Star Wars

All the Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Easter Eggs and References You Might’ve Missed, From Captain EO to Pirates of the Caribbean

Here is every Easter egg, reference, and callback contained in the Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premiere.

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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is a treasure trove of Easter eggs. Monday’s two-episode series premiere of the Disney+ series introduced four young adventure seekers from the Amblin-esque suburbs of At Attin: a mythical “lost planet of eternal treasure,” according to pirate lore. When the Jedi-obsessed Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) uncovered the Onyx Cinder — a long-buried pirate starship he mistook for a lost Jedi temple — he was whisked away with best friend Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) and hoverbike racers Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and KB (Kyriana Kratter) into hyperspace, breaching the Barrier of At Attin and getting lost in the galaxy’s Outer Rim Territories.

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Far from home and the protection of the nascent New Republic, Wim, Neel, Fern, and KB will embark on the adventure of a lifetime with the Force user Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) and rusty pirate droid SM-33 (Nick Frost), first mate of the Onyx Cinder who identifies Fern as his new captain after the stowaways accidentally activate the droid in an attempt to get home.

Here, we’re breaking down some of the many Easter eggs you might have missed in the first two episodes of Skeleton Crew, “This Could Be a Real Adventure” and “Way, Way Out Past the Barrier.”

Star Tours

Driving the tram that shuttles Wim and Neel to school is a droid that resembles RX-24, or “Rex,” the now-retired StarSpeeder pilot droid (voiced by Paul Reubens) who transported interplanetary travelers on the original Star Tours attraction at Disney’s theme parks.

Since C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) replaced RX-24 as tourist “captain,” the fan-favorite droid has appeared in the animated series Star Wars Rebels. “Rex” is now DJ R-3X, resident DJ droid at Oga’s Cantina at Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, which is set in Black Spire Outpost on the Outer Rim planet Batuu.

The Great Work

Fern’s mother, Undersecretary Fara (Kerry Condon), administers the career assessment test that will put students on the path to becoming part of At Attin’s contribution to the “Great Work” keeping the Republic “peaceful and strong.”

In The High Republic era of Star Wars storytelling that includes canon comic books and novels set centuries before The Phantom Menace, Lina Soh, Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, envisioned “a galaxy of Great Works” that included championing a unified galaxy with the Republic Fair and establishing the Republic’s Starlight Beacon space station as a symbol of hope and unity. More specifically, Chancellor Soh’s Great Works were projects she set up in hopes of bringing Outer Rim planets into the Republic.

The Old Republic

Wim’s Systems Coordinator father, Wendle (Tunde Adebimpe), gives him lunch money that turns out to be Old Republic credits — in “mint condition,” as pointed out when Wim tries to settle his debt with a greedy fry cook (Anthony Atamanuik). This draws the attention of the pirate scum on Port Borgo (more on that later), so Wim hides his “dataries.” This little-used term was first used when the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) tried to spend 20,000 to purchase a T-14 hyperdrive generator on Tatooine in The Phantom Menace — only to be informed by the merchant Watto (Andy Secombe) that “Republic credits are no good out here.”

The Star Wars Holiday Special

When Wim visit’s Neel’s home, his family — the adorable baby Tuloo and the twins Jobo and Jorko — are seen watching the same circus hologram from 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special that appears on the viewscreen in the home of Chewbacca’s Wookiee family on their home planet Kashyyyk.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Wim’s neighborhood evokes “Spielburbia,” a coin termed “for the American suburb as envisioned by Steven Spielberg.” More specifically, the neighborhood nestled in the lush green hills of At Attin brings to mind the suburbs from Spielberg’s 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. See the comparison (E.T. above and Skeleton Crew below):

The Goonies

Neel bumping into a pirate’s skeleton to the sting of a curt musical cue aboard the Onyx Cinder pays homage to a similar moment in The Goonies, where the camera “jumps” at the sight of the skeleton of the pirate captain One-Eyed Willy while exploring his ship. Co-creators Jon Watts and Chris Ford have cited the Richard Donner-directed Goonies as one of the biggest influences on Skeleton Crew.

SM-33

The Onyx Cinder‘s first mate is the droid SM-33 (“33” for short), which is a reference to Mr. Smee: the boatswain who serves under the Jolly Roger‘s Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

David Lowery, who directed “Way, Way Out Past the Barrier,” previously directed Law in 2023’s Peter Pan & Wendy, where the actor starred as the pirate captain Hook.

Star Wars Rebels and Andor

While SM-33’s memory bank has no record of At Attin, the droid names a few similarly-named planets from across the Star Wars galaxy: Atollon, once the location of Chopper Base in Star Wars Rebels; and Aldhani, the “sulfurous bog world” where the Empire had established a garrison as seen on Andor.

Port Borgo: Borgo Prime

The starport that SM-33 directs the children toward is Port Borgo, a hive of scum and villainy where “you’ll rest well in a soft bed or a shallow grave.” The pirate port is named after Borgo Prime, a location that has since passed into Star Wars Legends. In the 1995 Legends novel Young Jedi Knights: Shadow Academy, Luke Skywalker travels to a seedy starport on the asteroid Borgo Prime that is described as being “filled with people who have no conscience — thieves, murderers, creatures who would just as soon kill you as greet you.”

