Vampiremania's Castle

I'm a semi Heroes fan, but never thought about why it's so popular. Now with the Season 3 premier, this interesting review gave out some hints.

Supernatural Powers, Yes. Gen-Y Problems, Also Yes.

“Save the cheerleader, save the world.” On second thought, maybe just save Social Security.

“Heroes” returns on NBC Monday night for a third season at an apt time — in the midst of an economic crisis that confirms the worst fears of Generation Y members, namely that their baby boomer parents are leaving them a world convulsed by war, drowning in debt and melting down under global warming.

The heroes in this science-fiction drama are a group of young people with special supernatural abilities who seek to save the world from a dark, high-level conspiracy, spawned by the Me Generation that is hellbent on annihilating humanity.

“Heroes” is of course a comic book, a sleek cartoonish battle between good and evil. But the saga also serves as an allegory of generational malaise, a venting of the indignation and self-pity of 20- and 30-somethings reduced by the sins of their fathers to ever-diminishing expectations.

The show’s creator, Tim Kring, borrowing graphic novel parlance, refers to each season as a volume and gave this third one the name “Villains.” It could just as easily be called “Victims.”

Young people today can’t repay their college loans; they can’t afford apartment rents, let alone mortgages; their Social Security is being sucked up by their elders; and H.I.V. left them out of the sexual revolution: what was once free love is now a viral minefield. It’s a plight lamented in books like “Generation Debt” and even in ads for Freecreditreport.com that showcase debt-crippled lads gamely doing menial work as they warn others about the dangers of letting bills pile up. (“They monitor your credit and send you e-mail alerts/So you don’t end up selling fish to tourists in T-shirts.”)

“Heroes” gives its fans cathartic validation: You inherited a screwed-up world, and it’s not your fault.

These heroes are not driven to mistakes or misdeeds by their own personality flaws and weaknesses. When paranormal protagonists like Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) get hurt, harm innocent people or put the fate of the planet at risk, it’s because they were deceived by evildoers who pretend to be on their side in order to betray and destroy them (credit card companies). They are vulnerable to strange, often biologically engineered strains of viruses; one could wipe out all humanity, another strips people with supernatural abilities of their power.

And Generation Y has more special abilities than any previous one: these are people who came of age taking the Internet, BlackBerries, cash machines, Facebook and iPods for granted. They also take the taking for granted. They are the most coddled, indulged and overprotected generation ever. Swaddled in safety and self-esteem, they have all been assured that they are special. They don’t rebel against their parents or even seek independence; they welcome an electronic umbilical cord that stretches through high school and college and even the post-graduate return to the empty nest. On “Heroes” those filial bonds stretch beyond the grave: even after his father is dead, Hiro (Masi Oka) still receives his fatherly advice via prerecorded DVD.

That ambivalence between fealty and resentment is woven throughout “Heroes.” The children must battle an evil organization known as the Company that was created by the previous generation, including Peter’s scheming mother, Angela (Cristine Rose), who in her salad days seems to have been something of a power-flower, a groupie in an idealistic cult that later turned monstrous. Yet even after learning of Angela’s culpability, Peter remains a loyal if somewhat surly son.

Oedipal issues do surface on “Heroes,” at least among the wicked: the evil Sylar (Zachary Quinto), who keeps acquiring new and more daunting supernatural abilities, temporarily loses his powers when he visits his mother. And yet he does visit.

Some of the most likeable characters are stuck mopping up their parents’ mistakes. In Season 2, after Peter manages to wrest back the vial containing the world-threatening virus and destroy it, his fellow hero Matt (Greg Grunberg), whose father was also one of the founders of the Company, is less relieved than disgusted. “Your mother, my father, God knows what else they’ve done,” Matt says bitterly. “How much longer are we going to have to clean up their mess?”

It could be a while. “Villains” picks up where last season left off: An assassin shoots Peter’s brother, Nathan (Adrian Pasdar), a politician, at the very moment he is holding a press conference to expose the evil conspiracy, and the special gifts he and others have, to the world. Sylar has some but not all of his powers back and hunts down another one of the heroes, Claire (Hayden Panettiere), to try to take her regenerative ability. And Peter returns from a time-travel trip to the future to try to alter the present, which is on a headlong course to Armageddon.

The ratings for last season slumped, probably because there were too many pointless diversions and time-travel to feudal Japan. Mr. Kring has assured interviewers and fans that the third season will correct those mistakes and recover the fast-paced suspense and tension of the first season. The premiere episode lives up to that pledge, with lots of violence, special effects and laser-fast editing. The plot and ever-escalating conspiracies are hard to follow, but even first-time viewers can easily get the gist, or at least the subliminal message: Don’t trust anyone over 50.