‘Heroes Reborn’: Claire Bennet Is Dead, Reveals Creator Tim Kring

Heroes creator Tim Kring revealed that the girl once at the center of the show’s mythology, Claire Bennet, is dead by the time Heroes Reborn takes place.

Claire Bennet Died Before Heroes Reborn

Kring announced the news while presenting Heroes Reborn at the 2015 Television Critics Association on Thursday, revealing that Claire, as played by Hayden Panettiere, will have died a year before the events of Heroes Reborn.

“She died a year prior to our story starting. That sort of gets into the mythology that’s attached to the original show,” Kring teased.

Claire was one of the main characters in Heroes — the seemingly immortal cheerleader referenced in Heroes’ “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” Despite her absence, her father, HRG (aka Noah Bennet), played by Jack Coleman, is back for the series. In fact, Mr. Bennet was heavily featured in the teaser trailer released at Comic-Con in July. Other returning stars include Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman), Masi Oka (Hiro Nakamura), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder Suresh), Cristine Rose (Angela Petrelli) and Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah Sanders). That said, not all returning characters will be featured regularly in the series. Only Coleman’s HRG will be in every episode.

However, big stars Milo Ventimiglia, Ali Larter and Zachary Quinto, who got his big break on the show, won’t be appearing in the limited series revival. Kring said that the writers approached actors from the original series to return based on story ideas, but admitted that some were unavailable due to scheduling.

“Some of the actors did not have the availability because they were involved with other things … The truth about how and when we approached different actors was really what the story dictated…the story was really the thing that dictated who would come back,” Kring said.

Heroes Reborn premieres Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. on NBC.