The Teek Ferryman

The “wee Ferryman” who takes the children to the port is a Teek, rodent-like simian forest dwellers that typically scavenge and steal from animal nests and Ewok dwellings. This unnamed Ferryman resembles Teek and Yeep, both Teeks from Legends who appear in non-canon installments like Star Tours and the TV movie Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.

The Acolyte and Alien Species

Some of the alien species seen populating Port Borgo include the Theelin Melna (Paloma Garcia-Lee), the dance club worker who tried to get Fern and KB to a transport when she warned the girls that Borgo is “full of the nastiest pirates in the sector.” The Jedi padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen), who trained under Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) during the time of The High Republic in the Star Wars series The Acolyte, was half-human, half-Theelin.

Other species spotted in episode 2 include a Warthog, which first appeared as part of the pirate Captain Gorian Shard on The Mandalorian season 3; a Gran, the three-eyed aliens who appeared in The Phantom Menace as a podracer; the Quarren, the squid-headed species that have appeared in everything from Return of the Jedi to Star Wars Battlefront; and Weequays, the species that includes famed pirate Hondo Ohnaka: a fan-favorite from The Clone Wars, Rebels, and the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run ride within Galaxy’s Edge.

Vane

Another familiar face encountered on Port Borgo is the Kajain’sa’Nikto pirate Vane (Marti Matulis), who served as part of Gorian Shard’s gang in the Dalicron sector until the pirates were defeated by the Mandalorians Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) on Nevarro in The Mandalorian season 3 episode “Chapter 21: The Pirate.” Vane abandoned ship as Captain Shard went down with the Corsair.

Et tu, Brutus?

The werewolf-like pirate who leads a mutiny against the masked pirate Captain Silvo (who sounds suspiciously like Jude Law…) aboard a bulk freighter is Brutus (Fred Tatasciore), a member of the Shistavanen species that first appeared in the Mos Eisley cantina in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope (in Legends, that lupine was identified as Lak Sivrak).

The “werewolves” have since appeared in issues of the Marvel comics Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Poe Dameron, Galaxy’s Edge, and The High Republic. Brutus shares his name with the Roman politician Marcus Junius Brutus, famously known for turning on his friend and mentor in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. “Et tu, Brute?”

Lobot

While on Port Borgo, the children catch the eye of the pirate Gunter (Jaleel White), who is wearing a cybernetic implant device called the AJ^6 cyborg construct. The construct was made famous by Lobot (John Hollis) — the longtime aide of Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) introduced in 1980’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back — but has also been worn by the Rodian Tseebo (as seen on Star Wars Rebels) and Echo, the clone trooper who was rebuilt as a cyborg (as seen on Star Wars: The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch).

Snowball

The four-eyed rodent that has burrowed into SM-33’s circuits, causing his memory to fail, is named Snowball. The rat’s name appears to be a reference to the 1960 British New Wave film Snowball, which starred Kenneth Griffith as Phil Hart: a bus conductor with memory problems.

Captain EO

The caged creature that catches the eye of KB is the species of flying fur that counts Fuzzball, the sidekick of Michael Jackson’s Captain EO in the George Lucas-produced Disney Parks short film. The 17-minute film also features the elephant-like alien Hooter, who resembles Neel’s unnamed species.

8D8

The tattooed droid seen tattooing a Klatooinian pirate is an 8D-series smelter droid like 8D8, who tortured droids in Jabba’s Palace in Return of the Jedi and served Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) when the bounty hunter seized Jabba the Hutt’s criminal empire in The Book of Boba Fett. In another nod to the 1983 movie, Skeleton Crew‘s 8D ruins a tattoo of the Desilijic symbol of the Hutt clan that included Jabba before his death.

Pirates of the Caribbean

When Captain Brutus captures the children and locks them in the brig on Port Borgo, the sound of whistling is taken from Walt Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. It’s the whistle that three pirates locked behind bars use when trying to tempt the dog that holds the key, and the shot is framed in such a way that Fern, Wim, and KB look like the three pirates as they try to get Snowball to retrieve a key that is juuuust out of reach.

“We went back and watched a bunch of pirate serials and classic pirate films from the twenties and thirties,” series co-creator and episode 1 director Watts told StarWars.com about the many influences on Skeleton Crew. “It was important to create that tension, showing that the galaxy is scary and dangerous and that the galaxy is also peaceful and boring.”

Over the course of eight episodes, viewers may spot more Easter eggs and references to the series that pulls inspiration from The Goonies, E.T. Amblin’s E.T., the LucasArts game Monkey Island, and Lucasfilm’s own Indiana Jones franchise.

“I loved Monkey Island as a kid and I still do, and so getting to do space pirates was something that allowed me to check back in,” Watts said. “And Amblin always stands out to me because there was a feeling that they took the kids seriously. They didn’t feel like kids’ movies when you watched them as a kid, and even now looking back, they feel like grown up films that just happened to star kids.”

Set in the post-Return of the Jedi era of the New Republic, Skeleton Crew tells the story of four kids searching for their home planet after getting lost in the Star Wars galaxy, and the strange aliens and dangerous places they encounter on their adventure.

Starring Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith, Nick Frost, and Jude Law, new episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premiere Tuesdays only on Disney+.






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