Heroes Season 2 – Release Date: 2007

Trailer courtesy of Simon Flack

Episode Guide

Four Months Later
Lizards
Kindred
The Kindness Of Strangers
Fight Or Flight
The Line
Out Of Time
Four Months Ago
Cautionary Tales
Truth and Consequences
Powerless

Crippled by the writer’s strike, Heroes Season 2 is a disjointed mess with a rushed climax and far too much screen time given to two new uninteresting characters. There’s no doubt that there’s potential with some of the unexplored ideas but with a generic story line about a plague decimating the Earth in the future, Season 2 is a jumble of ideas and characters that unfortunately never get going.

With half the episodes this season compared to last, Season 2 feels like it drags for long stretches of its run time. The story sees all the familiar faces return and some new ones too but the emphasis this time around falls on just a few characters. Hiro (Masi Oka) finds himself in feudal Japan where he meets another super hero with the power of healing, Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) struggles with his memory before finding out about a plague due to wipe out life on Earth and new characters Maya (Dania Ramirez) and Alejandro (Shalim Ortiz) who aim to cross the Mexican border to find Mohinder (Sendhil Ramamurthy) to help cure Maya’s devastating power of giving people a strange plague-like symptom and ultimately death. These storylines dominate the season with most of the other characters demoted to cameos an 5 minute segments in each episode. For all its screen time, the Maya and Alejandro story ultimately is all for nothing as the main villain is easily thwarted after 10 episodes of building up to a plague outbreak with little to no involvement from the Mexicans.

Its worth noting here that the original ending to this Season is actually included on the bonus features of the DVD and is well worth checking out. The original idea led to the villain not being stopped and the plague due to begin with Texas in quarantine but the show creators decided not to end to the show on a cliffhanger to help Season 3 be a fresh new story arc. Ironically this decision may well have damaged the show beyond repair. The original ending sees good use of the new characters and makes their inclusion worthwhile with an ingenious solution to the issue. Of course, this never occurs and what we’re left with is a disjointed, poorly paced season in desperate need of some polish and refinement.

Overall, Season 2 is one of the worst hit casualties of the writer’s strike that crippled so many shows in 2007. The story is disjointed, poorly paced and for vast periods, largely uninteresting and drags. Its a shame too, because some of the ideas are interesting but their execution leaves a lot to be desired. Ultimately, Season 2 is a season of what ifs as the show plods along to its unimaginative ending but leaves the door open for Season 3 where hopefully the show can get back to being a decent science fiction superhero show.