In the story of Firefly, there was a civil war fought between Independent planets and the Alliance. The Alliance’s goal was to unify all the planets under a single government, but the Independents (also called “Browncoats” due to the color of their uniforms) wanted sovereignty. In the end, the Independents lost and all the planets were unified under the Alliance government. The captain of the ship Serenity, Malcolm Reynolds, and his second-in-command, Zoe, were both Browncoats in the war.

Outside the show, the term Browncoats has come to represent the avid fans of Firefly. These are not your average fans — Browncoats are the people who introduce others to Firefly even after it was cancelled, the people who donate money to charity in the name of Firefly, the people who organize special Firefly-related events and conventions. It is, in many ways, thanks to the Browncoats that the cancelled show has been resurrected as the major motion picture Serenity.

Here is what Firefly’s creator Joss Whedon has to say about Browncoats:

“Firefly went on the air a few years ago and was instantly hailed by critics as one of the most canceled shows of the year. It was ignored and abandoned and the story should end there, but it doesn’t, because the people who made the show and the people who saw the show (which is…roughly…the same number of people) fell in love with it a little bit…too much to let it go, too much to lay down arms when the battle looked pretty much lost. In Hollywood, people like that are called ‘unrealistic’ … ‘quixotic’ … ‘obsessive’.

In my world, they’re called ‘Browncoats’.”