by Jayson Stewart

About a year ago my wife and I decided to cancel our satellite television as a knee-jerk reaction to the amount of boob tube we and our young son were consuming.  We kept finding him catching glimpses of violent cartoons and consumeristic advertising and said enough was enough.  We needed to disconnect with television and reconnect with each other.

Unfortunately, that also meant that I missed the final seasons of Lost and Heroes. 

Recently, the tube junkie in us won out, bought an Xbox 360 Kinect for Christmas, switched from barely-better-than-dialup satellite internet in favour of the new Bell wireless broadband and started a subscription to Netflix. 

That introduction is a dance around the issue I wanted to write to you about.  I have always been a comic book fan and particularly like stories where average people develop extraordinary abilities.  As a kid I was a voracious consumer of Super Pickle books, Superman comics and that Canuck TV classic, My Secret Identity. I always dreamt of waking up one morning having been bombarded with solar radiation only to find that I could now climb walls, teleport, fly or become invisible. 

In 2006, well entrenched in my then-early 30s, I found presented with the prospect of another story to add to the superhero canon…HEROES!  Over the next few years I got to know and care for Hiro, Peter, Nathan, Claire, Suresh, Parkman and the rest.  I learned to thoroughly hate and fear the Company, Syler and the legion of other major and minor villains.  I got caught up with the whole mythology of the Heroes universe and was shocked and bewildered when NBC decided to cancel the show because of low viewership.  In what world is 5.9 million people low viewership?  If I created something beloved by that many people, I would do everything to keep it going but, then again, 5.9 million viewers is a large drop from their opening 14.4 million fans.

So there I was, without television and away from the Heroes universe.  I did not want to know how the story ended (or if it ended) without seeing it for myself so I stayed off of the websites and flew under the Heroes radar…until I could watch it on Netflix. 

Last night I watched the final episode and I feel the hunger for more.  It’s not that I WANT more of these “Specials”, it’s that I NEED more.  The series finishes off with their secret existence being brought to the media’s attention in Central Park, New York.  There’s no hiding it.  There are special people amongst us, people with wonderful and horrible abilities and the world would have to either embrace them or fight them. 

The ending screams for a series resurrection or a blockbuster movie but, despite the rumours, it doesn’t appear like either are in the works.  Like other favourites such as Firefly, the Sarah Connor Chronicles or Twin Peaks, and totally unlike Sue Thomas F.B.Eye, the Hills or Jersey Shore (which stay on the air despite their vapid idiocy and low production values), Heroes may be forced to die and stay dead.  Unlike Claire or Syler, the series didn't end up with immortality as its special ability.  It's super power, though, was a lot like Ando's, who could "supercharge" other heroes' abilities, only Heroes was able to supercharge geeks like me who often felt they needed to live a life secret to the world, a life where we could imagine a world populated by "specials".

Until some producer with a bucket load of cash gets their act together and realizes the story must go on, I am forced to turn the TV off again and use my imagination.  Or read a comic book.  Or wish really, really hard that I will wake up one day with an ability that can only be described as super.