With every year that passes, it seems easier for troubled and cancelled TV shows to find new life in different places. Actor extraordinaire Alan Tudyk recently saw one of his former TV projects get revived, with the animated series Young Justice earning a third season more than three years since its cancellation, but he's got this other show that people also want to see again: Firefly. While speaking with CinemaBlend about the digital release of his fantastic comedy series Con Man, Tudyk kept optimism alive for more from the Serenity crew, and he told me about a fantastic idea Nathan Fillion shared with him about how the next adventure should begin.
I'm always hopeful that it'll come back in some form or fashion. I think as long as you have Nathan Fillion - truly, if you have the captain - he can put the crew back together. Some new faces, some old faces, and get back in the air. I think Nathan pitched an idea once to me, and I think he actually got it from some fan fiction: Now, out in some shack on some forgotten moon somewhere, somebody comes and knocks on [Mal's] door and says, 'We need you.' And he answers the call.
I know that you guys might not have gotten goosebumps like I did when Alan Tudyk was saying it, but I'm sure everyone pictured that potential opening scene accordingly. It's the perfect set-up for an action narrative, with the unpredictable hero getting picked out of reclusion to head back out for one last mission. One. Last. Mission. Not that anyone said this would have to be the final mission for Mal Reynolds, who may or may not still have his Captain status, since there should never be a last mission for him.
I'm picturing Nathan Fillion with a big giant beard, and he's complaining about the "gorram WiFi never working" on his moon. There's probably some kind of a booze still behind his shack. And something happened that was so foul that he vowed never to get back out into the cosmos again, for either fun or profit. But then maybe Jayne or Zoe is in trouble - take that, Jayne - and only Mal can be the one to bring him/her/them/all the gold back. Combine that with the masterfully wild shot that Joss Whedon never got to bring to Firefly, and it all starts to write itself, though that's only helpful if the project can also order itself to series and air itself.
Even if Nathan Fillion may not have come up with the idea himself (though it's still possible), the actor retained the information long enough to share it with his occasional co-star Alan Tudyk, whose character Wash would need to have an entirely different opening scene should Firefly return in episodic or film format. Wash sadly died during the film Serenity, but it's the future, and I have no trouble believing the pilot could live on as a clone or a ship computer or something like that. Firefly can't exist without Tudyk. (Unless someone wants to make it happen right now and Tudyk is the only person with which there are scheduling conflicts.) I imagine every character's opening moments would be similarly epic. Time to start writing that fan fiction again.
Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk can currently be seen in the aforementioned web series Con Man - which you can purchase here or view as a subscriber on Comic-Con HQ - and they'll thankfully get more time together in the upcoming second season. As for whether or not we'll see either of them in more Firefly-centered adventures in the future, write your quadrant's Congressman. Head to our fall debut schedule and midseason premiere schedule to see all the things that are definitely coming to the small screen in the near future.
