Wait, They’re Bringing Back ‘Heroes’? Here’s A ‘Heroes Reborn’ Explainer.

If Twitter is any judge, many, many people were very confused last night when NBC ran a promo for Heroes, a show that understandably people thought was off the air. And Heroes was, but NBC is bringing it back as Heroes Reborn! Here’s what you need to know.

Wait, hasn’t this show been canceled for like five years?

Yeeeeep. The original Heroes went off the air in 2010, after five seasons and, according to fans and critics, a pretty severe drop-off in quality. And that, many assumed, was that. At least until NBC realized the only shows doing well for them are genre shows and witty sitcoms.

What’s the basic concept?

Basically a bunch of normal people discover they have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Mostly they use them to steal people’s brains and strand their significant others in a plague-ridden future before never talking about them again.

As for the overall plot, uh, it’s set in Canada? NBC is playing this one close to the vest. They haven’t even disclosed an airdate yet, but we’re assuming it’s fairly close. Heroes Reborn will almost certainly run on Friday nights as part of NBC’s genre block of programming, and they just made a rather large and glaring gap in their schedule at 10pm on Fridays.

So is this just picking up where that left off?

Nope. It will be a standalone “limited series” that’s largely unconnected with the original show, aside from a few characters turning up here and there.

Why the quotes around ‘limited series’?

The “limited series” idea seems largely to placate fans who were angry at the show taking what can only be called a nose-dive after the quite good first season. So they’ll run this for a series, and if it works, they’ll pick it up again. Presumably insisting on having all the scripts locked in before filming.

Will this be any good?

We’ll see. I’m hopeful, in that perhaps Tim Kring learned something from the way the series went to hell when he took the focus off “Normal people doing cool stuff.” But if nothing else, this might lead to NBC reviving their one true superhero series… The Cape.

SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE!

You know it, brother!

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