When Nathan Fillion and the cast of the 2002 space Western Firefly started teasing some kind of Firefly revival series, I immediately hoped it would be a sequel to the 2005 Serenity movie. But the plan is actually for an animated series set between the original series and Serenity, which strikes me as practical, but a touch underwhelming.

While two of the show’s protagonists die in Serenity, the movie ends on a note that feels a lot like a new beginning. Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his crew expose the Alliance’s darkest secret: the cannibal space pirates known as the Reavers were created on the distant planet of Miranda in an Alliance experiment that went terribly wrong.

Mal and the crew don’t topple the government, or anything all that dramatic — that was never really the point of Firefly. After broadcasting the truth to the galaxy, the survivors repair their ship, River Tam (Summer Glau) takes the pilot’s seat, and Serenity lifts off again. The message is simple: The story continues. Firefly was always a charming procedural that blended action, space drama, and comedy in a unique way. But it’s also a story with a kind of roguish energy that feels like it should keep propelling the story forward.

A revival set decades later has always felt like the most natural continuation of the story. By the end of the film, the characters are fundamentally different people than they were when the show began. River has embraced her abilities as a psychic prodigy and super-soldier (of a........

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