The feedback to the Lost ratings chart was good, so I thought I'd so the same for Heroes' first three seasons. Check out the chart above for a visual look at the US Nielsen ratings since the show began. A few bulleted points on the data below:
- Unsurprisingly, season 1 has been the best-performing season, but check out how its popularity dropped significantly at episode 18 (people getting bored?), before picking up for the episode 23 finale. But, actually, even the finale was one of the season's lowest-rated episodes!
- Echoing what happened with Lost, audiences tuning in for the start of season 2 gave the show its best ever ratings, but the numbers crashed as early as the following week and never really recovered!
- Season 3 got off to a bad start with 10.09m (only just above its worst recorded ratings at that time), then dropped further and continued to zig-zag around 8 million. Volume IV "Fugitives" caused a small spike of interest to 8.5 million, but that quickly waned to around 6 million. Oddly, interest briefly spiked again to 6.83m for episode 23 ("1961", one of the worst episodes that year!)
- The most popular Heroes episode has been season 2 premiere "Four Months Later..." and its least popular so far is "Turn And Face The Strange" from late-season 3.