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...