Heroes? Villains? Does anyone still care?

So during my many hours of Olympic watching, in addition to seeing commercials for that god-awful Kath & Kim, I've also seen the "They're villains, Claire" commercial for Heroes an inordinate amount of times. I loved Heroes when it first started and I thought the first season was great, but now these commercials can barely get me excited, and I'm not really sure why. Let's hypothesize:

1) Season 2 sucked so bad that no matter how good 3 may be, its too late to bring me back. Hmm, perhaps, but in retrospect the only parts of Season 2 that I absolutely hated were the Wonder Twins storyline, and on the flip side, Season 2 had KRISTEN BELL and I think I've made very clear how I feel about her. (And in case you're new to our club, WE LOOOOOOOVE KRISTEN BELL. Got it? Good.) Let's keep going.

2) Too much time has passed. This one is a pretty good bet. Heroes, with its intricate and dense mythology, needs a highly-engaged fan base. The problem with the last original episode having aired in December is that that fan base has moved on, not having had any new story, both on TV and in other media, to keep them addicted. They found new stuff to satisfy they're superhero fix, which brings me to my third point.

3) The Dark Knight is a much better meditation on the concept of heroes and villains than Heroes will ever be. I think this is the right answer. There's a reason why the Dark Knight is about to become the second highest grossing movie of all time, namely that it is a timeless work of art that makes the concept of "hero" and "villain" murky and indistinct and leaves the audience with something very real and very big to ponder over. I'm not sure that this show, which did struggle a bit creatively, can even come close to matching that task. Case in point: the trailer for season 3 (see below) asks the viewer to pick sides, whereas TDK leaves the viewer feeling as if there are no sides.

Heroes probably would have been able to avoid these comparisons if it was tackling a different storyline, but given the direction of the story this season, I think people are going to watch a few episodes and realize that it just can't compete. I hope I'm wrong, and please tell me if you think I am, but I'd bet that Heroes is going to become another casualty of the writer's strike, which is unfortunate, but not unexpected.