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Zachary Quinto explains how NBC ruined the "integrity" of Heroes, and it began when they brought his character back to life
Heroes was supposed to kill off Sylar in season one, and Zachary Quinto believes keeping the character alive led to the show’s downfall
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In 2006 Heroes was one of the hottest shows on television. However, the series had lost more than half of its viewership by 2010, resulting in NBC cancelling the show. It would take too much space to examine all the factors that led to the show’s downfall, but one actor believes poor writing decisions played a big role.
Zachary Quinto, who played the villain Sylar, used his character as an example. According to Quinto, Sylar overstayed his welcome and caused the writers to break the show’s rules.
“He was written very well, especially in the first season. Sylar was never meant to be around for as long as he was around,” Quinto says during a 2021 Salt Lake City Comic Convention panel. “Originally, he was only supposed to be on the show for about eight episodes. He was supposed to die in the first season, but people really liked him.”
Sylar’s popularity led to NBC wanting more of the character, even if it didn’t make sense for the storyline.
“There was a time when Heroes really was one of the last really huge monolithic network shows. Things really changed a lot after that. So, at the time when a network liked something and people responded to something on a network show, networks didn’t really know how to really do anything other than to say, ‘We want more of that thing.’ Even if it’s anathema to the integrity of the story, which it ended up being in the case of Sylar and Heroes.”
“[Sylar] should have died much sooner. Honestly, we got into territory later on where we were breaking our own rules just to keep the character around, and that’s always dangerous. But it was really well written at first, and I think that part of that helped me inform the character. And then a lot of the psychology on how he ended up the way he was kind of fed in. I think it was a combination of things. There was a perfectionism and a vulnerability that was around me feeling abandoned. I think that really fueled him and drove him.”
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