Villains may save the day for frustrated Heroes fans

By Amy Amatangelo (Courtesy of The Boston Herald)

With superheroes, sometimes with great risk comes great reward.

Sometimes not.

When NBC’s Heroes returns Sept. 22, the series must win back fans who were unhappy with the show’s sophomore season.  “There were a lot of expectations with season two,” said Masi Oka, who plays Hiro Nakamura. “And I think the writers made a very bold choice and took some risks with their writing, and, unfortunately, it didn’t connect with the audience as we thought it would.”

Those risks included the introduction of several new characters, isolating many cast members in separate story lines and traveling through time to focus on the generations of heroes.  In the third season, the series will concentrate on the dark side of its characters; the story arc is called “Volume 3: Villains.”

“All of us humans have choices that we make, and those choices lead us to the path of evil or good,” Oka said. “This season is about villains becoming heroes and heroes becoming villains and what makes a villain and what makes a hero.”

“So you’re turning characters on their heads,” said Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays the non-powered Mohinder Suresh. “And in order to do that and not have it be cheesy, you’ve got to do it in a very organic way, and I think it’s really cool and clever how the writers did it.

“The show certainly rivals, if not betters, the first season. My character has always been on the outside looking in, and this season he does find a way in and finds a way to understand these people. But there are severe consequences to all of his actions, and he goes down a really dark road.”

This season’s focus will particularly affect Peter Petrelli.  “Peter is not quite himself,” said his portrayer, actor Milo Ventimiglia. “There is that dark side to all of us, and there are these situations that will bring us either into the light or into the darkness, and Peter will have to battle his own demons and everything he fights so hard against.”

The actors credit the writers strike, which shortened the second season to 11 episodes, with giving the show the opportunity to recover.“To be cut off is, of course, going to be jarring. But I think it really did help the show,” Ventimiglia said. “We had a tough season. We had a tough year. There was a lot of criticism as to what was going on with the characters and what was going on with the stories. In retrospect, I think the writers strike helped us stop, assess and regroup and really get back to that sort of amazing, fun, heartfelt storytelling of the first season.”

Oka called the viewer backlash a humbling experience, especially since the show enjoyed such a rapport with fans in its first year.  “You live and learn,” Oka said. “And we want fans to know we’ve listened to them and we’ve gone back to what made ‘Heroes’ great.”

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