Jubal Early: A historically significant name

For this week's episode "Objects in Space," what stuck out for me the most was the name of the assassin that is able to board the ship, Jubal Early. For those of you in the class that aren't familiar with Civil War history, that was also the name of Confederate General Jubal Anderson Early. He stood out as a prominent officer to the Confederate cause, working with Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee throughout the war. At the war's conclusion many of General Early's writings (including his farewell order to the Army of Northern Virginia) advanced the idea of a "Lost Cause" theme inherent with the South's loss and the Union's subsequent occupation. This theme would come to characterize many literary works in the antebellum South, demonstrating the "lost cause" of the Confederacy that left such a deep wound in the region.

The fact that the writers of Firefly would use the name Jubal Early to describe their assassin character for the last episode of the series that they would never write for again serves as something ironic for the viewer to take in. I just found it interesting that the name of a Confederate general who advanced the "lost cause" theme in literature would be used for the central character of a show that was cancelled. I suppose the writers felt that Firefly was their own lost cause.