I’ve been forsaken by my Heroes. I saw it coming – all the signs were there. I just hoped it wasn’t true. I hoped that the tide was shifting to avert this disaster. But alas, they failed me.
Last night on Heroes, they went and tied all of the powers that everyone had to a solar eclipse. I was ok initially with the symbolic imagery of mysterious change when many of our powered friends manifested on the day of such an eclipse – I figured it was a coincidence that made for good storytelling. But last night, when another eclipse occurred, everyone’s powers seemed to shut off in response. With that, it is no longer coincidental happenstance – they are directly tying these powers somehow to the eclipse itself and suggesting that such events have a catalytic effect on our heroes’ and villains’ abilities. And that I don’t like.
I have to major issues with this logic: (1) If their abilities are somehow affected by the rays of the sun (e.g., certain wavelengths of EM radiation), then why would their abilities function at night? (2) If the eclipse is the root source for turning powers on and off, then how did people with powers exist prior to the initial eclipse and why did they keep their abilities during and after it? I understand that this series is written by a large team of writers and there are likely dozens of continuities to keep track of by this point, but this seems like a failure to honor any of it.
This series of events will not likely keep me from continuing to watch the show – I still like many of the characters and I’m still curious where they may go with all this. But I hope that the recent changes in staffing (and possible fan backlash over this story arc) will cause future episodes to shift back to something more like what we were originally introduced to two years ago. I can only speculate that most of these characters will have their abilities renewed following the completion of the eclipse, otherwise our band of heroes are about as effective as the group of misfits from last year’s Stan Lee reality show.
Hopefully the producers are considering trying to pull Brian Fuller back into the fold. While I enjoy his show Pushing Daisies, its days apparently are numbered, in which case he should be free to shift gears. Otherwise I almost feel like us fans might do a slightly better job at writing this show. This show needs to get better – I need something on television with supernatural drama worth watching! Heroes – you are failing me – stop it!