All right, Netflix and Amazon and Vimeo and every other streaming service out there are hungry for original content: It’s time to stop screwing around and give Firefly the second season it deserves.
This past weekend at New York Comic Con, the majority of the cast was on hand for a reunion panel, and 3,000 honorary crewmembers of the good ship Serenity packed in to watch the most beloved TV stars in the 'verse trade anecdotes (Nathan Fillion is a thief) and express their desire to do a second season of the cult favorite show ... if they could just get the chance.
And now, we forcefully shout, is the time for that chance! When Firefly was cancelled in 2003, TV just wasn't ready for Joss Whedon's ultra-charming space western. It was his first time producing an original series and his first venture that didn’t have anything to do with a mythology built around Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But despite moving his Whedon-esque sensibilities into completely new territory the guy produced a fantastic, unique show populated by incredibly likable characters who lived in the future but talked like they were in Tombstone. It was fresh and entertaining and had a stellar cast, but not enough people got it, so Fox cancelled the show after just 13 episodes.
But come on, that was 12 years ago and TV is a wildly different environment than it was when Captain Mal and his Browncoats entered our lives. First of all, Firefly was pre-DVR. Yeah, TiVo debuted in 1999 but digitally recording your favorite shows to binge-watch four at a time was not a thing back then, and there was no significant next-day watch tracking in 2002. It was a big enough hurdle just to exist as a savvy science fiction show on Fox's primary network, and getting buried on Friday night meant it was handicapped right from the start. If the show had the benefit of delayed viewing, or had aired on a network like SyFy where it was actually reaching the right audience for its time, Firefly would have had a much different future than the one-and-done run it was given.
And speaking of Friday night primetime, the shows running alongside Firefly were America's Funniest Home Videos, 48 Hours, the longish-running family drama Providence, What I Like About You and Sabrina The Teenage Witch. While you may look at that lineup and think "Jesus, why was anyone watching anything but Firefly?!" the fact is that our TV tastes just weren’t the same all the years ago. There was no Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Game of Thrones or Arrow or even Once Upon a Time. The only show structured around fantasy and wholesale worldbuilding—narrative elements we consider commonplace today—was Star Trek: Enterprise, and that doesn’t even count because Star Trek has been around in one form or another for 50 years! (And just like Firefly, it too was inspired by old Western tales.)
The cultural sensibilities of today, however, are built for stories like Firefly. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the defining force of mainstream entertainment. Our biggest stars wear spandex like all the time. And guess who masterminded the great joining of so many onscreen forces in the MCU? None other than the rebel commander himself, Joss Whedon! Whedon was furious when Firefly got its lights shut off, but instead of cowing to the man and making Mad About You ripoffs, or something, he kept making weird projects like Dollhouse and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog before being handed the Infinity Stones and proving that Marvel's fully interconnected multi-phase screen monster wasn't so much crazy as it was brilliant. Nothing makes more reliable money than creature features (Jurassic World) and fighting robots (Pacific Rim, all the Transformers) and lovable heroes in over their heads (see: anything Chris Pratt and lots of Melissa McCarthy), so why not strike back with more Firefly when the iron is hottest?
And while we're on the subject of popularity, we're not just talking about the sci-fi/fantasy genre as it exists now. Ever since Firefly was grounded and Serenity passed through the box office with great reviews but a low total gross (yes we know it sounds familiar), the show and its cast have only become more popular. The original fans still lobby for a revival and over 12 years many more have joined the call for more show. Whedon, obviously, has since become a mega Hollywood director with gobs of money and influence. Nathan Fillion wages a daily charm offensive on social media to his millions of followers and is currently starring on the thousand-episodes-and-running crime dramedy Castle. Gina Torres is an essential member of the show Suits—where she says she’s basically playing a version of her Firefly character Zoe. Morena Baccarin has kept her sci-fi credentials strong in shows like V, The Flash, and Gotham, and also had a run on Homeland when the show was at the height of its impact. Alan Tudyk has continued being amazing because he’s Alan Tudyk, and Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, and Summer Glau have been steady presences on TV since they left the Serenity behind.
So without further delay Netflix, Amazon et al, we demand that you resurrect Firefly and at least give it the second season the cast and fans have deserved for more than a decade! Yes, we understand there are probably some Fox-owns-it/other-networks-have-contracts-with-its-stars hurdles, but come on! People love superheroes and space epics and adorable rogues living in different galactic planes now. It's like when Star Wars came out, except now there are all kinds of star wars to make movies about. People were unsure about Guardians of the Galaxy, and then it became one of the best action movies in recent memory. An amateur writer self published a book about a funny guy doing a shit ton of science on the Red Planet, and now The Martian is currently the highest grossing movie at the box office. Battlestar Galactica is considered a great character drama and everyone is a nerd now. Besides, you can't seriously defend bringing back Full House, a show that got more than its share of airtime over the course 192 episodes, and then say there's no room at the inn for something that is approximately 700 percent more in line with the zeitgeist than a Tanner family reunion.
You played the hero with Arrested Development and Mr. Show, Netflix. Now it's time you helped us find out what happens when River Tam is all grown up.
