I wouldn't criticize Heroes too much for having Magical Negroes too much because they're not any more extraordinary than the rest of the characters -- in fact, they should have more un-Magical Negroes if anything.

However, you can't discount the fact that some of the characters may have been written out because the actors wished to leave, et cetera.

Because the show is so very structurally episodic, I'm holding on to the hope that the story we've seen so far will pay off in good ways that I'm not foreseeing just yet. As a trend though, I think that the regression of the female characters power and agency may reflect on Bryan Fuller's departure.

I think Heroes has been fairly equal opportunity in who's bitten the bullet. You have Isaac, Simone, Linderman, DL, Evil!Eric Roberts, lots of B-list Heroes (thanks, Sylar!) like Eden and the superhearing lady, the melted metal guy, Charlie, now Kaito's dead. You could make a Benneton ad with that group.

Kat, I think your list goes the other way for me.

Isaac

Latino

Simone

Black and female

Linderman

Evil (and also with not much screen time)

DL

Black

Evil!Eric Roberts

Evil (natch, but again with not so much screen time)

lots of B-list Heroes (thanks, Sylar!)

Unimportant, and I'll throw in superhearing lady and metal melter, because not a one of them had more than a couple of minutes of screen time.

Eden

Female

Charlie

Black

now Kaito

Asian

Not a lot of male white good guys taking one for the team on this list, although male and white would describe about a third of our major characters and heroes (Parkman, the Petrellis, Bennet, Claude, and Sylar by my count).

Charlie wasn't black. Charlie was Hiro's brief girlfriend, with the super memory.

I agree, though. Though I also agree with a comment I saw on LJ that at least Heroes can kill off minority characters and still have some left on the show, which puts the show ahead of lots of other shows.

D'oh! I was thinking Charlie was Simone's dad. Now I can't remember his name.

He was Charles, actually, so you're pretty close. Charles Deveaux. Plus, he's dead, so he still counts.

We just call him Shaft.

Sadly, the Blunder Twins would fill my #1 and 2 slots of which characters need to die next. That would not help the track record any.

Matt - I'm totally with you on that. Maybe we should start a petition.

Just because characters are evil doesn't make them not white or not important to the story, so I stand by my list. And I had totally forgotten that Simone's dad was named Charles, so I was really confused by the whole Charlie = Black thing. But if we're counting heroes who bit the bullet off screen, then we can go on and throw in Papa Petrelli, who was white and (as far as we know) not evil. Still believe that the show has been pretty equal opportunity in terms of the deaths. And last week, we lost Candace (maybe), so throw another one into pile whitey (and no points off for being evil in my book).

I would have said that of the two wounded Kirby Plaza heroes last season, I'd prefer Matt die rather than D.L. But now that we have 3M, I've been forced into liking Parkman, so I'm glad he didn't die. (Damn you, Kring!)

As for future deaths, I'd be happy to lose Nikki and los gemelos aburridos (although the boy twin is soooo pretty).

Skipped and skimmed like mad to be here real time watching Heroes LIVE! Woo!