A Meditation on What We’ve Lost
I don’t know when it started. Maybe it was gradual and subtle, like a dimming light you don’t notice until the room is too dark to read by. But one day, I looked around at the screens that raised our children and couldn’t find the heroes.
I began to notice it with The Boys. It is a show about heroes—but not really. It is a world where the ones with power are most corrupted by it. Where valor is theater, morality is performance, and saviors are mostly just men in costume pretending not to be monsters.
Then came Spider-Man: No Way Home. A young man with a heart too big for his world, Peter Parker chooses to save even the villains and believes in redemption when the world screams for retribution. In doing so, he loses everything: his aunt, friends, and identity.
He chooses to be good—and the price is silence, exile, and anonymity.
Then there’s Invincible, which doesn’t even pretend to be kind. A coming-of-age wrapped in trauma and blood. Where the father figure is a god-turned-murderer, and the son is taught that the universe does not care about kindness. Where hope feels like a joke told too late at a funeral.
They tell us these shows are for adults like Family Guy, Futurama, and The Simpsons. But they don’t say this: these shows raise children too. And in their worlds, good is outdated. Noble is naive. Heroism is a mask we wear until it no longer serves us.
When I was young, our heroes were loud. They didn’t ask for nuance. They exploded onto the screen with muscles and missions: Rambo, Chuck Norris, Axel Foley, John McClane. They weren’t perfect, but they were good.
They stood for something.
Even in their flaws, they modeled something to reach for. Courage. Loyalty. Sacrifice.
The soldiers we looked up to weren’t broken men with body counts and vendettas. The cops weren’t corrupt antiheroes buried in procedural nihilism. They were flawed, certainly, but they fought for what was right. And they usually won.
Now we give our children John Wick—a grieving assassin. Mr. Nobody—a retired government killer with nothing to lose. Deadpool—a mercenary with jokes sharper than his morals.
They are cool. They are dangerous. But they are not heroes.
Maybe that’s the lesson. Being a hero doesn’t guarantee success. That goodness is impractical. That mercy gets you killed.
Evil lived in Sinners (and yes, it was beautiful in its own right). The vampires survived. The message buried beneath symbolism and song is that light doesn’t always win.
And maybe that’s true. But what do we do with truth when it wounds the spirit?
What happens to a child raised on stories where every savior falls? What happens to a generation who watches the world through screens that whisper: no one is coming to help you. Everyone is broken. Do what you must.
I know someone will say, “Heroes still exist. Look to real life.” And yes, there are firefighters, soldiers, teachers, nurses, and parents. But these heroes are buried beneath algorithms, drowned in the noise. Their stories don’t stream on prime time, and their morals aren’t trending.
And while they live, they are rarely seen.
But the most painful betrayal comes not from stories in which heroes fall but from stories in which heroes are rewritten.
Marvel took perhaps the greatest heroic sacrifice in modern cinema—the death of Tony Stark, Iron Man, in Avengers: Endgame. A moment that defined selflessness, courage, and the idea that doing the right thing often costs everything.
And now, they are planning to bring him back—Robert Downey Jr.—not as Iron Man, not as the man who saved the universe, but as Doctor Doom.
From savior to villain. From selfless to sinister.
They will say it’s storytelling. They will say it’s a multiverse. They will say it’s fiction.
But they are really erasing memory, replacing the legacy of heroism with the ambiguity of moral inversion. In doing so, they are telling a new story to a generation already unsure of what good looks like.
What hope do we have if Iron Man can be undone and his sacrifice rewritten?
So, I write this not just as a lament but as a question:
What does it mean to raise children in a world with no heroes?
What do we ask of the imagination when every tale ends in blood? What do we feed the soul when victory is reserved only for those who betray the light?
Because I still believe in the power of a story. I still believe in the need for something to reach for.
I fear we are telling our sons and daughters that goodness is outdated, honor is inconvenient, and heroism is a lie the world no longer has room for.
And if that is the case, then we have failed.
Not just to inspire. But to believe.
By Kyle J. Hayes
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