Two by two, hands of blue. But what happened to the duo? Hello all, Ric here with a firefly
video this week, looking into a question that nagged at the back of my mind, what happened
to the two agents who were pursuing Simon and River Tam? The last time we see them in
an episode is in Ariel when the crew is almost caught by the Alliance after Jayne betrayed
Simon and his sister. By the time we get to the Serenity film, which I believe, in universe
is under a year from where the series ends, these two pursuers are out of the picture
and the Alliance has stepped up its game by dispatching the Operative.
Not that I’m complaining, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s surgically calm but violent assassin was a
great foil for the crew, Malcolm in particular, but I am curious to find out what happened
to the others. I guess one of the many casualties of the series being cut short.
So, the two suited stalkers were officially dressed in neat suites with the only outstanding
feature being the skin-tight gloves of blue material they wore, which gave them a sterilised
look. They were consistently unflustered and implacable with their features.
They also had a lot of clearance, access and gadgets seemingly beyond the recognition of
the common alliance guard. It seems their edict was to retrieve River Tam, and ensure
that any compromises she may bring about were dealt with. During serenity, we learn that
River’s telepathic abilities inadvertently read the minds of higher-ups in the Alliance
and as such, was exposed to secrets that were never to be made public. Because of this,
anyone who even spoke to River or Simon was to be killed before they could spread anything
that River may have uttered. Extreme, but this is the same alliance that gassed an entire
planet so, hey. They clearly have a super high level of Alliance clearance and cover
up potential behind them. Within the show, this is all we get, but from
the comic book, “Those Left Behind”, we get a resolution to this particular story
arc as these agents catch up to the Serenity at last, as well as some more details on just
who and what they are. It’s revealed that those blue gloves that
we see are in fact simply the visible part of an entire bodysuit, at least the top of
one. The gear is worn underneath their clothes and equally skin-tight, but it has several
inlayed and riveted details. These suits were suspected to offer some high degree of defence,
from whatever material they were made from. But this has led some to speculate that they
were in fact cyborgs in nature, if not completely artificial. The premise for this is that these
suits are in fact their outer layers of “skin” and that their artificial nature explains
their immunity to the sonic device they were fond of as well as their inscrutable expressions.
It's also been suggested that they don’t work directly for the Alliance, unlike the
operative, but instead are on the chain of the Blue Sun cooperation. The Blue Sun is
a ‘Verse spanning organisation that has its tendrils in most trade an commerce sectors.
As such a large organisation, it naturally has numerous divisions that are all doing
their own thing, from food suppliers to the colonies, to cooperate espionage. Their enormous
wealth in turn gave them great influence among the politicians of the ‘Verse and it was
widely accepted that they were a corrupt organisation, but one too big to be brought under control.
If these Blue Hands are indeed some products of high-end Blue Sun espionage, could that
mean that the Blue Sun was involved in the Academy that messed with River and other candidate’s
minds? It seems odd that these agents were sent by the alliance to deal with the Tams,
if they were Blue Sun unless that company already had a vested interest in them, especially
with River’s siphoned secrets at play. This is further bolstered by what we see in “Those
Left Behind”, as they are referred to as independent contractors, not Alliance agents.
Personally, I suspect that the Academy was a joint operation run by the Blue Sun Cooperation,
but with Alliance off-the-books backing. This would seem to be supported by something said
when Simon Tam was busting River out of the Academy, doctor Mathias says “I was told
the Alliance’s support for the project was unanimous…” suggesting that this is not
a strictly Alliance operation, just one backed by them.
Blue Sun or Alliance operatives, the enigmatic individuals definitely were involved in the
Academy as River seemed to know them and their presence from before, citing the rhyme that
gave them their name, before she had even seen them.
So after Aerial, what happened to her pursuers? They continue to try to keep their ears to
the ground for the location of the Serenity and their following of the chain brought them
to Whitefall, the 4th moon of Athens in the Georgia System, the one owned by Patience
in episode 1. Here they meet up with “Agent Dobson”, the alliance undercover Fed from
the same episode. In this comic at least, he survived the shot to the eye and had it
cybernetically patched before going AWOL as a mercenary. They team up with him, and turns
out he’s been working on a revenge plan against Mal for some time, so their goals
are more or less aligned. Eventually they take Dobson’s vessel to
Serentiy to capture River and Simon, while Dobson takes his crew to ambush the rest while
they’re on a job looting the site of the “Battle of Sturges”. Short story shorter,
they manage to board the Serenity through the cargo bay floor hatch, but River senses
them coming, giving Simon scant time to react, making his way to the cargo bay just in time
to surprise one of them with one of Jayne’s Bars, knocking him back into the pit. Kayleigh
then secures it and keeps it locked until they have to return to their docked vessel,
however Serenity manages to jump away, the proximity to the firefly’s engines burns
out the crappy Dobson ship and kills them. The alliance learns of the deaths, then decides
to pass on the mission to the operative. There also was a book released called Firefly:
Generations, which unfortunately is not the Star Trek crossover I’d been hoping for,
but does shed some more light on the Hands of Blue agents with a second pair, this time
a female duo. In this narrative, set before “Those Left Behind”, we learn that they
are in constant telepathic contact with their partner, to the extent they think of themselves
as a “we”, not individuals. This might also explain how River was able to sense their
approach, she read their activity as they came closer, which unnerved her even more.
These two were stationed aboard an Alliance ship, in order to watch over another one the
of Academy’s children (the first, called Silas) from afar and were unnaturally dedicated
to their task, and routine in their daily activities. Almost robotic in their adherence
to order, but they are emotional. This particular duo were actually created after this Silas,
but have been alive for years, again it’s so vague. The way they are described does
refer to them as not quite human anymore, but it’s not clarified if they have been
altered in a similar way to the academy children, or if they genuinely are cybernetic in nature.
I think this all ties together in some way. The fact that the Operative in Serenity refers
to River without surprise as a psychic and she is called a Reader and Seer by Mal, shows
that in some fashion, telepathic powers are not unheard of in the ‘Verse. So perhaps
these Blue-handed independent contractors, are not of the alliance, but created through
the morality-lacking, but egregiously rich Blue Sun corporation for their own use. The
alliance gets wind of these types of operations the notorious business is conducting in secret,
and brings them on board, by financing further and more invasive experiments, such as the
Academy children and borrowing the use of their existing contractors. Following the
hints and the post series media, it seems to be that the Alliance was in bed with the
Blue Sun cooperation and sharing their experimentation in making people better.
That about covers everything I could learn on the Hands of Blue from Firefly. The narrative
continued in expanded media such as books and comics and as sad as it is, it’s probably
the only continuation it’s going to get. Overall, I found the deaths of the original
two in Those Left Behind to be rather unsatisfying, but it’s because of the unreseolved mystery
more than the actual characters. Cos’ let’s face it, the Hands of Blue had little to no
character anyway, besides surreal. The Generations book was a solid read that added a fair amount
to the origin through the introduction of another pair, where they basically persist
on a standby state of routine until they are needed. But it still hasn’t answered every
question. But maybe one day. So, thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time for
another video, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you later, goodbye!