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In defense of one-season wonders

Learning of Hayden Panettiere’s tragic and untimely death on Sunday night felt like a millennial gut punch. From voicing Princess Dot in A Bug’s Life to playing young Sheryl in Remember the Titans and starring in millennial sleepover staples Ice Princess and Bring It On: All or Nothing, Hayden grew up with us on screen and left us with an iconic body of work.

Texting with friends about it, I realized everyone’s natural inclination this week seems to be revisiting their favorite Hayden comfort watch. My sister is restarting Nashville; my coworker is doing a Bring It On marathon, and friends are going back to Raising Helen—my favorite rom-com, my ultimate comfort movie, and the subject of an entire Worth the Chat last month. (Reminder: for the first time in years, it’s available to stream on Prime Video. So, once again, go watch it while you can.)

Last night, I started rewatching another Hayden classic and my middle school TV obsession: Heroes. When it premiered in 2006, the show was something of a phenomenon. In case you forgot, it was about ordinary people discovering extraordinary abilities, all converging on one warning: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” The cheerleader was Hayden’s Claire Bennet, a teenager who could heal from virtually anything.

The show ran for four seasons, but after the 2007–08 writers’ strike cut the second season short, it never quite recaptured the magic of the first. It has since aged into an IYKYK show alongside one-season hits like Firefly and Freaks and Geeks, except Heroes had the misfortune of staying on the air long enough to disappoint people.

I feel strongly that shouldn’t stop anyone from watching it.

We treat TV as all-or-nothing, as if recommending a show means standing by every season of it. I reject that premise entirely. Nobody skips a great movie because its sequel tanked; I’m not sure why we apply different logic to television. For example, I think the first three seasons of Grey’s Anatomy are some of the best procedural TV we have, but I also think it’s an abomination that the show is still going. And for all the discourse around Game of Thrones’ botched ending, is anyone really arguing that the extraordinary television that came before it isn’t worth watching?

If we can separate the good from the bad when a show gives us several great seasons, why not when it only gives us one?

That’s the category I’m diving into today: the one-season wonder. A show that caught lightning in a bottle for a single season—whether it was canceled too soon, went completely off the rails afterward, or simply never managed to recapture the magic. Sure, you may be left with a cliffhanger, but as they say, it’s about the journey, not the destination.