When I saw this earlier it was with the note that these are not all the characters in the show, but rather the ones who are mentioned in the opening credits. Which is important because most of the new people added on the White side have actually been in the show all along--though the fact that they are being given opening credit over other actors is significant.

And even though they may not have actually added many more White characters, the loss of so many amazing characters of color is quite disappointing, especially when they could have been so useful to the story.

Not that I know anything about this show but there some sort of non-white political correctness quota that programs need to meet in USA?

Shh! I'm busy pretending that Heroes ended after Season One...

Someone recently counted all deaths and disappearances of Heroes characters by sex and race, with results similar to the graphic: http://just-katarin.livejournal.com/198169.html

I don't know the show, but from the pictures, it also seems that there are much less heroines than heros... hardly surprising...

This is grossly inaccurate... half the white characters shown as "new" in later seasons in this graph were there from the beginning.

It should be noted that Ando & Mohinder have had barely any airtime at all.

Being included in the opening credits certainly increases name recognition with the general public.

I recently heard someone comment that Heroes "had too many blonds". When my wife was watching the most recent episode I noticed that there was a Thanksgiving dinner scene with three women, all of whom were blond. And that wasn't counting Ali Larter, a blond woman who has been on the show since the start.

Not surprising in the least. We wouldn't want people of color to feel like they're an actual part of American society, now would we? I have a massive, unprofessionally non-scientific theory on this type of thing. Actors of color never appear in mainstream American movies without them being segregated off if the actor isn't Jackie Chan, Halle Berry, Cuba Gooding Jr. or Denzel Washington. People of other ethnicities must act funny or stereotypically, black women must be light-skinned and attractive, men must just be Denzel. If darker or brown-skinned women like Whoopoie Goldberg or Oprah Winfrey are going to act in mainstream American films, you'd better believe they're either "the funny black lady" or a slave. Sure you can find an exception here or there, but this is the norm.

And that is why I find it SO disappointing that a popular American show has lost its actors of color. They were just the everyday Americans I know. Sure they had superpowers, but with Sci-Fi shows also being acted by predominantly white people it just continues the divisive way whites still tell people of color that they are excluded and not authentic representations of America today.

I watch Heros. There are really only 3 Heros: Hiro (optomistic, geeky, intelligent, asexual asian man) Peter (loving, sensitive, easily taken-advantage of White man-child) and Clair (Blonde cheerleader who just wants to fit in)

everyone else mostly evil.

They've been trying to revamp for a wider audience, that may be why they are white-washing. I mean, who in "real America" is going to relate to a bunch of non-white people with special ability. That's MORE scary! ("they took my country" etc.)

I don't think this is accurate enough. Micah for instance had a big role in season 3 (vol.4). okay, he had not much to say, but his character was omnipresent...

Oh yeah, I've definitely already noticed this trend. But really what offends me the most about heroes is that the very dark-skinned black man doesnt even have a name. Thats not a coincidence. Even the people closest to him (like clair's dad) call him The Haitian. It gets on my nerves so damn bad. And Hiro is pretty racist as well. He's my favorite character because he is really the only unselfish person on the entire show and he only uses his powers for good, but they use his ethnicity as comic relief. like "hahaha look at the stupid things this japanese guy says"
And of course there's the stupid Clair being a lesbian just for ratings thing.
Heroes is dead. The first season was awesome and its never been good since then. They just need to cancel it.

I've got to agree that this is incredibly confusing. First of all, all the 'white' characters in season 3 were in seasons 1 and 2, as well - counting this, there's only one or two white characters that season 4 has that are missing from season 1.

Then, in season 2, the writers introduced a whole bunch of new characters of various races - Elle, Adam, Maya and Alejandro, Monica, West, Caitlin - and the only one that 'survived' to season 3 was Maya, IIRC, the rest were causualties of the writers' strike (especially Caitlin, that's pretty much the biggest loose end EVER!).

On the 'people of color' side, the Haitian is missing from seasons 1-4, Micah is missing from season 3 at least, and I haven't watched enough recently (it seems to have jumped the shark) but what about that African man who could paint the future from season 3 or 4? And didn't Micah's dad come back sometime in season 3? Or was that season 2? Oh, and Ando is missing from season 1.

Someone should put together a really comprehensive thing like this...

Interesting observation: While the minority characters get 'killed off' for real more often, there are several white characters who die more times than all the minorities put together - Claire, Adam, Peter, Sylar, and let's not forget Nikki/Jessica/Tracy/whoever the f*ck she is this week. What's up with that?

(In case you couldn't tell, I loved the show during season 1. Season 2 was tolerable, but the writers' strike really did it in. Season 3 was where I mostly gave up, and from my occasional watching, it seems to have jumped the shark in a most spectacular mannet since then.)