A star of the NBC show Heroes admits the show declined in season 2 and says the last writers' strike was the culprit. “Save the cheerleader, save the world” became a ubiquitous tagline in 2006, as season 1 of the NBC superhero drama Heroes took over pop culture, becoming a ratings winner with an average of over 14 million viewers per episode. But Heroes’ run as compelling comic book-inspired primetime programming would prove to be a short one, as the show took a huge creative dip in subsequent seasons, losing most of its huge viewership by the time it went off-the-air in 2010.The ill-fated Heroes now is mostly remembered as a prime example of how not to sustain a series after a hugely popular first season, and star Greg Grunberg thinks a key part of the show’s steep decline was the WGA strike that hit Hollywood in 2007. In a tweet showing support for the current WGA strike, Grunberg referred back to the Heroes cautionary example, declaring “The last writer’s strike I was on Heroes and we all know how that turned out.” He added, “Give the writers what they deserve!”

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Whether the 2007-08 strike was mainly responsible for the creative decline of Heroes is something that could perhaps be debated, but it certainly didn’t help that writers hit the picket lines right in the middle of the show’s second season. In a case of history sadly repeating itself, the current writers’ strike is itself already having a negative impact on a lot of popular TV series, causing production shut-downs on some shows and placing others in limbo.

Perhaps the biggest show affected by the strike thus far has been Netflix's Stranger Things, which has had to delay work on season 5. Yellowjackets season 3, Abbott Elementary season 3, Cobra Kai season 6 and Big Mouth season 8 have all also paused work amid the strike. In the last few days, Evil season 4 also ceased production, as did Severance season 2. Most recently, it was revealed that acting auditions for The Last of Us season 2 have been paused, after it emerged that video game scenes were being used for actor readings in lieu of new script pages.

It’s yet to be seen how long the current writers’ strike will last, but things have already been disrupted to a great degree. At least in the view of star Grunberg, there’s a lesson to be learned from the example of Heroes, a show that was off to a roaring start until an earlier writers’ walk-out derailed its momentum, leaving its fans wondering what might have been.

Source: Greg Grunberg/Twitter