Fourteen years ago I flew out to San Diego Comic-Con and met up with some friends. Everyone turned in early Thursday night by my standards. The bus stop at Petco Field had changed which led me to walk by the front of the convention center and about 200 uber-fans already camped out and many fast asleep around 12:30 a.m. Friday. After a few weeks of 100 degree temperatures in the Midwest it occurred to me how nice the cool sea breeze felt. Why not see what this camping out on the street at the Con thing is all about? I headed to my hotel and on the bus met folks on their way back to the center for the Firefly 10th anniversary panel. Nowhere close to feeling like winding down for the night I took a shower, changed into my Friday clothes, grabbed some extra shirts and headed back on the bus toward downtown at about 1 a.m.
One to two hundred more people were in line and I caught up with the people from St. Louis I met on the bus. I nestled in with my backpack as a pillow under a palm tree on some nice lawn turf. Not so bad! New friends Cody and Sam even offered me their hotel pillows. The night life was surprisingly peaceful, a true Zen moment. Back in the line everyone was still bustling but gradually teetering on the edge of sleep. Conversations about where neighbors in line were from and what they did and what they like. Who they were, what they were doing, where they were going. The low murmur of card playing and conversation lulled by the hour until a kid started running down the line shouting. You can find out all the details of what happened in line at 3 a.m. here.
Around seven thousand of us waited and talked. For nine more hours. And it never got boring. I didn’t even bring a book to read. You may have heard about visitors to Comic-Con. One hundred and fifty thousand like-minded, self-professed geeks and nerds (and all proud of it), you will find no better community anywhere. Everyone was there for Ballroom 20 at the San Diego Convention Center for Comic-Con to host the big Firefly 10th anniversary reunion. It was a once in a lifetime event. So many people coming together because they wanted more. Sean Maher parodied an old Christopher Walken Saturday Night Live bit, to cheers from the crowd:
Maher: I think you might have a fever.
Fillion: The only cure is more Firefly.
Now it’s 2026. Cue that country-western Firefly theme. It’s almost the 25th anniversary of the series. And something’s about to happen. This month Browncoats everywhere finally received a sign–or actually six signs. They came from Captain Mal Reynolds, aka Nathan Fillion. And here’s how it began, in six quick cryptic clips:
So what does it all mean? That’s Fillion giving a go-ahead to… something… with Gina Torres, Jewel Staite, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Summer Glau, and Morena Baccarin. The clip with Staite includes a note stating an announcement is coming Sunday, March 15. The best analysis is Fillion and members of the cast will be issuing a big reveal at Awesome Con this weekend in Washington, DC, where the cast, including Alan Tudyk, are part of a Firefly reunion panel. Is this just another non-starter? Fillion remarked as part of the Sean Maher clip, “Some of you have guessed convention, podcast, or cross-over. You are wrong.”
Lots of questions come along with a new Firefly project. Will Alan Tudyk, whose character Wash was killed off in the movie, make some kind of return? How will they address the death of Ron Glass, who played Shepherd Book, who passed away in 2016? And what about creator Joss Whedon, who stepped away from Hollywood, but has been behind the scenes of a long series of Firefly tie in novels (all reviewed here at borg)? Coming off of his success on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Joss Whedon, who would go on to direct the second biggest blockbuster ever at the time with Marvel’s The Avengers, created Firefly as a human drama/space western, attempting to do something different with the sci-fi genre. Due to low viewership and Firefly relegated to Friday night airings, Fox cancelled the show before the end of the first season, airing only 11 of the 14 episodes.
But the fan base wouldn’t let the show die, and an Internet and convention campaign prompted Whedon to bring the cast back together for the 2005 big-budget film Serenity. Later in the year the Science Channel would broadcast a documentary, Firefly: Browncoats Unite. It was watched by 1.2 million viewers–the night was the single most watched Sunday ever for the Science Channel. Chatter about the series also tallied 25,000 tweets on Twitter, generating 26 million impressions. At Comic-Con Whedon remarked, “Everything we were doing was for the right reasons, with the right people, that we were making something that was more than the sum of its parts. That I had the best cast I will ever work with.” One member of the audience asked if an animated version was possible. The answer was in the negative but Fillion suggested he’d like to do a radio version.
So what’s next? Will we see more of the ‘verse? Sounds like Browncoats may finally get their answer Sunday.
C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg
