Remembering Hayden Panettiere: How Heroes and Claire Bennet defined a generation

When I began my first job as a video editor for a media company back in 2007 at the age of 21, I quickly became good friends with the guys in the animation department. That meant one thing: watching the latest episode of Heroes during our lunch breaks the moment it dropped.

I would walk upstairs at lunchtime to find every animator glued to their computer screen, Heroes playing in unison. It was almost as if all fifteen-odd monitors were synced, the exact same scene playing out at every workstation. The image of a man (Peter Petrelli) stepping off a building in a apparent suicide attempt, only to soar into the sky, became permanently burned into my memory.

What truly hooked me in the pilot episode, though, was a high school cheerleader leaping off a towering bridge at a construction site. She hit the ground, got right back up, pop-cracked her dislocated shoulder back into place, and walked away completely unharmed as the gash on her cheek miraculously healed.

After watching that, you realised Claire Bennet was indestructible. She had a friend record the entire thing on a camcorder before turning to the lens: "This is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt number six."

Claire was brilliantly played by Hayden Panettiere , whose tragic death was announced on Monday. The cause of death has not yet been made public.

One of the most iconic phrases from the show was "Save the cheerleader, save the world." It was a warning about Sylar, a superhuman serial killer hunting down others with abilities to absorb their powers. If he stole Claire’s immortality, he would become completely unstoppable.

Yet despite her incredible power, Claire was fundamentally just a teenager trying to fit in—a goal made infinitely more complicated by the fact that she couldn't be physically harmed.

I identified deeply with that theme. High school was still fresh in my mind back then. I had been bullied (as I was normally the smallest kid in my class) and gotten into my fair share of fights, almost always coming out on the losing end. That desperate need to just blend in hit remarkably close to home.

All these years later, Netflix added the iconic series to its platform at the start of July. Though the series is somewhat dated now, I feel zero shame admitting I’ve been binge-watching the show all over again, revisiting a time that defined my early adulthood.

Which is why the loss of Panettiere at 36 —someone a part of my mind will always view as immortal—feels so particularly heartbreaking.