24. Mal (Malcolm Reynolds)
Appeared in: Firefly, Serenity Firefly is one of the most cursed of Whedon's properties - yet one of the most resilient. And of course, it needed a strong captain. Created at a time when Buffy and Angel were still in production, Firefly was the third Whedonverse show on the air simultaneously, a Dick Wolf-like feat that had many questioning whether Whedon was spreading himself too thin (especially with Buffy in the hands of producer Marti Noxon, who fans were not exactly happy with). When the show, a space western, debuted on FOX only to be quickly cancelled (only fourteen episodes of the show were ever produced, and it was cancelled after the eleventh; at one point it seemed unlikely that all the episodes would even get a chance to be aired). it seemed as if the naysayers had be proven right. Only, things weren't quite that simple. As fans of the show (Browncoats) were well aware, the series had been aired out of order by FOX, making it nearly impossible to get into for the casual viewer. Fan support among Browncoats and Whedonites in general, however, was so strong that the show would eventually be brought back as a movie, Serenity (named for the ship main character Mal and his crew fly around in), and the property moved into other formats such as comics and games as well. As the captain of the Serenity, Mal was an ex-soldier on the losing side of a galactic civil war, played admirably by Whedon regular Nathan Fillion. What made him so great? In short, Mal was a space western version of Han Solo, with the added benefit of Whedon's tight dialogue.