Why Firefly's return is exactly what we need right now

Proving once again that Browncoats never say die, Firefly is coming back.

As Mal Reynolds once said, “We’ve done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.” The once unceremoniously cancelled space western, previously revived in the form of a theatrical film, is coming back as an animated series.

Having endured for far longer than any cancelled show should, Firefly is about to return to a very different world. It’s a world in desperate need of hope in the face of insurmountable odds, something the crew of the Serenity is all too familiar with.

And it’s precisely because of that rag-tag crew of imperfect heroes that makes now the perfect time to bring back Firefly.

At its heart, Firefly is the story of a found family. Where most shows cancelled after a short run of episodes are consigned to oblivion on Netflix, Firefly’s eccentric cast of loveable rogues has helped keep its spirit alive for over 20 years. Found families are integral to science fiction.

Whether it's the crew of the Millennium Falcon or the Enterprise, different people, from different walks of life finding each other and uniting to take on a common enemy is the heart and soul of many a great space opera.

What makes Firefly so special, and important, is the way that the show's main character, Serenity captain Mal Reynolds, rediscovers his revolutionary spirit through his found family.

When we first meet Mal, and his partner in crime Zoe, they’re literal losers. The Browncoats, fighting for freedom and independence, lost the war against the Alliance. As Mal says, “War's long done, we’re all just folk now.”

At the start of Firefly, he’s rudderless and bereft of that same fighting spirit that powered him through an impossible war. He’s just surviving until the full and complicated crew of the Serenity assembles. That’s what makes the idea of found family so revolutionary. ‘Bless this mess’ has never been more apt.

If the Alliance represent a sense of uniformity, the found family of the Serenity, with its messy and complicated people, represents the freedom the Browncoats were fighting for.

The crew of the Serenity aren’t perfect. They do bad things, they treat each other poorly. But they also love each other and fight for each other. In other words, they’re human. That’s what makes Firefly’s unique brand of found family so important in today’s world.

By banding together with those both similar and different to ourselves to make strange and complicated found families, we can find that same revolutionary spirit that helps us stand up in the face of oppression.

These ideas aren’t unique to Firefly, of course, but the show takes its inspirations and develops them in unique and interesting ways to create something quietly different. The Millennium Falcon and her crew were a central inspiration for Firefly, with its found family spirit inherited from Star Wars – whose revolutionaries were always messy and complicated.

Mal is a clear analogue for Han Solo, a reluctant hero with a heart of gold who, when the chips are down, will do what he needs to do to fight for the weak and stand up to oppression. In a post-Andor Star Wars universe, finding those small acts of revolution within each other has become even more important. Even when the oppression of the Alliance is overwhelming, there are few shows better at those small acts of rebellion than Firefly.

Take the film, Serenity, as an example. A central plot point at the heart of the film focuses on the results of the Alliance’s attempt to placate the population of the planet Miranda and its subsequent cover-up. Their efforts ended up having extreme effects, with a percentage of the population becoming so placid that they simply stopped doing anything and died.

The drug then had the opposite effect on the rest of the population, who became the violent Reavers from the show. Realising it is a secret that cannot remain hidden, the Firefly found family bands together to share the truth of the Alliance’s experiment with the universe.

Unlike Luke blowing up the Death Star, this isn’t a bombastic act of rebellion. It is a quiet act of resistance, one that the Firefly crew specialises in and one that is ever more important to our modern and turbulent world.

It reminds me of Rose Tico’s quote in The Last Jedi: “That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” That’s the spirit embodied by Firefly.

The new animated show is set to bridge the gap between the series and the film, taking place across a roughly eight-month period. Fillion and the rest of the cast have gone to great lengths to explain that this is because they want to unite the whole Firefly family. As pilot and fan-favourite character Wash (Alan Tudyk), and the ship's spiritual centre Shepherd Book (played by the late Ron Glass), both died in Serenity, fitting the new series in before the film keeps that found family united on screen.

It shows that this new revival still understands what makes Firefly so special. Without each member of this messy and complicated crew, the revolution cannot be fought. The scrappy, underdog spirit of Firefly, one that embraces the imperfect instead of disregarding it, should continue to be the beating heart of the show going forward.

And that same revolutionary spirit that bleeds through the Firefly found family should remind us that our strength exists because we’re weird and complicated and diverse, like any good found family should be.

After all, fans, like the crew of the Serenity, are a found family of Browncoats, fighting the television networks and studios to keep the ship flying at all costs.

To, again, quote Mal Reynolds, “if you can't run, you walk, and if you can't walk, you crawl, and if you can't do that... you find someone to carry you.” Well, the Browncoats are here and we’re ready to carry this show for as long as we can.

Firefly is available to stream on Disney+ UK. Sign-up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month.

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