Old Hero, New Pals



""...here on Primus, I found too new brave friends, and a new family...""

- Fragment of The New Adventures of He-Man opening narration.

There is this new version of an old series. You may notice from the beginning that it continues from the original work instead of being a sort of reboot. However, despite The Hero still being there, most of the supporting cast has been changed for new characters, except for one or two. Sometimes this is due to the hero having moved to a new city. Part of the new cast tend to be Expies to old characters. It could be considered a Retool.

Contrast Changing of the Guard. See also Spin-Off, where it's a secondary character being placed in a new setting instead of The Hero.

Anime and Manga

 * Battle Angel Alita: Last Order begins with Alita stranded, having left all her friends (and almost all other characters) back  . She soon makes new friends.
 * Berserk, for obvious reasons.
 * The second season of Record of Lodoss War has Parn (older), and Deedlit (unchanged, given she's an elf), but most of the rest of the cast is changed. Oddly, certain characters are introduced is if the main cast has never met them, such as Parn's "first fight" with Orsen and Sharis.
 * Season 1 of Tower of God ends with everybody passing the test of the 2nd floor . Season two begins with several new characters meeting a new, stronger and far more stoic Baam. The rest of the old cast is just alluded to.
 * The second season of Medabots gets rid of most the supporting cast.
 * This has been a staple of Pokémon post Johto seasons.

Comic Books

 * When the de-frozen Captain America began having solo adventures apart of The Avengers, this trope was enforced by the fact that he had already lost his supporting cast in the meantime.
 * In The Incredible Hulk supporting characters come and go (and sometimes come back again) while Bruce Banner remains the central character.
 * Paperinik New Adventures only keeps Paperinik (AKA Donald Duck) and Uncle Scrooge (albeit Demoted to Extra), while the rest of the characters are new ones.
 * Mickey Mouse Mystery Magazine was a failed attempt to repeat the success of PKNA.
 * In the comic series Powers, a major chunk of the secondary cast has been killed over the dozen+ volumes, (including everyone from Jerkass rival detectives to friendly superheroes) but the two leads have remained constant, aside from the occasional time on a bus. As a result either entirely new characters have filled in, old characters have evolved, or the focus has gotten tighter on the leads, depending on the situation.
 * Wonder Woman in particular suffers from this. She had a regular supporting cast up until The Bronze Age of Comic Books, but since then they keep being killed off or just disappearing without explanation. Most infamously, they just won't let her have her original love interest, Steve Trevor, back, doing everything from killing him to marrying him off to Etta Candy (another rarely seen supporting character). Wonder Woman herself has been based off at least three different American cities over the years.

Film

 * In Shock Treatment, the semi-sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Brad and Janet (and minor characters Ralph and Betty- and possibly the Criminologist) are the only Rocky characters to appear. In an unusual case, all except Ralph and the Criminologist are played by different performers, while several performers from Rocky appear in different roles.
 * Starship Troopers: Marauder features Johnny Rico, the protagonist of the first movie, in the leading role but the rest of the cast is completely different.
 * Cars 2 had the townsfolk of Radiator Springs reduced to cameos in favor of new characters Finn McMissile and Holly Shiftwell to accompany Mater and Lightning McQueen.

Literature

 * Every Tom Swift series that hasn't simply used the next generation of Swifts has used this instead.

Live Action TV

 * The New Avengers keeps only Steed. Of course, his partner changed anyway during the original series.
 * Charles in Charge: When it moved from network to first run syndication the only characters carried over were Charles & Buddy. The mother from the previous family was there as a Spinoff Sendoff, showing the house to the new family moving in.
 * In Chef, only Gareth and Everton carry over for all three seasons. The supporting cast changes frequently.
 * Earth: Final Conflict: by the end of the series the only character left from the first episode is Sandoval, The Dragon to the Taelons and - after the Taelons Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence - the Atavus.
 * The revival of Mission Impossible in The Eighties had Jim Phelps lead an all new Impossible Missions Force. One of the character however was the son of an original series one, who appeared in a few episodes.
 * Torchwood: Miracle Day, by virtue of it mostly being set outside of Wales and Torchwood staff having a low life expectancy. The previous series, Children of Earth also had a milder change of focus.
 * Due to its time travel format, Doctor Who rarely had recurring cast outside of the Doctor and between one and three companions. However, the Third Doctor's era had a strong rapport between the Doctor and UNIT...which dissolved after he regenerated into the Fourth Doctor and he no longer had a connection to 20th century Earth.
 * Most of the Tenth Doctor's allies went on to with their own lives (and spinoff shows), leaving him alone for the 2009 specials, and with a brand new recurring and main cast once he regenerated in The End of Time.
 * Season 4 of Veronica Mars was slated to be this, judging by the teaser. New work environment, new rivals, new (ex)boyfriends, yet Kristen Bell was still playing the lead role despite the notable lack of other series regulars. Sadly, it was too good to last.
 * The New WKRP in Cincinnati: about half of the characters from the old show were still at WKRP, with several new characters replacing the rest of the cast.

Video Games

 * Ryo and Robert were the only recurring characters in Art of Fighting 3. Yuri also returns as an NPC. The rest were essentially rehashed (albeit slightly reworked) versions of the original cast with the exceptions of Lenny, Sinclair, and Wyler.
 * Final Fantasy X 2: Yuna and Rikku go have their own adventures, with a new team-member (Paine) in tow, and a whole bunch of N.P.C.s. The other playable characters from FFX have either died (properly), been erased from existance, gone to settle down to start a family, or gone on to rebuild his tribe's society.
 * Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings: Vaan and Penelo and a couple of their mates steal a sky pirate ship and meet a new buddy, Lyudd. It takes them a while, but the other characters from your main cast do eventually rejoin your party.
 * The Legend of Spyro and Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure are both this, albeit with both having Cynder.
 * The Dragon Age expansion "Awakening" transplants the player's Warden to a different part of Thedas, where s/he acquires a whole new Ragtag Bunch of Misfits (save one veteran who suffered from Late Character Syndrome in the main game).
 * In Mass Effect 2, the late Commander Shepard is back in action but with a largely newly recruited crew, while his/her old crew is (mostly) unavailable. This will be reversed in Mass Effect 3, though.
 * Shadow Hearts keeps Yuri for sequel, but with brand new party since the previous heroine  and rest of party busy elsewhere with own lives. Some do reappear in the game though or are referenced.

Western Animation

 * The New Adventures Of He Man was this for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He-Man and Skeletor travel to planet Primus, where they join the Galactic Guardians and the Evil Mutants respectively. The Sorceress appears from time to time and there's one episode with Teela.
 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fast Forward sends the Turtles and Splinter to the future, where they meet new people.
 * Extreme Ghostbusters, wherein Egon Spengler from The Real Ghostbusters assembles a new Ghostbusters team.