If you could change things....

[Abaddon]

what would you change, and how you do it?

I'd have to start back in season 1.
Mohinder suggested at one point that altering his genetic code was making Sylar crazy. Well, I would have taken that idea a little further and have Sylar's constant upgrading actually give him a progressively monstrous appearance. By the end of the season he'd look diseased and not entirely human. He would "die" and we wouldn't hear about him again until late into season 2.

D.L. would have gotten more character development, but to tie the Sanders subplot closer to the main story arc, I'd have Jessica secretly working for Linderman much earlier. Eventually she'd take over, and DL and Micah would work to bring Niki back. Eventually Niki would come to recognize that she can be the strong one, and Jessica would realize she needs to loosen the reins, and the personalities would merge. Yadayadayada happily ever after.

 

[ragdus]

I would have left season 1 largely intact, save for the major letdown that was the final fight with Sylar. That should have been expanded upon greatly.

Season 2, I would have made that season about the city's reaction to nearly being blown up. This would have been a solid reason to make the show a bit more international, and the US was out looking for revenge on countries they thought would have perpetrated the attack. This could have also served to bring in more regular non-powered characters who have a stake in this super powered fight.

The end of the season would have been about the outting of the superheroes as being the real cause for the near destruction of the city, and set up season 3 for...

Season 3: The inevitable battle that MUST come when you have a group of extraordinary people that are feared by the ordinary. This makes the fracturing of friendships and the choosing of sides more plausible and meaningful than what we currently have.

Yes, it plays out a lot like the X-Men tends to, but the thing is the reason it's so compelling is that we all KNOW this is how things will eventually go down should superpowers ever become a reality. And while the overall conflict is not new, the stories within that conflict can quite easily be portrayed in ways never seen before.

 

[chaseter]

Season 1:
Nathan sacrifices himself to save people from his brother. He came full circle from wanting to harm people to send a message to dying to save people to send a message.

Season 2:
Make the main villian someone much more menacing than a guy that just regenerates. Maury was touted as the Nightmare Man and was easily defeated by his son after putting Molly in a measley reversible coma.

The Maya storyline was just unneeded completely. Hiro stayed in old Japan way too long. And the virus went from being potentially a pandemic to just infecting 3 people. This is where they started deaths don't mean anything and that was wrong. Nathan has come back twice. HRG should have been left a mystery until this season but they ended the suspense an episode after he was shot in the eye.

Season 3:
Why kill Bob...just why? His power is meaningless enough to warrant Sylar using it. The clone/triplet story line made my gag reflex go off. The future is bad we must change the present plot is getting old. Mohinder suddenly turning evil is also like WTF...but we will see how that plays out before I kill it.

 

[Neptune]

- I wouldn't make Sylar a Petrelli.

- I would leave out the hunger because that is just stupid.

- I wouldn't kill Adam. He was a big player in the original 12 and he had lots of potential.

 

[marukisu]

...

 

[GL1]

Season 1:
Cut some of the fluff from Peter's story and fill in D.L.'s plotline (see deleted scenes from episode 1 to make them more relevant).

Add a few more skirmishes to the final fight, add a more dynamic 'teaming up against Sylar' facet to it. Bring out that Sylar came to stop Peter from blowing up. Let D.L. Sacrifice himself to hold Sylar still so that Hiro could stab him.

That's all. Everything else was awesome.

Season 2
- Give Sylar Peter's whole plotline, from amnesia to kaitlin, to painting a gallery of a diseased dead future battling his forgotten dark side to teaming up with Adam and almost releasing the virus. Peter fears his own powers because he's responsible for his brother's death.
- Give Peter and Monica the preferably-dead-despite-that-they-were-great-characters Nathan and Matt's finding the 12 storyline. Make Paula Hawkins one (where Peter meets Monica) and send them on a worldwide tour finding out all this crazy stuff about the past, the most looming of which is the virus. Do not kill them all off in one bit of dialogue. Make the series of 8 paintings the deaths of the remaining 12, including Angela, Bob, Maury, Hawkins, and Adam.
- Let Hiro's journey in the past teach him sword fighting skills and warrior's bravery, then send him into various time periods related to other characters in Lost-flashback/flashforwards style. He gets a birds eye view of the Generations effect, even meets our generation's kids and Future Future Hiro.
- Claire is discovered by the Company, and becomes an operative, and quickly, a good one, and is teamed with her father, HRG. Morally grey and hard parenting lessons ensue.
- With the cleared space, Maya and Alejandro's journey brings them into contact with
- Give Candice (and Adrian Pasdar) something to do, with a subplot where Candice acts as Senator Petrelli after real Nathan's death and slowly, Candice gets enveloped in Nathan's life. Becomes nemesis for Peter.
- Make Mohinder, Nikki, Micah and Molly a very odd family unit, trying to live normal lives, and keeping large secrets from each other which eventually break out. Give Mo and Nikki a tragically failed romance subplot. Mohinder gets stuck in the company and paired with Elle, but Nikki Micah and Molly are the ones he betrays, not HRG. Between the two of them, they tell powerful stories about family, which again tie into Generations, which is about family. Jessica would be Nikki's sister with the power of body-jumping (explaining the tattoo).
- Do the whole 1975 episode as it should have been.
- Make the Haitian a well-rounded character, even giving him a name to reveal at the end of the season.
- Will likely end in a battle between the 12 and the current generation, where the old heads show just how devastating their apparently benign powers can be.

Season 3
- Finish off the Virus storyline proper, since the writer's strike would stop the second half... insert a time gap in the storyline to reflect the time gap for the viewers...
- Use Maya to combat/cure the virus, as originally planned.
- Second half, Villains, make them utter badasses, destroying the Company almost completely by episodes 1 and 2. Use them as metaphors for every type of crime conceivable. Let them go unerase Sylar's memory and dig up Adam. Let each "Hero" battle with their conscience, but only let one fall, and let it be an important and unprecedented fall, like Claire or Mohinder, and let it make sense.
- Because of the nature of the Heroes movement, each villain would have ties to various characters, old and new in shocking and often dark ways.

Clearly, I've given this too much thought. I have a spreadsheet around here with episodes as columns and characters as rows as far as what I would change.