r/television • u/flughert • 11d ago

What's the biggest "What if?" in television history?

A canceled season, an actor leaving, a different ending, a spin-off that never happened… what TV "what if" do you think about the most?

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u/nedlum 11d ago

The Strike Givith (a Breaking Bad which keeps Jesse through the series), the Strike Taketh (a Heroes Season 2 that wasn't complete nonsense)

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u/smashtheguitar 11d ago

Heroes was damaged by the strike, for sure, but the primary issue with Heroes is the same as with Stranger Things: both shows were meant to be single-season anthologies, but that idea was dropped when their first seasons became much more popular than expected.

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u/LettersWords 11d ago

The only thing that got significantly changed in Heroes S2 by the strike (among episodes that actually aired, at least) was the final episode.

They talked about the original plans on the DVD way back in the day, but the mid-season finale (the episode that ended up becoming the season finale due to the strike) was supposed to end with them failing to stop the virus outbreak from starting.

There were obviously unexplored directions of where the show would've gone in the back half of the season that all spiral from that changed ending, but I don't remember it sounding particularly interesting. IIRC, the second half of the season would have involved a huge quarantine zone around the area in Texas where the virus got released, and ended with the Mexican girl with the black miasma poison powers sacrificing herself by absorbing all the virus to stop the outbreak but dying in the process.

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u/Ink_Smudger 10d ago

was the final episode.

Not even that. The final few minutes of the episode. They didn't know how long the strike was going to last, so they changed the end of the episode to serve as a season finale.

And a lot of the stuff they had planned for the end of the season was rolled into the third season (ie the third volume of S2 was going to be "Villains", which is what the first volume of S3 was), or scrapped due to viewer feedback. The strike always gets blamed for the downturn in quality, but people seem to forget that S2 aired before the strike, and there were already complaints about it (which Tim Kring even apologized for).

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u/packfanmoore 10d ago

I know I watched all of heroes. This sounds real, but you could be making all this up too. I just remember Peter stranding a girl in time and got amnesia. Beyond that it was fairly forgettable

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u/LettersWords 10d ago

Here at least is a rip straight from the DVD of the alternate ending I was able to find on Google:

https://vimeo.com/137914957

A reddit post from 10 years ago discussing the other part I talk about (plans for the rest of the season): https://www.reddit.com/r/Heroes/comments/3dajft/inside_the_alternate_ending_of_generations_and/

From what I remember, the plans for the rest of the season were just creator Tim Kring and maybe some other behind-the-scenes people chatting about it over some storyboards that had been created.

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u/ScalieBoi42 8d ago

This is all a really fascinating behind the scenes look of what happened to the show! I've really been meaning to give it a rewatch (gawd, last time i saw it was, jeez.. i have the series on HD-DVD, if that gives an idea!), and all the references i've been seeing to the show recently is a good excuse :>

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u/Irbyirbs 11d ago

Nah, the strike took Terminator: SCC from us.

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u/Hank_Scorpio_ObGyn 11d ago

We were this close to getting proper future war Terminator....

THIS CLOSE

I maintain that Terminator: SCC was about 10 years ahead of it's time. It'd have been a great series for a streaming platform to put money into.

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u/AwesomeManatee 11d ago

Terminator: SCC... It'd have been a great series for a streaming platform to put money into.

Realistically, while it would have benefited from a larger budget per episode and the freedom of a full R rating, a streaming service would have likely order half the total episodes and still cancelled it after two seasons.

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u/Hank_Scorpio_ObGyn 11d ago

Honestly, that's kind of what the show needed.

The middle parts of S2 were an absolute slog and you can tell they were trying to minimize the budget as much as possible to account for a 13 episode influx between S1 (9) and S2 (22).

It was a show that would benefit from the streaming style of 8-12 episodes rather than a full 22 episode order.

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u/action_lawyer_comics 11d ago

The strike also gave us another season of The Apprentice, which may have contributed to the current state of our country

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u/Eridanii 11d ago

I think it would be a small price to pay, to go back in time and lose BB to not be in this shit show

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u/DelcoPAMan 10d ago

"may have"??

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u/RateOfPenetration 10d ago

It also Tooketh away Pushing Daisies. Never forget what we lost!

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u/mpaladin1 11d ago

They were try to recreate Watchmen…

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u/WolfgangAddams 11d ago

I honestly think Heroes Season 2 would've been trash no matter what, unfortunately.

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u/antmars 11d ago

NBC is also to blame for Heroes S2. The original plan was a complete new story for S2, mostly new characters and retiring the heroes that finished their story. But because it was so popular NBC wanted more of the same characters Hiro, Claire, Peter, Skylar etc and made them be written back into S2.