I couldn't quite remember if this had been posted before but it turns out it hadn't. I think this image (not sure of the original source) has been doing the rounds for a while now.

Simon | November 14, 19:33 CET

Enjoying the "River=Slayer" idea but there are some very easy to spot holes in this (the sacrifices having been going on since the 90s at least).

D-e-f- | November 14, 20:06 CET

I like this. I hope Joss expands the universe after his musical project

Butler | November 14, 21:54 CET

The big hole in this theory is that the Senior Partners were "awake" and active long before the destruction of the Circle of the Black Thorn.

It works better if you theorize that the Black Thorn had been performing rituals and sacrifices to keep the Senior Partners from coming into this world in the flesh, and afterwards the Initiative had to take over that function.

AndrewCrossett | November 14, 22:36 CET

Maybe there are ways to explain all this away, but...

The sacrifices had been going on for thousands of years prior to the events of CITW.

And there appeared to be plenty of males at River's special school, not just possible activated Slayers.

And Melaka Fray is the only Slayer to appear on the earth in hundreds of years, no?

And are we to believe the Old Ones didn't destroy the Earth in 2012? Or that humanity somehow wasn't wiped out and rebuilt to a deep-spacefaring species in a few hundred years?

These "bigger universe" theories are fun, like the "Jar Jar Binks is a Sith" thing, but they work so much better when there aren't gaping holes that need to be explained away.

rvashko | November 14, 23:58 CET

And there appeared to be plenty of males at River's special school, not just possible activated Slayers.

In the canonical Serenity comics, it certainly looks like all the "graduates" of River's school turned out to be female.

I had a theory that they originally tried to take both males and females, but the males had some kind of reaction to the protocol that made them unstable. I thought that maybe Jubal Early was an example of a failed attempt at the first generation of "Slayers." The evidence for this is mainly in the Leaves on the Wind comics.

AndrewCrossett | November 15, 03:35 CET

My initial reaction to the reveal about River was "She's a slayer!" I've never stopped thinking of her as one, even if the two series aren't in the same 'verse.

Nebula1400 | November 15, 04:03 CET

Huh. I really thought this had been posted before but I'm not finding it.

Sunfire | November 15, 04:23 CET

Everyone is probably thinking of this?

b!X | November 15, 04:31 CET

No, like Simon, I've seen this image several times before. I guess just not here.

Sunfire | November 15, 05:04 CET

I've seen it too - and also thought of River as a slayer. Wasn't there a unifying theory with Dollhouse?

hann23 | November 15, 15:03 CET

I've seen it too - and also thought of River as a slayer. Wasn't there a unifying theory with Dollhouse?

In the Buffy season 8/9/10 comics, Andrew Wells is able to make recordings of people's personalities just like on Dollhouse... but he puts them in human-like robot bodies instead of in brainwashed people.

AndrewCrossett | November 15, 16:42 CET

I don't know if it was in any of the comics, but the episode of Angel with those cyborg things could be part of the whole tech+personality stuff that was also in Dollhouse. One could imagine that in Firefly, the same tech was built upon to create slayers like River, and control what they knew and didn't know. Also, Mr. Universe had his love-bot.

It's all connected.

I read something like this in 2014, but this is not the same article.

[ edited by Nebula1400 on 2015-11-15 19:35 ]

Nebula1400 | November 15, 19:34 CET

@Nebula: Lineage? With Wes' dad?

D-e-f- | November 15, 21:07 CET

Yes, D-e-f. I had always wished there was more about the cyborgs and their origin, but not in comic book form, because I'm way behind on reading the ones I have.

Nebula1400 | November 16, 02:01 CET

I've seen this before as well but I cannot recall where from.

rvashko-Melaka Fray would have been born hundreds of years before River Tam.

menomegirl | November 16, 07:33 CET

I like the idea of River being a Slayer. Also, the Director is Maggie Walsh's sister.

KissingToast | November 16, 15:29 CET

Myself I've never been a fan of the River as vampire slayer theory since it's just too damn predictable imo. It's far more interesting for her to be her own, unique thing. Plus - imagine the confusion/hilarity that would ensue if she ever crossed paths with an actual vampire slayer/vampire since that is, of course, what they would assume her to be.

[ edited by brinderwalt on 2015-11-16 16:04 ]

brinderwalt | November 16, 16:03 CET

I've seriously disliked these since the idea first surfaced a few months ago. For one, Joss said at the time neither Firefly nor Dollhouse was set in the Buffyverse, and Firefly obviously doesn't have access to "DH tech." Not to mention to plot holes others have mentioned.

This sort of thing can be fun when done by say PJ Farmer in Tarzan Alive or Doc savage: His Apocalyptic Life, since all those writers claimed to be writing in a more or less real world, so why *can't* these different adventurers, back to Solomon Kane, exist? But this is hashing together fantasy/s-f- worlds with their own mythologies, and requires doing some violence.

I'm just recalling when Marvel comics introduced the parallel world of the Squadron Supreme. some fan felt he had to write a letter coming up with "explanations" as to why the major Marvel characters didn't exist there. Hello, it's a different world, why *should* they exist? This is much the same as that fan.

DaddyCatALSO | November 16, 20:39 CET

Now work in Much Ado About Nothing.

redeem147 | November 17, 01:19 CET

Can we go back to Jar Jar being a Sith??! Because I'm unable to move past that...

NYPinTA | November 18, 00:12 CET