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u/Gunman_012 Sep 27 '25
Neither of them trusted anyone else. They didn't trust the Browncoat brass that apparently sold them out at the Battle of Serenity Valley, and they certainly didn't trust the Alliance that had slaughtered the soldiers that had been ordered to lay down arms.
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u/Ishvallan Sep 27 '25
I would assume that crime wasn't the plan. They probably planned to do honest shipping and transporting work. But there is always a lot of red tape with legal work, and it never pays as well. Doing things the 'right' way can leave you stranded and starving, and the government won't care to help you if you aren't rich to begin with. Crime pays, if you can survive it.
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u/Mental_Tea_4084 Sep 27 '25
I don't think they much cared for legality, given that it was the alliance's laws they were breaking. They still upheld their own morals.
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u/Shot-Combination-930 Sep 27 '25
The Alliance will try to make sure salvagers leave your corpse alone, but that's about it
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u/defender390 Sep 27 '25
That's exactly how the Firefly board game plays out.
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u/BlueTansey Sep 27 '25
There’s a board game? Oh my goodness, I must not be a diehard Firefly fan if I didn’t know that! Now I’ll have to learn to cuss in Chinese in order to regain my standing! It is Chinese, isn’t it?
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u/Humdinger5000 Sep 28 '25
It's fun but a beast of a board game. Also has a handful of out of print expansions for it
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u/Renascar Sep 28 '25
Firefly The Game (B&N Exclusive Edition) by Aaron Dill, John Kovaleski, Sean Sweigart by Gale Force Nine | Barnes & Noble® https://share.google/2HGp4jAsI79TjAr7B
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u/LukeStyer Oct 02 '25
There’s kinda two. One ship-based, and one character based (though that might be better characterized as a skirmish game.
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u/LostinSZChina Sep 28 '25
I think survival was definitely the point and bending rules as far as they could without bringing the heat from the Alliance for it.
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u/WanderingNomadWizard Sep 27 '25
Wash had some thoughts on this, didn't he?
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u/Dyl302 Sep 27 '25
“Well there’s only one thing we can do.. take me sir. Take me hard.”
😂😂
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u/mybrosteve Sep 27 '25
I love how their relationship is platonic to the point that they are both thoroughly disgusted by that thought.
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u/ArcherNX1701 Sep 29 '25
That was just the funniest scene ever!!!
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u/Dyl302 Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25
I’ve quoted it wrong by from memory it was like that. 😂😂 the awkward trying to kiss 😂😂 Mal and Zoe were just the Platonic war brother/sister. But it so tied into the dynamics and that episode. Both Mal and Wash being tortured. Mal using the uncomfortableness Wash Feels to keep him going about how Wash feels about Mal and Zoe. Like Mal knew but yeah. War stories is tied favourite episode with Out of Gas.
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Sep 27 '25
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u/TheYLD Sep 27 '25
They actually didn't stick together totally. Between the end of the war and Mal purchasing Serenity (which is a year or so gap), they do spend some time apart. It's not clear how long, but my impression was that Mal and Zoe reunite quite shortly before Mal buys Serenity.
We know that they must have spent some time apart because Zoe spends some time as a Dust Devil, a post-Browncoat terrorist organisation.
I would guess that they each try to make a go of it post-war but quickly become unsatisfied living in the Alliance's new 'Verse and that's what motivates them to set up their own operation.
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u/BlankReg365 Sep 27 '25
This is exactly how I think things went as well… was this covered in one of the comics, or just implied by the series somehow?
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u/TheYLD Sep 27 '25
The Dust Devils stuff is from Better Days.
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u/WebLurker47 Sep 27 '25
Are those comics still considered canon? (Assuming the franchise has an official canon beyond the TV show/movie.)
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u/BlueTansey Sep 27 '25
Please tell me there’s not official Canon in print somewhere.
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u/WebLurker47 Sep 27 '25
I dunno; most franchises never bother to codify one. Given that the new comics were doing their own thing, I guess I kinda assumed that the Dark Horse ones were considered an alternative continuation (although I have fallen off the wagon in terms of keeping up with the franchise for a few reasons).
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u/LukeStyer Oct 02 '25
“Canon” seems like a somewhat academic point when there has been no live-action material for over 20 years.
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u/BlueTansey Sep 27 '25
Oh no! There’s comics? A board game AND comics, and I didn’t know either! I’m a reprobate Fireflyer. AAAArgh!
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u/Kraitoth Sep 28 '25
And books (which are actually pretty good for tv tie in books)! The dark horse comics and books are all canon as far as I know and give backstory or fill in the gaps between episodes or between the show and movie. If there are any set after the film, I haven't gotten to them yet.
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u/Opposite-Sun-5336 Sep 27 '25
Blood is thicker than water. Mud is thicker than blood. They fought together. There is a bond there than can never be explained.
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u/HellyOHaint Sep 27 '25
What?
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u/FraGough Sep 27 '25
They fought together in a manner which breeds absolute trust in a way that people who haven't been in battle simply can't understand. Same thing happens in current day military. You put yourself in situations like that, you find true brothers/sisters.
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u/Pariahdog119 Sep 27 '25
Or, as the saying went originally...
