We’ve written about the phenomenon of Firefly here on TG many times, and it’s amazing how much love there still is for a show that only lasted fourteen episodes.
Nevertheless, appearing at Comic Con this summer, Joss Whedon and the Firefly gang saw how much the fans are still behind the series, and wish it was still on TV.
The Browncoat phenomenon has grown so strong in geekdom that Firefly has made a return to TV, this time as a special on The Science Channel, Firefly: Browncoats Unite, along with an all day Firefly marathon on the channel leading up to the special. (In fact, the Science Channel started re-running Firefly back in March 2011).
It’s amazing to the cast of the show that there’s a strong Browncoat cult today, and as Nathan Fillion told Variety, “When Firefly was cancelled, I thought it would go the way of most all other canceled shows: nowhere. But it just won’t die.” As Chris Hardwick, founder of Nerdist, also told Variety, “Our community feels like it was robbed, and it’s just tragic.”
Even though it was cancelled ten years ago now, we hope Joss Whedon feels a sense of pride that like The Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek, Firefly has grown stronger in popularity since its original run, and Fillion also tried to be philosophical by saying that because Firefly ended so early, “the show never had a chance to suck.”
We all know how disappointing it is when a show gets terrible and outstays its welcome, and if anything good came out of Firefly’s demise, it’s that it never got stale. (Would have been nice if it got the chance after years on the air though…)
Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee Frye on the show, told the L.A. Times, “Everybody wants to know if there’s going to be a sequel to the movie. I had a customs officer ask me that when I was crossing the border. Every time we do these big panels at these conventions, I’m always amazed at how many people turn up to hear us tell the same stories and jokes ago. I know we love going, just because we get to see each other again and feel the magic of all that all over again.”
