this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Whedon isn't involved, so I might give it a shot.
I kind of feel the opposite way. I mean, will it be any good without Joss?
(I'm all for taking moral stances against artists, but he was canceled for being a dick, not for any of the much better reasons other people were canceled.)
Being a huge dick is good enough for me to not want to watch his media. He was really toxic and I don't want to support that. The fact that the abuse was not sexual doesn't mean it was not bad.
That's fair. I'm just saying it's less of a dealbreaker for me personally than if he were racist or sexually abusive.
Or like if he'd been a leader of a harassment campaign against women and minorities that led to the rise of the alt right, like Adam Baldwin, that'd be a hard dealbreaker.
It's you!
You seem not to be understanding what I'm saying.
I find his style cringey and out of date. Plus he wasn't just a dick. He was championed as this great writer of women and a feminist in Hollywood while treating his stars like shit.
It's also hard for me to not see how he directed for the male gaze. If there are boobs, they're low cut with some jiggle. (Ex: In The Avengers, there's a woman that Cap saves. She gushes to a reporter afterwards. The scene that establishes her as a character who met Cap earlier? That was cut, but he kept the boob shots.)
Adam Baldwin may be worse but we are talking a paycheck for voicework compared to, say, showrunner status for Whedon.
That actress with the reporter is Ashley Johnson. Chrissy from Growing Pains, and Ellie's VA in The Last of Us.
I know that's not really relevant to what you're getting at.
I actually really appreciate that!
I love giving credit where it's due, especially to smaller roles.
If that changes your perspective on this show, Tudyk and Fillon among don't mind praising him in a personal level right now. They have a podcast together I found recently and in the last show they invited another common friends of his.
I don't follow what happened, I don't really care much about who's who on the media (except when the fucking critical drinker appeared in an audiobook), but I was surprised after all the negative feeling I've seen
I don't wanna judge those with personal relationships with Whedon. Everyone is free to have their viewpoint, especially when they have history together.
Plus I still rewatch some of his stuff. I'm not perfect either.
..the editor, you mean? Your best example is something someone else did?
I certainly agree with your reservations. However i wonder if it would matter either way. Is he even capable of that kind of writing and creativity anymore? Recapturing the magic of something you made 20 years ago is not easy to do. People change a lot.
The fact that people change a lot is a big problem for me with Firefly to begin with, because I loved Firefly, but...I was like 17 when I watched it. I'm in my late 30s now. I do not feel the same about it anymore already, in ways where I don't think it should come back at all.
Did his writing fall off? Is there something in his later work that was really bad? If not, I don't see any reason to think he couldn't do it again, and he's probably got more ideas on how to do it than anyone.
Twenty years ago he was the only one who could do it. He wrote the manual on genre-bridging action/comedy storytelling with an ensemble cast. It's why Avengers worked when it probably shouldn't have, and any similar successful properties since then have followed his lead.
I'm not trying to deify the guy, but I think the unique nature of his talent is swept under the rug since he got canceled.
He's one of a kind. No one has ever quite matched what he does with dialogue, even if the hyper sarcasm is a bit much at times, and a clutch.
He wasn't cancelled for "being a dick", he was cancelled for being a serial abuser and sex pest.
Don't try to rewrite history just cause you liked the guy before it was revealed
Who accused him of being a "sex pest"? When did that happen? Because I double checked before my comment and triple checked just now.
Last I heard he was making women feel uncomfortable by asking coercive questions, and one of the male actors that worked with him refused to let him be alone in a room with women for fear that he'd be creepy towards them and make them uncomfortable
So you're just accusing me of rewriting history based on your memory?
The thing about not letting him alone with Michelle Trachtenberg was because he was an abusive dick and she was a kid. If there was a sexual component to it, nobody ever mentioned it. As far as I can find, none of the accusations against him are sexual in nature.
Abusive, misogynistic even, sure. But not sexual.
So when you accused me of rewriting history...
Ah yes that's much better, being abusive to a child
Yes, being verbally abusive to a child is much, much better than being sexually abusive to a child.
Man, I must have missed something... How was he a dick?
A lot of stuff came out a few years ago, tons of specific instances, but it mostly boiled down to him just being a jerk. Saying mean things, saying them meanly. Stuff that would have gotten most people fired.
I'm understating it, but it wasn't overtly misogynistic or racist. No sexual misconduct, unless cheating on his wife with consenting adults counts.
Just... being a dick.
What about how Michelle Trachtenberg said he wasn't allowed to be alone with her?
That was because he was too much of an asshole, not because he was sexually inappropriate.
Why are you acting like it was more than what the people who actually leveled the accusations said it was?
The last I heard, it sounded like there might have been more to it. Perhaps there wasn't, I haven't followed it since so I asked a question. Sorry I asked.
It's not sexual stuff, but Charisma Carpenter wrote about what an absolute sadistic and petty asshole he could be. It's hard not to see with Cordy later in Angel.
When did Baldwin sexually assault people?
He didn’t, where did you get that? He did have a part in the origin of “#GamerGate” in that he’s often cited as the first use of the hashtag when sharing a few videos talking about the original ‘thezoepost’ blog post. He’s mostly just kind of a huge asshole based on the things he has posted or said publicly but he’s never been associated or accused of any substantive abuses AFAIK.
That is my point, meanwhile Joss Wheaton is accused of Harvey Winestein style abuse.
Except that isn’t the case at all. Whedon has been accused of being inappropriate, verbally abusive, and creating toxic work environments. Weinstein has been convicted of sexual assault and charged with multiple rapes. None of this is said in defense of these monsters but equating them to the same level of abuse is simply factually incorrect.
Not really, more like Ari Gold style abuse.
citation needed
Sorry; someone was convicted of assault?
While I agree on principle they just tried Buffy without him and are talking of cancelling it now after testing the pilot.
I was never a big fan of Buffy personally, but maybe the material was lacking or the pilot was good and the execs are idiots.
Buffy worked because of the particular writing style. The snappy little jokes and dialogue but paired with a genuinely horrific setting.
Whedon has been involved in a lot of projects as a script doctor. Called in to give dialogue a once over.
So that style of snappy little jokes made it's way into fucking everything, even when it actually clashes with the setting and detracts from the story.
So now we're all sick of that "style".
James gunn has picked up this "grand setting, but with real people" style and done it better. Messy, sometimes stupid, clearly vulnerable people mixed with the power of gods. Sincerity as a writting style.
Wheadon tapped into it that dynamic, but for firefly it was also the cast being themselves. Heres hoping that the script leans in the Gunn direction and also lets the cast breathe the way they used to.
It’s dead, Hulu isn’t picking it up.