While Bryan Fuller's latest farewell to NBC's troubled Heroes seemed like a shock when the news broke yesterday, later developments suggested that maybe everything's going just as it was originally intended to by Fuller and NBC... but what about Heroes?
From the time that Fuller's return to the NBC show was originally announced, it was always known that Fuller was going to be splitting his time at the network between developing his own shows and working on Heroes... which he was only originally confirmed to do through the end of the third season. So when he told Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello that his departure was less to do with creative friction -
I'm crafting two pilots right now and it's a lot of work... It was just too hard to [juggle] Heroes and my development; something had to give.
- it looks less like inner turmoil behind the scenes and simply a positive sign that Fuller will have some new, original work appearing in the near future (Our fingers are crossed, anyway). But does this mean that Heroes is doomed?
That remains to be seen; while Fuller has become the face of a potential Heroes turnaround since rejoining the show's staff, he's always spoken as if the show's change in focus back to being a character-based drama was less his doing than something that was already in the works before he came along again. It's worth remembering that, even without Fuller, the people making the show won't be the same as those who made the first three seasons - Producers Jeph Loeb, Jesse Alexander and Greg Beeman have all left the show, meaning that some change is inevitable. Whether it's good change or not - and, let's be honest, that whole "Nathan is really Sylar" thing could go either way - will be seen when the show returns in the fall... Or, at least, when we finally get to the episodes untouched by Fuller's hand, which may not happen for some time, depending how far in advance the writers were working.
