Star Wars: Skeleton Crew had an uphill battle in front of it. When the teaser trailer first dropped, the diehard Star Wars “fans” decried it because it had lawns and suburbia and those weren’t Star Wars. These are the same people who complained about the bricks in Andor, though, so most Star Wars fans knew to ignore them. However, that doesn’t change the reticence towards Skeleton Crew. If anyone had asked fans which show was going to be better last year, most people probably would have picked Star Wars: The Acolyte, the show that dealt with the High Republic Jedi battling the Sith years before the prequels.
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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew‘s viewers’ hours weren’t as high as The Acolyte, but the fans that gave the show a chance loved it. There are many reasons why — great characters, that Goonies feel, incredible mystery box storytelling — but one very important thing is that Disney allowed Star Wars: Skeleton Crew to be unique. The show didn’t bank on nostalgia, and that paid dividends.
Skeleton Crew Felt Like Star Wars Without Being Slavishly Devoted to Star Wars
Disney paid four billion dollars for Lucasfilm. That’s an obscene amount of money and they wanted a return on their investment as quickly as possible. This led to the sequel trilogy, whose first installment, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was an exercise in nostalgia. The movie took ideas and scenes from the original trilogy, putting them on screen with new characters in familiar spots, and called it a day. Disney knew that the best way to make their money back as quickly as possible was to use the power of nostalgia.
Ever since then, Disney’s Star Wars output has been obsessed with callbacks. Take a look at all the Star Wars projects of the last thirteen years — the sequels (well, except Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but we all know how that turned out, unfortunately), The Mandalorian, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Star Wars: Ahsoka, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi, even Star Wars: Andor to an extent. All of those films and shows were filled with callbacks to the original trilogy and the prequels. However, Skeleton Crew went a different way.
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Sure, Jod Na Nawood uses the Force and gets a lightsaber. But what other callbacks were there? The show did reference how the New Republic was fighting with the pirates, something that has been happening in the background of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, but is that really a callback? The show owed more to kids movie classics of the 1980s than Star Wars. However, the show also always felt like Star Wars. Port Borgo felt like the Mos Eisley Cantina mixed with Jabba’s Palace mixed with every hive of scum and villainy from Legends. The technology, the characters, and the locales all felt like Star Wars without copying something from a previous project.
There were no galaxy-shaking battles between good and evil. Jod wasn’t a Padawan veteran of the Clone Wars. There were no stormtroopers or desert planets. What there was is what made Star Wars popular in the first place: a familiar story, a group of cloistered children having an adventure in the greater world, interesting characters, and intriguing mysteries. It unfolds in an organic way, never feeling like it’s ticking off boxes on a list titled “Star Wars Things”. It just told a great story. What a concept.
Skeleton Crew Is up There With Andor as Peak Star Wars
Andor worked so well because it took Star Wars in new directions, albeit ones that were always there. Andor is about the effects of fascism on society, and Star Wars, at its core, has always been a fight against fascism. Andor did have some callbacks, but it still felt unique. Skeleton Crew does much the same thing. The show digs into the seedy side of things that have always been a part of Star Wars, but does so in such a way that feels completely fresh. It’s Star Wars that doesn’t need to throw Star Wars in your face.
Skeleton Crew shows that Star Wars is more than Sith and Jedi or Rebels and Imperials. Over the last 48 years, Star Wars has created a universe where anything can happen. The best parts of Star Wars — be they Legends or canon — have always dug into this universe and showed off new corners of it. Star Wars doesn’t need a checklist. It just needs great characters, jaw-dropping action, and smart storytelling. That’s it. A lot of people didn’t watch Skeleton Crew, but they need to. It’s everything that Star Wars should be without being everything that Star Wars has been.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is streaming in its entirety on Disney+.
