Firefly: Brand New ‘Verse has revealed the surprisingly perfect fates for two fan-favorite former members of the Serenity crew.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Firefly: Brand New ‘Verse #2 by Josh Lee Gordon, Fabiana Mascolo, Lucia DiGiamarino and Jim Campbell, on sale now.
Firefly: Brand New ‘Verse has been slowly revealing more and more about what happened to the various people who served on Serenity. So far, that’s included Zoë Washburne — who has become the new captain of the Serenity after receiving it from Mal Reynolds — and Inara — who has in the years since the original series and film has risen in the ranks of the Companion Guild to become a Priestess.
And in Firefly: Brand New ‘Verse #2, the peaceful fates of two more former members of the crew — Simon Tam and Kaylee Frye — have been revealed. But this only raises more questions about what became of the rest of the crew, especially the most dangerous person the ship ever carried.
After breaking into a Blue Sun ship on the advice of Inara, the new Serenity crew — Zoë, her daughter Emma, the mechanic Lu, and the soft-spoken Salo — find themselves staring down a mysterious woman speaking Spanish (which at this point in the Firefly universe is more or less a dead language). There’s no evidence of the young woman in any publicly accessible database, and in the escape from the Alliance, they’re forced to bring her aboard Serenity. Salo notices a particularly gruesome-looking injury on her arm, a deep red spreading through her skin and seemingly even her veins. Despite the language barrier, the woman is able to beg the crew not to take her to a hospital.
But it’s clear she’s in need of medical assistance, forcing the Serenity to redirect their course towards Bryson’s Rock, a small and peaceful world in the Red Sun System. The crew eventually approaches a small farmstead, discovering Simon Tam wielding a rifle. Zoë is surprised to find Simon as a farmer, seemingly embracing a more basic life as a farmhand over his more delicate and specific medical training. Meanwhile, Kaylee — revealed to still be romantically attached to Simon — walks out of a nearby barn to greet the group along with her two children, Teddy and May. The pair seem to have ultimately settled down together, with their children’s shared surname suggesting that since the conclusion of the original series the star-crossed lovers have actually gotten married.
Kaylee had long been a member of the Serenity crew by the time the original Firefly began. As the ship’s bright and peppy mechanic, her skills with the ship’s engine kept it flying through the universe despite it being in constant need of repair. She met Simon Tam when he became a passenger on the ship who hired the Serenity to deliver him and a mysterious package across the galaxy. Smitten by the good doctor, Kaylee’s affection for Simon only grew as the series progressed and the full weight of his actions — throwing away a promising medical career to rescue his younger sister River from the machinations of the Alliance Government — became clear. The two finally consummated their relationship at the ending of Serenity, ending the film in an embrace within the Serenity engine room.
The appearance of Simon and Kaylee is a heartening one, but it does raise a number of questions. Emma treats the pair as “Uncle Simon and Aunt Kaylee,” hugging them as soon as she sees them. This suggests that they did play a part in Emma’s early years. But Simon also notes it’s been almost a decade since he last heard from anyone on the Serenity, suggesting something may have occurred on the ship that prompted him and Kaylee to leave it behind. They’ve also named their dog Jayne after their former crewmember. This could be an honorific reference to someone Simon always had a complicated relationship with, or it could be a hint that Jayne perhaps isn’t among the living anymore and this is their way of remembering him.
Perhaps most notably, there’s been no revelations yet about the fate of River Tam, the psychic warrior/abused runaway who Simon had been trying to save in the first place. Although Emma briefly mentions her while on Serenity, Zoë quickly cuts her off before she can reveal too much. There’s a chance that something has happened to River in the ensuing years, or that at the very least Zoë is content to keep information about her on the down-low, even from her crew. But with her brother seemingly set to take a new role in the story, it would be surprising to not learn something about his wayward sister.
