When Heroes Reborn was announced, fans of the original series were excited about the possibilities of the new event series. Though it was presented as a special event, many assumed that it would continue on with additional seasons after the first.

Now it seems that this isn't the case. NBC is bringing Heroes Reborn to an end after a single season, and that may have always been the plan.

According to THR, NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt confirmed that the single season was all that the drama was getting after an appearance at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour on Wednesday. Greenblatt admitted that there had never been any plans to continue the series into a second season, stating "That was always the plan, unless Tim woke up one day and said, 'Oh, I have another chapter to tell.'" This does go along with statements that creator Tim Kring himself had previously made, stating that Reborn would be a closed-ended series, even if the Heroes franchise itself might come back in different ways.

Speaking with THR last July, Kring said:

"The premise of the show is elastic enough to reboot. It has a basic premise — there are an undetermined number of people waking up to the idea that they have these powers — and we can always start with people's origin stories. Plus the world always needs saving and that is a continual premise of the show. We've saved the world a few times, and the promise of Heroes is that it’s about ordinary people who come together to save world. So it feels like it can be rebooted, relaunched and recast as a franchise more than just an ongoing saga with the same characters."

When asked about Kring's statements and supposed ideas that he had to continue Heroes, Greenblatt claimed to not know of any plans to continue the show or franchise:

"He didn't say that to me, so I haven't heard that. As far as I know, there's no more incarnations of Heroes coming."

Heroes Reborn drew large crowds when it first aired, but viewership quickly dwindled as the weeks went by. The show wasn't bad, but it did little to recapture the magic of the first season of the original Heroes. Many of the questions raised by the season four cliffhanger seemed to go unanswered, or at least weren't answered with any satisfaction; the time jump from then to now likely had something to do with that, since the aftermath of the cliffhanger would have been handled in those years. By the time we picked back up with HRG and the Evos (as they're now called, perhaps because most of the good names were already taken) there just wasn't enough of the original there to make a lot of former fans care.

It's possible that Heroes might return again at some point; as Kring said, the premise itself is elastic enough that it could be rebooted or picked up again with relatively little difficulty. The problem would be finding new protagonists that viewers actually care about the way they did with Peter, Claire and Hiro in the original series. That seemed to be part of what was lacking this time around, and if Kring has more stories to tell then he'll need to tell them about people that the fans want to see more of.

Next: Heroes Reborn Midseason Premiere Review

The Heroes Reborn series finale will air on January 21.

Source: THR