'The Mandalorian': Joss Whedon's 'Firefly' has some lessons for Jon Favreau's Disney+ space Western
'The Mandalorian' is presenting itself largely as a Western set in space with a lone gunslinger exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy. It is a subgenre that has gone surprisingly unexplored in television as most shows tend to focus on a sci-fi centric exploration of space.
From what we know of ‘The Mandalorian’, the closest thing that has been done to a show like this is director Joss Whedon's 'Firefly'.
Released in 2002, ‘Firefly’ only ran for one season but has since gained a massive cult following. The show is praised for its sharp writing, unique aesthetic, and memorable, complex characters—led by Nathan Fillion’s morally ambiguous Mal Reynolds.
The show follows a team of scavengers and smugglers exploring the far reaches of the galaxy on their ship ‘Serenity’ in the future a hundred years from the present.
Just like in ‘The Mandalorian’, the show explores the criminal underworld of a grungy future on the frontier of space. While there are places in both shows for high-tech, opulent, futuristic cities, both shows seem to be more focused on an Old West aesthetic with sci-fi flavorings.
While the trailer for ‘The Mandalorian’ suggests a much darker tone, there’s still a lot that the show can learn from ‘Firefly’.
Lawlessness in space
The protagonists of ‘Firefly’ were most definitely on the wrong side of the law. However, the show took its time illustrating why the prevailing law itself wasn’t always in the right. It made criminal characters a lot more sympathetic, and their crimes a lot more fun to root for. Sometimes a criminal is just someone struggling to get by—and those are stories all audiences can relate with.
'The Mandalorian' is set after the fall of the Empire and its oppressive regime, but there’s no telling how many practices begun by the Empire are still followed in the outer rim. While the Mandalorian is likely no outright hero, there’s a lot more room for character ambiguity when the law he’s meant to be following is unjust.
Bad blood, betrayals, and duplicity
In the tradition of all good Westerns, ‘Firefly’ was rife with enough betrayal, double-crossings, triple-crossings, and fake-outs to make it hard to keep track of who was on whose side. While we do want to see sympathetic characters in ‘The Mandalorian’, if they’re going to be part of the outer rim’s underworld, there’s no reason for them to keep to a code of honor.
Twists, turns and surprises keep the thrills alive, especially when you realize it couldn’t have happened any other way.
Good and evil in an ambiguous world
The characters of ‘The Mandalorian’ will likely live in a world of moral greys. A world where “good” and “evil” are difficult to quantify. And in a world like that, characters who are unequivocally one or the other leave a lasting impression. Truly evil characters that audiences will love to hate will really help the show leave a mark on their minds. The brutal practicality of ‘Firefly’ characters like Adelai Niska or the mysterious and terrifying Reavers truly raised the stakes and you always know the show’s protagonists were going to win, but the question was at what cost?
The galaxy established by the Star Wars universe is very different from the world we saw in ‘Firefly’—but ‘The Mandalorian’ is seeking to establish something tonally different, and new. There’s every chance that global audiences are about to be introduced to TV’s best space western since 2002.
‘The Mandalorian’ releases on Disney+ on November 12.