Now that Heroes has finished season 4, the ball is in NBC's court about renewing it for yet another season.  Given NBC's recent track record of decision-making, we suspect Heroes will be renewed for another five seasons right after The Biggest Loser is expanded to three-hour episodes.

But this is a very bad idea.  Despite ending with "To Be Continued," the start of Volume 6 is as good as any place to end the series.  Keeping Heroes on the air is a deadly mistake NBC should avoid at all costs.  Here are just five of the best reasons we can think of to cancel Heroes right now.

1. The Ratings Are Terrible
If NBC wants to get out of the gutter, keeping Heroes isn't the way to do it.  It's rare for a show to have such a disastrous decline in the ratings, but numbers don't lie.  Here is the average number of viewers per episode of the four seasons of Heroes.
Season 1: 13.86 million
Season 2: 11.46 million
Season 3: 7.81 million
Season 4: 5.19 million
Or to put it in graph form:
In case you're bad at math, that's an 8.5 million viewer drop from season 1 to the current season, making Heroes one of NBC's lowest rated shows.

2. Hayden Panettiere's "Acting"
We're sure Hayden is a nice enough girl, but let's be honest, her acting isn't very good.  Maybe it's just bad writing.  Maybe it's the fact that her character has been stalled since the beginning and hasn't grown at all emotionally.  Sure, she exposed her secret to the world, but the underlying problem is still that she wants to be both normal and special.  The sooner Hayden is off our TV screens, the happier we'll be.

3. Nothing Matters Anymore
After four seasons, the biggest problem with Heroes is the fact that there are no ramifications to anyone's actions.  Sure, Nathan is dead, but since part of his mind is still trapped inside Sylar, there's nothing to stop Sylar from morphing back into Nathan and letting his consciousness take over.  After an entire season of Hiro preparing for death, he's magically cured and back to perfect health.  And call me a doubter, but we've seen Sylar bounce back and forth from bad to good so many times that's it's impossible to believe his latest attempt at being a Hero.  No matter how Heroes may try to change everything by exposing the secrets, the show has proven that all roads lead to Rome, or in the case of the season 4 finale, a crazy man hellbent on destroying New York City.

4. It Would Free Up Zachary Quinto
If there's one thing we agree on, it's that Zachary Quinto has huge potential.  He's a great actor and incredibly handsome, and with success in Star Trek, he now has a ticket to the big leagues.  Please cancel NBC so Quinto isn't burdened with such a crappy TV show.

5. It's the Only Way to Avoid Disappointment
Season 4 ended with Claire attempting to disprove her father's theory that "things change, but people don't."  While it would be very nice to see that put into practice, the problem is that he's completely right.  Claire still wants to be both special and normal, Peter still has to save everyone just like he did in the "Pilot" and Hiro still has all his powers and wants to fulfill his destiny.

The show has already lost its most talented writer, Bryan Fuller, TWICE!  Heroes has been given chance after chance to find itself, settle down, and live up to the promise of its first season, and every time it fails.  If at fourth time you don't succeed, it's time to give up.

Creator Tim Kring has proven himself to be untrustworthy when it comes to moving the story forward, so there's no reason we should think entering a "Brave New World" would change anything.  Instead, let's just end on the possibility of Heroes getting better instead of the inevitability of him somehow screwing it up.



Source: Nielsens
(Images courtesy of NBC)