Thanks to The Rev. OJ Flow for putting me onto Brian Ausiello’s Entertainment Weekly story that indicates “a male series regular on a one-hour drama — a onetime ratings powerhouse — learned that he was out of a job only after reading his character’s death scene in the script!”

According to Ausiello, his source was speaking on condition of total anonymity–so much so that he couldn’t actually name the series about which the information was being leaked. There were a series of scathing critiques of the show’s producers, though, and a few quotes from insiders about how the blindsided actor was hurt by the showrunners’ unwillingness to discuss it with him first.

While Ausiello wouldn’t confirm or deny it (and promises more hints in the coming week), E! News is reporting that Heroes will be losing a male lead–one of the original cast members–in the coming weeks. Put two and two together (along with the fact that most observers would agree the producers of Heroes haven’t known what they were doing for the last two and a half seasons) and that seems pretty damning. The question, then, is which character is likely to get the ax? I’m thinking HIro–all season, he’s been living on the edge, with his anonymous condition killing him. I, like most viewers, just figured they’d find a way around it–but in a show that steals most of its plots from ’70s Marvel books, would it be surprising to see a Death of Captain Marvel-type story where having powers doesn’t save him? Going against that, though, is the idea that if they’re actually writing him OUT of the show, Hiro would be the hardest to do it with–he could return at any time, given the nature of time-travel.

The most likely seems to be Nathan Petrelli, especially since he’s effectively dead now anyway after this week’s episode, but that seems like it would be pretty unsurprising. Peter would be an enormous shock, so he almost seems like the most likely candidate here–but the whole first part of the season has revolved around him so it seems like they’d be pretty hard-pressed to REALLY get rid of the guy. Ando and Suresh may ironically be safe because of the fact that they’ve been so sidelined this year. Noah Bennett is always a hair’s breadth away from getting killed, being the only one without powers.

I’d love to see it be Sylar–no offense to Zachary Quinto, but the character really has been pretty redundant. I think that’s virtually impossible from a practical sense, though, becuase unless they can come up with another villain who can actually instill some kind of interest in the viewers, Sylar’s here to stay.

What say you, ‘Rama readers?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.