'Heroes' finally canceled: You won't have Sylar to kick around anymore

Image Credit: Dean Hendler/NBCThe first season of Heroes might be the best season of broadcast TV ever. But Heroes will probably always be remembered more for what came next: three seasons of amnesia, of people losing their powers, of premonition dreams, and of time travel. So, so, so much time travel. (The space-time continuum should sue for damages.) And as for the plot…well, at one point in season 4, Hiro defeated a brain tumor by sword-fighting with a dead man in an imaginary courtroom right next to the stairway to heaven. This morning, NBC announced that, in a rare moment of mercy, it was taking Heroes away to live on a beautiful farm in Kentucky, which is coincidentally the same place your parents sent your dog when he got sick and you never saw him again. By which I mean, Heroes is over.

There are a whole host of complex emotions running through me right now. On one hand, I’m happy that the Heroes cast is finally free. They’re a talented bunch of actors. That’s especially true of Zachary Quinto, who can now officially begin the second act of his career.

But I’m also a little bit sad. As bad as Heroes got, you always got the feeling that it was just one massive reboot away from getting good again. There are few things more satisfying, as a viewer, than seeing a once-great series become great again, before the end. (See: Season 4 of The OC, which rediscovered the season 1 mojo when no one was looking.) I always hoped Heroes would be that kind of series. It wasn’t. There are some rumors of a wrap-up TV movie. Let’s not.

Why don’t we take this opportunity to start erasing the last three years from our memory? Let’s go back to a simpler time, before kooky carnivals and long-lost parents and disappointing season finales. Let’s look at the penultimate episode of season 1, and how it ended with Sylar poised on a rooftop over New York city, casting tiny fire bursts out of his hands with his newly-acquired nuclear powers. “Boom,” he smiled. That’s where I’ll leave Heroes.

PopWatchers, are you sad, happy, or just glad that our long national nightmare is finally over? And does this mean we’ll never get the long-awaited spin-off, The Haitian?