Fans of the series Firefly are likely going to be bouncing off the walls when they learn that the canon is going to stay alive as it will expand with a series of upcoming books. That might not mean much for the actors at the moment but at the very least it means the series won’t up and fade away anytime soon. Many fans will likely see this is a saving grace that is something to be thankful for since Firefly has been kind of confusing since it came out as a motion picture and then went back to being a series. Personally I did watch the movie Serendipity that showcased the cast of Firefly but I always wondered how that translated to the series. Some argued that it didn’t, that the canon got messed with, while others attempted to come up with some convoluted theory or another as to how things happened.
The unfortunate part is that when Hollywood or a director that comes along and wants to take a story to new heights doesn’t pay attention to the source material things get wonky really fast. Characters end up dying that shouldn’t, plot points get muddied, and everything just kind of goes off the rails for a while. But with a book series there is almost no limit to what can happen. In a movie dealing with space and a crew that can travel freely through it, more or less, the only limits come from the writers and their imaginations. Limits do have to be set even in the books, but they’re far more pliable and less apt to be challenged by fans so long as it sticks to canon.
Hopefully for Firefly the story will continue grow and expand to new heights that fans haven’t yet seen. My own experience with the Star Wars franchise, and many others, was kind of tarnished when Disney took over and decided to scrap the old canon and go with their own. In with the new and out with the old and all that, but it did upset a lot of fans and it did mess with the timelines something awful. Let’s hope that this doesn’t happen to Firefly as well. It’s always a shame when someone comes along that wants to take a series in another direction without considering what the fans want and what’s already happened that people rely on as a basis for the loyalty they hold to a series.
As far as I’ve seen though Firefly has really been doing well as a series that has a lot of fans but still isn’t quite as big as some of the more noticed and well-established stories. Unless Disney completely runs Star Wars into the ground I don’t think that Firefly will ever really compete, but the great thing is that they don’t have to. They’re separate stories, different universes, and they’ve both garnered loyal fans, some of which like both stories and won’t pick between them. While I’m not a Firefly fan I do think it’s a great story, and hope that it can continue to grow.