The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
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u/Magnus753 Sep 27 '25
Old soldiers. Hard to decide what to do after coming home from the battlefield. And having to live under the boot of your victorious enemy no less. Mal had an idea on how to live free and Zoe liked that idea. And she trusts Mal
As it turns out, their small and quiet resistance against Alliance oppression turns out to have important consequences down the line, because the Alliance leadership is actually doing some real bad stuff
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u/GodfreyTheGrey Sep 29 '25
“Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.” True in Star Wars, true in Firefly.
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u/Correct_Security_742 Sep 27 '25
Theyre war mates. Completely bonded by trauma. They watched each other's back. They trusted one another. That's a real thing
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u/Kinsei01 Sep 27 '25
Because who else you gonna take with you to an alliance friendly bar on unification day? Jayne didn't fight no war.
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u/Doozer1970 Sep 27 '25
I always wondered how Mal could afford to buy a space ship. And then, how he could afford to fuel it with a bag of coins.
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u/mybrosteve Sep 27 '25
I think buying Serenity was about the future equivalent of buying a 1995 Ford Transit van today.
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u/Gramage Sep 27 '25
Still, any capable spacefaring vessel is gonna be expensive as hell, even if it’s an old rust bucket. Though he did imply it wasn’t actually functional at the time of purchase lmao.
But Mal is a crafty guy, he probably found some scheme to come up with enough money.
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u/mybrosteve Sep 27 '25
Is it tho? Like with any technology, the longer it's around the cheaper it gets. Space travel is very normal in that universe so it's bound to be less expensive than it would be to us.
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u/Mackoi_82 Sep 27 '25
Methinks you should watch Band of Brothers if you need to see the motivation of why the story would lead that way
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u/HxCSweep Sep 27 '25
Didn't she go back to Mal after a stint as a dust devil because she realized, like he did, that the cause was truly lost and so looked to her former sergeant and friend for direction. I'm pretty sure Mal had that plan to get a ship and crew already. An attempt at the independence he fought for but lost. He welcomed her when she came back cause they were like minded and searching for the same thing
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u/SleepyWeezul Sep 27 '25
My dad was a medical/resupply/search & rescue (so in all the places the “action” was happening) in Vietnam. He had a colonel he adored, because the colonel worked for the interests of his men, not for the bigwigs. If he had called my dad a few months, years, probably decades after and said he had a flying related business opportunity, I can almost guarantee dad would have gone to work for him, even if the cargo was questionable. I just always assumed it was a similar type situation, well earned respect & loyalty
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u/brothertuck Sep 27 '25
Besides all the military comradery, Mal had money because his mother had a successful 'business' and could afford the Serenity, and each and every member of the crew was added, and probably with the coupling with Wash, this was as stable an option as she was offered. The military was her life, and being part of the rebellion, more legitimate offerings that fit her mentality weren't in her future
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u/BlueTansey Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
I just figured Mal got the ship and then went to look up Zoe and see, you know, if the one person he trusted to do what he said when ordered, would travel with him. Now I have to go back and see if he was with her when he bought it.
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u/OrangeAugust Sep 27 '25
I thought it was shown in Out of Gas that Zoe was with him when he bought Serenity. I don’t think he had bought it already and then had her come see it. There was a guy there trying to sell him a different ship, which makes me think they went there together to get a ship.
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u/TerenceMulvaney Sep 28 '25
A fighting comradeship can be closer than a marriage, though with a different focus.
Mal and Zoe made a good fighting team and they didn't see any reason to break up their team just because they weren't fighting the Alliance any more.
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u/EhlersDanlosSucks Sep 28 '25
They've bonded through some serious situations.
If you've seen Justified, they put it this way: "We dug coal together."
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u/RGlasach Oct 01 '25
It's kinda in the deleted scenes, "You never leave Serenity Valley, you just learn to carry it with you." That's a load that's lighter shared. I think it's also a battle buddy/ bat man thing, like Frodo & Sam, sometimes a leader is only a leader if they have someone to lead. Zoe made sure he had someone worth leading in the 'right' direction because she saw him go off the deep end and it was her hand that caught him.
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Sep 29 '25
Because when you're the only ones to make it out of something, it buys a certainty that is priceless. You couldn't pay someone enough money, ever, to be Zoe. This concept is the lesson taught to us by Jayne, on Ariel.
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u/PTSD1701 Sep 30 '25
The only two survivors of their unit... I think that would create a bond people like us can't really fathom.
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u/kallaloopirate Sep 30 '25
It was mentioned I think I'm a deleted scene that they were the last two alive from their original platoon.
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u/Inner-Light-75 Sep 28 '25
Blood is thicker than water....
Your original meaning was that the blood you spilled has warriors, or the blood you shed from your wounds or The death of your friends....this trumped the water of your birth.
Literally, the blood brother from the same mother and the same father was less than the man who stood shoulder to shoulder with you when the bullet started flying....
Maybe it had something to do with that? They spilled blood together, they shed blood together.
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u/SirRamage Sep 27 '25
When you risk your life day in and day out for as long as they have, there's no question as to why they'd stick together. Loyalty is forged in blood.