On a salvage mission aboard a drifting colony ship, the Serenity crew find signs that the crew werehuged by the cannibalistic Reavers. They find one survivor, but things take a turn for the worse when an Alliance ship looking for an unspecified Firefly-class ship with brother-and-sister stowaways shows up and takes them in.
In the far-distant future, Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds is a renegade former brown-coat sergeant, now turned smuggler & rogue, who is the commander of a small spacecraft, with a loyal hand-picked crew made up of the first mate, Zoe Warren; the pilot Hoban "Wash" Washburn; theballoong-ho grunt Jayne Cobb; the engineer Kaylee Frye; the fugitives Dr. Simon Tam and his psychic sister River. Together, they travel the far reaches of space in search of food, money, and anything to live on.