With filming on Heroes‘ second season well and truly underway, Masi Oka has revealed his character will be spending some time in feudal Japan. As the time-traveling Hiro, he will be seen 400 years in the past - the time of the samurai.

The news comes as Oka announces the next series will begin with two individual time lines - one in the past and another set four months after the recent season one finale.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Learn more about Screen Rant or if you want more frequent updates follow us on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Hey folks! Another weekly summary for you including news on the “Save Jericho” campaign, the reveal of Heath Ledger as The Joker from The Dark Knight, Iron Man news and the season finales of Lost and Heroes.

I hope you enjoy the smooth listening sounds of the audio version of Screen Rant.

powered by ODEO

So Season 1 of Heroes is finally over and it pains me to say this, but I didn’t love the finale. I just thought it was “OK.”

Especially following on the heels of the previous episode, which was amazing, the final episode titled How to Stop an Exploding Man just seemed a bit anti-climactic to me. Maybe it was because there was such a huge sense of anticipation and excitement leading into it, that the episode could not meet expectations.

Some Heroes news for you concerning Season 2:

It looks like they’re going to kinda, sorta emulate Fox’s 24 in that although there will be similarities between the first season and the second, there will be major differences as well. This, as opposed to one long multi-year story arc a la ABC’s Lost.

I was all set to go off with a really heinous rant on CBS concerning the Jericho cancellation, but I just got off the phone with someone in their press office who was really nice so I’ll hold back. A little bit.

So it’s official that Jericho is off the air. Having just watched the season (and now, series) finale last night I’m here to tell you that I’m really pissed. To just pull the plug on a show after a huge cliffhanger is in my opinion just a plain slap in the face to the viewers that did tune in to the show.

Holy cow… Last night’s episode of Heroes title Landslide was amazing.

It was the penultimate episode of Heroes‘ first season, and if that was the next to last episode, I can’t wait to see the final one next week!

Over at Sci Fi Wire there’s an interview with Tim Kring, creator of NBC’s Heroes which gives me the warm fuzzies about the show. There’s a lot of good information there, but the upshot is that he and the others involved in the production actually understand that you cannot string the audience along indefinitely.

Tim Kring referenced X-Files, which I’ve stated here many times is what Lost is in danger of becoming with their never-ending “dangling carrot” method of storytelling (Although over the past couple of weeks that seems to be improving. A bit.). If you haven’t followed my comparison here the issue is one of providing so many different threads and red herrings that by the end of it all nothing can be satisfying enough as a conclusion, and that by then the audience has been jerked around for so long that they no longer care.

All you Lost fanboy losers out there: you can keep that go-nowhere, yank my chain show… NBC’s Heroes is where it’s at, baby!

If you’re not watching it already, hopefully between now and April 23rd (when the show picks up again) you’ll have a chance to watch it in reruns. Just kinda, sorta kidding about the fanboy loser comment, BTW. It’s not our fault if we got sucked into the bottomless pit that is Lost. but if you’re still defending it, well… if the shoe fits.

Heroes is one of the shows that was spawned by the success of the go-nowhere and give few answers Lost last season, and has completely surpassed it in terms of story, character development and sheer drop-your-jaw entertainment value.

I gotta tell ya… the ONLY reason I’m hanging in there with Lost is that I’m a coward. I’m afraid that the week after I stop watching there will be some huge revelation that will finally make sticking with this damned show worthwhile.

In the meantime, we continue to suffer…

At the end of last week’s episode, the TV version of “Movie Trailer Announcer Guy” says dramatically that three mysteries will be revealed in this week’s episode.

Yeah, right.

After a long wait, Jericho is finally back and it at least partially answers a lot of questions. CBS’ Jericho is following somewhat in the footsteps of Fox TV’s 24 and American Idol in broadcasting only new episodes sequentially, without any reruns to gum things up and annoy viewers. Although this puts a long gap between what are now know as the “Fall” and “Spring” seasons, I think it’s a good idea for shows like Lost, Heroes and those mentioned above. All of these shows are sequential in nature, depending on the episodes that came before, and it’s aggravating to see a rerun in between new episodes on shows like these.

Jericho is one of those “ongoing mystery” shows that were spawned by the success of ABC’s Lost. It also happens to be one of the shows (along with NBC’s Heroes) which has taken that original concept and improved it substantially. These shows have done that by actually moving their respective plots forward and revealing what’s happening in the story and who the characters are at a pace that doesn’t leave the viewer feeling like they’re getting jerked around.