A bounty hunter named Jubal Early sets his sites on capturing River Tam and manages to sneak aboard the Serenity to do so.

The Serenity goes to the moon of Deadwood to answer a distress call from Inara's old friend who runs a brothel.

What starts out as a nice day at a space station goes very wrong when Mal and Zoe receives the corpse of their old war buddy in the mail.

Mal has to make a tough choice in whether he should trust his ex-wife again as she offers the Serenity crew an opportunity to make a lot of money.

Tensions begin to run high on board the Serenity when Wash finds himself feeling threatened by the closeness between Mal and Zoe.

On return to Ariel, Simon hires the crew out to smuggle River into a hospital so Simon can figure out what the Alliance did to her.

The Serenity engine explodes, leaving the ship low in oxygen and causing Mal to have delusions and flashbacks that pieces together his present.

The Serenity crew pulls a job in a town where Jayne once made some friends and few lifelong enemies.

Mal inadvertently marries a village girl during a job in the backwater. His new bride stows away on board the Serenity, while the crew is forced to figure out what to do with their new discovery.

While the Serenity crew is doing a job on an outlying planet, both Simon and River are kidnapped by the locals in need of a doctor.

On a mission to transport some goods on the planet Persephone, the Serenity crew attend a ball where Mal ends up in a duel to defend Inara's honor.

The Serenity crew drifts upon the ruins of a colony ship and goes on a salvage mission. The expedition turns from bad to worse when they discover dead crew members and that they are not actually alone.

The Serenity crew is coerced into pulling a train robbery. When they discover the stolen cargo is actually medicine intended for refugees, they are forced to reevaluate their priorities.

In this original pilot episode, the crew transports passengers to another planet to sell salvaged goods only to discover that an undercover Alliance agent is on board the Serenity.