Star Wars: Skeleton Crew kicks off an entertaining, Amblin-inspired adventure

Say what you will about Star Wars TV shows, but at the very least they’ve helped make the franchise about more than just Skywalkers and lightsabers, showcasing different tones and kinds of stories in the galaxy far, far away. Still, as much as both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett promised to give us stories about the criminal underworld, they ended up doing dissimilar things (with various levels of quality). This is to say it is rather satisfying to see 2024 be the year of Star Wars criminals entering the spotlight. There was the hugely entertaining game Star Wars Outlaws, which showed a dirtier, more treacherous side of the galaxy focused on scoundrels. Now, Skeleton Crew is taking that baton and running with it, giving us a Star Wars tale where danger lurks at every corner and pirates rule the world, all while still delivering the whimsy we expect from a classic Amblin-style coming-of-age story.

Taking place around the time of The Mandalorian, the Empire is no more, and the New Republic is struggling to restore order to the galaxy, which means it’s a wonderful era to be a pirate. The opening scene shows this to great effect as a pirate crew boarding a ship transports goods for the New Republic. It’s a thrilling moment, with director and co-creator Jon Watts going from the horror in the transport ship crew’s faces to the hoards of pirates rushing in, nicely setting the tone for these villains before a single shot is fired. These pirates are not simple stormtroopers; they are menacing—and even scary. Led by a wolf-looking pirate, each one looks different and unique, partially because so many of them are aliens (more on that later). 

Our story, however, starts on the planet At Attin, a quaint little suburban planet that successfully translates the Amblin-like Anytown, U.S.A. setting of so many ’80s movies to space. (Of course, there are even space bikes here.) It’s a location unlike anything else we’ve seen in the franchise before, and it’s quite cool that Skeleton Crew seems to be doing more with this planet than just using it for film reference. Instead, At Attin is essential to the show. It quickly becomes clear that there’s something strange about this planet (and not just because audiences have never seen a suburb in Star Wars before). For one thing, kids are assigned a job for life after a single exam when they’re 12; for another, there are many security droids around that keep talking about “the barrier” that surrounds the planet. Most importantly, no one seems to know where this planet is yet a whole bunch of pirates are confident that it’s a mythical planet full of treasure. (Yes, this is Treasure Planet: A Star Wars Story.)

The titular crew here includes Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), the kid with a big imagination and even bigger dreams whose dad is too busy with work to pay attention to him. There’s also Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Wim’s best friend and the show’s comic relief, who has a big and loving family whose life should be protected at any cost. He is a wonderful work of character design and a stunning combination of practical effects and motion-capture performance. Then there’s the slightly older Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), a tenacious girl who talks down to pirates and boys alike and cares about bikes more than grades but is also a star student whose mom is part of the school administration. Finally, there’s KB (Kyriana Kratter), who is without a doubt the coolest kid at school, with her slick silver hair and a cybernetic implant that looks like Lobot’s in Empire Strikes Back (only hers can turn into a badass cyberpunk visor). The two boys are absolute dorks, often fantasizing about Jedi and grand adventures, while the two girls are the Han and Chewie of the group—that is, rebellious, badasses and with sick rides. Even if they aren’t exactly the most fleshed out or nuanced characters just yet, the chemistry between the four is wonderful so far.

The first two episodes of Skeleton Crew feel very much like the first half of an Amblin movie. The first installment sells the idea of suburban Star Wars, establishing the characters and their quiet, boring lives and their—or at least Wim’s—desire to go on an adventure. Of course, Wim gets more than he thought he wanted when he accidentally finds what he thinks is a hidden Jedi temple buried on his way to school that turns out to be an old pirate spaceship. Because the curious kid cannot resist pushing the big blinking button, Wim activates the ship, which jumps to hyperspace and sends the kids far away, leaving them stranded with no way to get home. We don’t know who the ship belonged to, but judging by the skeletons scattered throughout it, they are long gone. Only a droid remains, SM 33 (Nick Frost), who is fantastic, a gruff-looking one that talks like a pirate from a ’50s movie and whose punches land extremely hard. 

The second episode is all about the realization that adventures are not like they look in picture books and that the galaxy is full of dangerous criminals who want to kill them. Fern successfully convinces SM 33 that she murdered the ship’s captain and took their place, which makes the droid agree to help the kids get home. When he realizes none of them knows where the kids’ planet is, he decides to drop them off at a nearby spaceport and pirate haven while he fixes the ship. Of course, the moment the pirates see a bunch of kids with clean clothes, handing off Old Republic credits like they just won the jackpot at the casino and talking about a planet that they know only as the “lost planet of eternal treasure,” all hell breaks loose. SM tries to help but he is shot down and the kids get thrown in prison. 

The adventure has just begun, but it is already clear this is a different, much smaller-scale story than we’ve seen in the franchise before (even if the mystery of At Attin could end up being much more connected to the rest of the canon). More importantly, even if tonally this is quite the polar opposite of Andor, both are stories that have actual stakes and danger. We’re not following skilled warriors but regular people (kids, in this case) in impossible situations and pitted against extremely violent and oppressive villains. That is, at least, until the kids are thrown in prison and a mysterious guy played by Jude Law shows up—promising to help them find their way home if they let him tag along—who proceeds to use the Force to get the jail keys. So much for our powerless protagonists. 

Stray observations

• • Okay, but seriously, when are we getting a Neel trilogy?
• • Skeleton Crew has a stunning variety of aliens and showcases all sorts of weird little guys that are imaginatively designed. With the franchise usually being rather human-centric, it’s great to see this show capture the magic of seeing the Mos Eisley Cantina sequence for the first time.
• • The dynamic between Fern and Wim is fantastic, with her relishing in trying to scare the boys by telling creepy stories (like how a kid who missed his assessment like Wim was supposedly sent to work at the mines, where he was never heard of again).
• • Watching the kids act terrified when their ship first jumps into hyperspace makes me think that it’s been a long time since Star Wars has been portrayed as scary. Back in the day, the franchise used to be filled with moments of fear, like Vader’s entrance or the trash-compactor sequence. It’s clear that horror and danger lurks at every corner here.
• • Wim carries credits that one of the pirates says are from the Old Republic. Does he mean the Galactic Republic from the prequels or the Old, Old Republic from the games?