Heroes is finally back on Netflix and its first season is still superhero TV at its best

Heroes makes for the perfect weekend binge

It’s hard to think of a time when superhero stories felt new. Over the past two decades, superhero movies and shows have taken over the entire entertainment industry. Somehow, comic book characters are cool now, a safe topic for water cooler chatter or something people might casually talk about at parties. It may sound surprising, but for many years this wasn’t the case. Superheroes were considered a kind of niche genre apart from heavyweights like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man.

Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe made superheroes cool, one network managed to take all the great things we love about the genre and translate it into one perfect season of television. That show is Heroes, and it’s now streaming in full on Netflix, where it was added on July 1 after being off the platform since 2016.

Created by Tim Kring, Heroes premiered in 2006, just two years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe kicked off with Iron Man. Airing on NBC, Heroes had a luxurious 23-episode count for its first season, allowing writers to introduce a wide roster of characters with different superhero abilities. There’s an invincible cheerleader, a time traveler from Tokyo, a nurse with an unknown superpower, a mom with memory lapses and wild strength, and that’s just off the top of my head.

In its first season, the show introduces over 10 main characters, all hailing from different parts of the world and coming from diverse backgrounds. In addition to dealing with newfound powers, each character has personal drama they’re dealing with, whether that's love interests, family difficulties, or complications in their work lives. In some ways, any one of these characters could have been the star of their own separate show.

“I was interested in what exactly is a hero,” Kring said in an interview with Inverse. “Those were the Bush years when we were kind of thuggish around the world, so it was important to have an international cast where people from all over the world came together.”

Heroes begins with a solar eclipse that awakens these characters’ abilities. They are united by a sense of idealism and a greater purpose, coming together to prevent an explosion that would devastate New York City. Part of the appeal of the show is wondering how all of these disparate stories will come together, making for some of the most rewarding scenes and story arcs when they finally pay off and your favorite characters meet. Throughout the first season, Kring and his writers' room add twists and reasons for characters’ lives to intersect time and again, including a serial killer on the hunt for people with superpowers and the influence of a mysterious organization called The Company.

Heroes highlights the power of serialized TV. It’s a great example of that era of television, where writers had the room to explore characters in depth, posing exciting questions that challenged the medium. It’s no coincidence that Lost was also airing around that time, surprising audiences with every new. In the case of Heroes, the network format was also a great fit for superhero stories, with episodes and seasons built around arcs, mirroring comic book runs.

Heroes ended in 2010, airing four seasons in total. It was canceled in its last season, ending on a painful cliffhanger that leaves you with no closure and without knowing the fate of its characters. While more heroes, villains, and drama are introduced as the seasons progress, there was a steady decline in quality over the course of the series. Every new season is worse than the last, with each one losing a bit of what made the first so special. Kring also produced an "event series" titled Heroes Reborn, which aired in 2015 for a total of 13 episodes. It's neither a reboot nor a direct sequel of the original, but it is set in the same universe.

Still, maybe the first season will make you a true believer, and you’ll want to stick around to watch what happens with the rest of the characters. Or maybe you’ll be happy by sticking to the first 23 episodes. No matter what you choose, there’s no better way to spend your weekend than by filling this gap in your pop culture history.