

Man is each season a reboot Yes or no

Im really glad i never got on the bandwagon regarding this show.

1:49

@16:00 why not just use the excuse that because it was her father the blood worked for him but would not work for people who don't share her genetic data?

I always wondered what happened to Heroes. One day it was absolutely HUGE, and the next day just... vanished.

Heroes, is a show I belived to be full of potential that never reached it.

Great vid

That something as huge as the season 2 finale could even change partway through filming is proof of a lack of artistic intention; it means that there wasn't any plan or artistic point to be made past season 2, it proves that they were just throwing stuff at a wall. This seems like one of those shows that is willing to throw out artistic integrity for the sake of keeping characters around and being able to just keep running on and on. Glad I never watched it, as rude as that may sound.

Yatta!!!!

how did i know it was heroes with just the thumbnail lol

Wait……where’s S3 and 4 at??????

Heroes: Eclipsed 2024 new spinoff series

Honey wake up, new lowart vid

how much do you think the writer's strike hurt or helped this series? breaking bad's creator said it helped save his show.

This video feels like a part 2 of something, and if it is then that could really be better communicated in the title or video itself

Kristen Bell. Christian Bale. Kristen Bell. Christian Bale. Kristen Bell. Christian Bale.

Season 2s biggest problem was that they wanted to redo season 1s mysteries by omitting the events of the 4 month time period between season 1 and 2. If they started with the flashback episode, it would have solved a lot of the pacing issues and give the new characters a much better introduction.

The mistake is always going too many seasons.

Seems like it struggled with the same issues as CW and FX, how much you have to dedicate to VFX or action scenes with super powers. Nobody really figured this out and now we'll just have AI mainstream the process so you can choreograph any sequence on a tight budget. But it would have been interesting to see compositions where you cut around the need for supernatural movements. Perhaps by ignoring physics and time dilation at our usual scale. Think of how many conversations happen while characters are flying in the air in Attack on Titan. They were just swinging on cables that should have taken a few seconds at most but the show was willing to embrace its ridiculous propositions. These network shows seem completely unwilling to do anything but the most embarrassing stage play of actors standing in Victorian military formation, firmly on the ground. They're all Anchorman news team fight scenes.

Wow I watched the show so long ago I was like holy shit what are they going to do about the virus now and then o wait nvm it’s gone

I was just searching for heroes content. Not enough ppl cover it.

Please dont forget that there was a writers strike back during the second season of Heroes and they lost half of their season and hadbto play catch-up in the third season. And then they biffed it in the fourth.

For me, it was always Jeph Loeb that sank it. I can't think of a single thing he's done where he has had a brilliant start and great ideas, but craps the bed with the endings. The man just can't end something on the right note and so you'll feel like you've enjoyed the ride, but hate getting to the destination. Kinda like sitting on a toilet, constipated, and you feel like something is going to come out, end your painful misery, but it is merely a fart and you still feel like something is stuck up there. Just sayin'.

The biggest mistakes they made were not making Sylar a brain eating cannibal, making the "legendary Samurai" Hiro meets when he goes back in time some random white dude instead of having it be Hiro or his dad, and flubbing Hiro finding Isaac dead hy making it some weird "exploding man."

I loved this show but never finished it

As overpowered as Hiro Nakamura is, he doesn't need to be nerfed as his vulnerability to speedsters can negate any of his nerfings Arthur Petrelli stealing Hiro's powers was the straw that broke camel's back in terms of Heroes' canon

Damn, I hella forgot about this show. I remember there was a bunch of buzz when it came out and then...poof; nothin'.

I had a hiro nakamura toy actually 🤓

Fear the old blood

Heh. I can't think of any show that made me angrier than Heroes. I heard after season 1 they kept going with it. But when they got to the last episode of season 1 and they decided to go around door-to-door and take a shit directly in the mouth of every single viewer, I determined at that point I wasn't sticking around for an encore. Heroes came out during a big writer's strike. And it was not long after Lost had been huge. Lost was great, but the end of that really soured people. Basically everyone guessed the entire setting when they watched Season 1, episode 1. But the producers swore, cross their heart and hope to die, that no, no one had guessed it and the characters definitely, unequivocally, 100% were not all dead already. Definitely not. Then they got to the last season and were like 'fuck, we're cancelled, we're out of jobs, fuck the audience anyway, they're all dead already and have been the whole time.' Then Heroes. 'We saw what Lost did and we SWEAR, like 1000% SWEAR that we have a self-contained, interesting story that we will tell in one season. Get invested all you want, it will be over and everything resolved, no dangling loose ends. And everyone went all-in. Save the cheerleader, save the world. Let's see how this goes. And everything was going marvelously well... until the last episode. Then the producers were like, as far as I could tell, 'fuck after this we're out of a job, fuck the audience anyway, I've got to take a shit', then they have an off-screen fight and a new big bad crawl LITERALLY OUT OF THE SEWERS. I'm surprised they didn't do one of those "special messages" where after the episode ends they show that it's all on a set, camera pulls back, and one of the writers comes out and speaks directly to the camera saying "Hi. You've never seen me, but I'm the guy who wrote this show. And I hate you. Every last one of you, I hope I hurt you. I hope I didn't just ruin this night for you, I'm really hoping that as you look back on this and pick the corn from my shit out of your teeth, that it continues to hurt you for the rest of your life." That was the sentiment I got from it. Why anyone would ever watch Season 2, episode 1 I can't even begin to imagine. IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE LONG-RUNNING! They actively and loudly proclaimed it as a single season!

Fully agree. They fucked up Hiro, the fucked up Heroes.

the writers strike always gets brought up with this but i dont think it played a big role in heroes downfall

Its pretty clear they had a clear vision for S1 but as of S2, that vision was muddled and lost