Nathan Fillion has been teasing a Firefly reunion on Instagram, over two decades after the show ended, with an announcement coming on March 15.
The space Western drama, which is set in a new star system in 2517 and follows the cast of the spaceship Serenity, ran on Fox for one season in 2002, getting cancelled after 11 of the 14 produced episodes were aired. However, it’s developed a cult following over the years, in part thanks to its DVD release, and it won a Primetime Emmy in 2003.
Due to the success post-cancellation, creator Joss Whedon and Universal Pictures produced the 2005 movie Serenity, which continues the story, while the Firefly franchise also includes comics and tabletop role-playing games.
Fillion played Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds, the owner and captain of Serenity and former Independent sergeant in the Battle of Serenity Valley, in the series. He hosts a podcast, Once We Were Spacemen, alongside Alan Tudyk, who played Serenity pilot Hoban ‘Wash’ Washburne, and the podcast’s social media pages have been posting videos of Fillion visiting the homes of their former co-stars and telling them, “It’s time”.
Among the co-stars the Castle actor has been visiting are Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, Sean Maher and Summer Glau. In the caption of the most recent video, which sees Fillion visiting Jewel Staite, the podcast’s account has written: “An announcement is coming on Sunday, March 15.”
Fans have been trying to guess what the announcement later this month could be, with some suggesting that Fillion and Tudyk might be getting the cast together for a rewatch on their podcast, but in the video featuring Maher, the caption read: “Some of you have guessed convention, podcast, or cross-over. You are wrong.”
Last year, Baccarin discussed the potential for a Firefly revival, admitting that she had doubts about a live-action reboot getting off the ground, but adding: “There’s always talk. There’s always people asking about it. Part of me would be excited to revisit that world, and part of me is also a little bit like, I love it so much where it is, that I’m worried about reopening that door.
“That’s a lot of different careers and different people that you have to negotiate with and make work and all that … schedules and whatnot. Could there be a comic book or [another] thing – maybe?”
Back in 2020, meanwhile, it was reported that Fox was considering a revival of the show. Michael Thorn, then president of entertainment at the network, told The Wrap: “Any time we look at one of our classic titles, if there’s a way to reinvent it for today so it’s as resonant now as the original was, and is, to the fans, we’re wide open,” he said.
“I loved Firefly, personally, and I watched every episode. I didn’t work on it, but I loved the show. It had come up before, but we had The Orville on the air and it didn’t make sense for us to have, as a broadcast network who is very targeted, to have two space franchises on our air.”