Hero widget inits child widget multiple times - flutter

Question

Whenever, I have a Hero widget about a StatefulWidget, the State.initState method is called three times instead of once when navigating to that page.
This obviously only happens when the other page also has a Hero with the same tag.
class Page extends StatelessWidget {
const Page({Key key}) : super(key: key);
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) => Scaffold(body: Hero(tag: 'tag', child: HeroContent()));
}
class HeroContent extends StatefulWidget {
HeroContent({Key key}) : super(key: key);
#override
createState() => _HeroContentState();
}
class _HeroContentState extends State<HeroContent> {
#override
void initState() {
print('_HeroContentState.initState'); // printed three times with `Hero` widget and once without
super.initState();
}
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) => Container();
}
Whenever I navigate to Page, _HeroContentState.initState is printed three times (and twice when popping a route).
Fully reproducible example of this as a gist on GitHub.
If I change the build method of Page, to look like this (removing the Hero widget):
#override
Widget build(BuildContext context) => Scaffold(body: HeroContent());
Now, _HeroContentState.initState is only called once as it should be.
How do I avoid Hero inserting my widget three times? How can I ensure that initState is only called once or have a different method that is only called once?

Answer 1

There is nothing you can do about that.
The way Hero works is that it moves in different locations in the widget tree in 3 steps:
the original location
inside Overlay, during the Hero transition
in the new page
Usually, for such issue, you'd use a GlobalKey, but that is not compatible with Hero.
As such, it is probably better to refactor your code such that initState doesn't matter.