What Happened to Wash in Serenity: A Rant

Every fan of the Firefly TV series is doubtless disturbed by some of the deaths in the movie Serenity. Book's death could perhaps be understood, since it was fairly relevant to the plot of the story, but Wash's death seemed so pointless, besides being "too soon." The subject comes up fairly regularly in the various Firefly fan groups I'm in, and I've seen this particular meme more than once:

I'd actually heard this story, that Wash and Book were killed off because the actors wouldn't commit to sequels, long before I'd ever seen the meme. I didn't believe it then, and I still think it's COMPLETE AND UTTER BS, and it peeves me that it's getting spread around as a "FireflyFact."

Here's why I believe this is bogus:

• I've seen, and continue to see, a LOT of interviews with Joss and various members of the cast (e.g. on the DVD, on YouTube, etc.) and not only have I not seen one that made this statement, but I haven't seen one that gave the slightest hint that it might be true. In every one I've seen, every cast member seems very interested in doing sequels (if they might happen).
• The Serenity: The Official Visual Companion book includes an interview with Joss where he addresses the question of why he did it. He says, basically, it was personal decision for the dramatic effect (see pic at right) and says nothing to suggest the actors might have had anything to do with it. This info is also consistent with his commentary on the DVD.

  (I'll note that in this info, Joss does indicate that all the main cast did survive in his first draft, so I don't have a problem with that part of the meme. And I'll even buy the part about Zoe and Wash deciding to have children. It's just the "actors wouldn't commit to sequels" bit that pisses me off.)

• When I've seen someone post this "actors wouldn't commit" rumor in a group, and asked them to identify their source, I either would get no response, or I'd get pointed to some highly questionable source like a blog, which would say, as the meme does, "Joss said" but not give a date or occasion, or any kind of documentation of when he said it.

• One of the very first times I saw this discussed in one of the fan groups, someone pointed out that it just doesn't make sense from a movie-studio-logistics point of view. First of all, it makes no sense to ask an actor to commit to something if there's no schedule for it. And second, a studio is not going to commit to a sequel until they see how well the first movie does (with very rare exceptions, but Serenity clearly wouldn't qualify for one of those exceptions).

--- Sherry Reardon, June 2017

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