Hayden Panettiere’s ‘Heroes’ character Claire Bennet is an underrated sci-fi icon

For a couple of years in the late-2000s, Heroes was the coolest superhero show on TV – and Hayden Panettiere was its breakout star. The show’s premise sounds less fresh in the post-MCU era – it basically followed a motley crew of supposed normies struggling to cope with their superhuman powers – but the execution was initially superb. The first season, which launched on NBC in 2006, benefited from concise characterisation, rich world-building and the sort of impressive special effects that you just didn’t get on network TV back then.

• Read more: Hayden Panettiere, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Scream’ star, has died aged 36

Panettiere, who has died aged 36, played a high school cheerleader called Claire Bennet who discovers she possesses the power of rapid regeneration. When she cuts her thumb with a knife, the wound will heal within seconds. When she jumps off a tall building, any bones she breaks will fix themselves in a matter of minutes. Claire looked like the archetypal All-American girl, but her impact would be felt way beyond the bleachers. “I like to think of myself as just a girl who happens to have powers,” she said in a much later episode. “And it’s just one thing in a list of attributes: loyal, friendly, regenerative, good skin, you know.”

Panettiere was just 17 when Heroes premiered – she was an actual teenager playing a teenager, a rarity on TV at the time – and imbued her character with guts, grit and youthful exuberance. In that sensational first season, Claire spent much of her downtime getting her best friend Zach (Thomas Dekker) to document her regenerative powers on video camera. She was already smart enough to know that she’d need receipts further down the line.

Claire was also absolutely integral to the show’s overarching narrative. Back in 2006, the mantra-like line “save the cheerleader, save the world” became part of Heroes lore as it was uttered by various characters at various points in the story. Nowadays, it would probably become a meme.

Heroes started to stutter during its second season, when it got bogged down in its own mythology and swapped zesty storytelling for relentless sombreness, but Claire remained a standout character until it was finally axed in 2010. Sadly, and a little bafflingly, she wasn’t part of the 2015 follow-up series Heroes Reborn. Panettiere said she only heard about this short-lived reboot when a family member sent her a text.

In May of this year, while promoting her admirably candid memoir, This Is Me, Panettiere spoke unsentimentally about the show’s rapid demise. “I mean, I would love to do a show that was good all the way through,” she told The Independent. “Heroes was incredible in the first season, but you’re signed up for six years – you never know what it’ll become.” By this point, Panettiere was a seasoned industry veteran and then some.  Panettiere, the daughter of an ambitious soap opera actress from whom she later became estranged, booked her first TV commercial when she was just 11 months old.

She had high-profile roles after Heroes – starring opposite Connie Britton in the sudsy country music drama Nashville (2012-2018) and popped up in three Scream movies including 2023’s excellent Scream 6. She also spoke without self-pity about the many cruel challenges life threw her way, including losing custody of her daughter, Kaya, and struggling with postpartum depression and alcohol and drug addiction. Panettiere’s younger brother Jansen, who also suffered with substance abuse issues, died in 2023 aged 28. But on screen and in the collective psyche, Heroes will remain the cornerstone of her legacy. Panettiere never tried to hide her human frailties but she’ll be remembered, with poignant irony, for playing someone who seemed indestructible.