First announced at Star Wars Celebration 2022, Lucasfilm’s Star Wars streaming series, Skeleton Crew, has finally arrived on Disney Plus. After being delayed by over a year, the eight-episode series now finds itself in the unenviable position of following one of the studio’s most harshly treated projects in The Acolyte. While Skeleton Crew is the tonal antithesis of The Acolyte, a growing subset of Star Wars fans have begun to approach every new project with an accumulated skepticism and, in many cases, an increasingly choral disregard for the Dave Filoni era of storytelling in the galaxy far, far away. Skeleton Crew may well provide Lucasfilm’s best effort to combat and contravene the online vitriol that has become endemic to Star Wars fandom. And it does so with kids!
I’ll break protocol for a moment to explain that this review won’t conclude with some judgment of whether Skeleton Crew is “good” or “bad” nor make any accurate predictions about how fans will feel about it. That’s because I cannot know if it is “good” or “bad” or even begin to evaluate how I feel about it. Members of the media were given a screening package that included the first three episodes of an eight-episode series. By the time the third episode ends, it is clear that the show has the potential to continue in an entertaining direction; however, anyone pretending to review a full season after only seeing 38% of a series is at best disingenuous and at worst, deliberately causing chaos and harm.
Following an opening scene steeped in Star Wars tradition, Episode 1 of Skeleton Crew presents as a slice-of-life project before quickly morphing into a rollicking and spirited adventure into some peripheral corners of the Star Wars universe that have always existed but have never been explored in live-action. Pirates have played a major role in canonical animation and in Legends continuity and after first popping up in The Mandalorian where the Pirate King Gorian Shard caused some issues, here, there be pirates. From the daring boarding that breaks the silence of space and is Pirates of the Caribbean in space to the boisterous and bawdy Port Borgo full of scurvy swashbucklers, Skeleton Crew is all hands hoay into buccaneering, including some elusive booty that will likely sit as a central mystery throughout the series. That said, calling it a show about pirates wouldn’t be fair.
Despite boasting Jude Law as a key figure who is kind of mysterious and kind of dangerous and definitely none of the people he says he is, Skeleton Crew is a show about children but probably not specifically for children. Rather, in the mold of Stand By Me, it’s a little coming-of-age adventure that also vibes with, yes, The Goonies but also with a less well-known adventure film like 1985’s Explorers and maybe even a little bit with the ridiculous Ice Pirates. Skeleton Crew treats its core kids a bit in the way Stephen Spielberg always did. They get to behave a little older than they are, live out their fantasies, meet people they’ve only read of in legends and be in danger without actually being endangered. And most importantly, not one of these kids is learning any lessons through two episodes.
However, putting children at the center of the story allows co-creators Christopher Ford and Jon Watts to create within their comfort zones As a result, at a time when the Star Wars franchise is in need of renewed hope and a return to the innocence that the first audiences to see Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back took with them into the theater, along comes a Star Wars project full of kids who while vulnerable, are full of true wonder.Skeleton Crew‘s core four are the archetypal rebel (Fern), explorer (Wim), innocent (Neel) and caregiver (KB) who may well provide exactly what audiences need to reconnect with the magic of the Star Wars universe. Despite having kids at its core, Skeleton Crew looks to be intended to do some expansive world-building which seems likely to be why Filoni gave it the green light and set it in the New Republic era. I won’t even tease spoilers here but there are enough hints in the first two episodes to catch on to the fact that At Attin, the homeworld of the leads, is quite unlike any planet we’ve ever seen in the franchise.
Following a bit of a slow, exposition-heavy start, Skeleton Crew does weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen and it looks like it’s going to be one hell of a ride through space as the crew tries to find their way back home. Despite its small sample size, accentuated by Mick Giacchino‘s quirky, uncanny and neo-nostalgic themes, Skeleton Crew checks the boxes of an adventure worth taking. Indeed in the best ways, it feels quite like a successful adaptation of a Disney theme park attraction into a live-action project, except there’s no Disney theme park attraction being adapted. Perhaps it’s best to take it for exactly what it is: a return to innocence that’s been missing from one of the world’s premiere franchises for far too long.
Episodes 1 and 2 of Skeleton Crew are now streaming on Disney Plus.
