Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Finale Proves That Callback Connections Are the Franchise’s Achilles Heel

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew may not have the highest viewing hours of some of Disney+’s other Star Wars shows, but it still managed to impress those who did watch it. Skeleton Crew‘s final episode stuck the landing, delivering on its Goonies meets Star Wars adventure movie feel. However, there were some aspects of the show’s ending that many fans didn’t like – the callbacks to other Star Wars media.

Skeleton Crew showed that major callbacks aren’t integral to good Star Wars, which is why the finale’s callbacks – Jod’s origin and the New Republic’s arrival on At Attin – felt so incongruous. In fact, moments like these weaken Star Wars as a whole. Nostalgia can be poison, and modern day Star Wars is proving that.

Callbacks Stifle Creativity

The original trilogy introduced moviegoers to the galaxy far, far away nearly fifty years ago, making Star Wars a part of the cultural lexicon. Those three movies established several things which would become shorthand for Star Wars in the minds of audiences – lightsabers, Jedi, desert planets, X-Wings, stormtroopers, and Death Stars. The prequel trilogy would add the Sith and clone troopers to the list while deploying many of the tropes set up by the Original Trilogy. Nearly every piece of Star Wars media out there included some of these elements.

Callbacks are hard to get past in Star Wars, because these tropes have become the ones that set the franchise apart from other pieces of science fiction. However, these aspects aren’t the only thing that define the series. One of the great things about Star Wars is that it’s been going on for so long, it has become its own setting. There are thousands of years of history and multiple eras, all of which have their own unique feel, and a Star Wars story can easily be told without ever showing a lightsaber or familiar starfighter.

There’s a difference between a callback and the setting, which is something many people working on Star Wars have forgotten. For example, setting something in the era of the Empire isn’t a callback, but throwing in stormtroopers just for the sake of having stormtroopers is a problem. Constantly reminding people of things that came before in order to keep them watching has become a hallmark of Star Wars that many people have gotten tired of.

Related: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Creators Explain Why Finale Has No Cliffhanger (And They’re Right)

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew started having callbacks early into its run. Jod Na Nawood’s Jedi origins were hinted at when he was introduced to Wim, Neel, KB, and Fern, and fans got to see X-Wing fighters in action as early as the third episode. However, it also did its best to be its own story, taking fans to new worlds and on different kinds of adventures. The best parts of the show were the characters, the plot, the feel of it, and not the obvious callbacks to the Jedi. If anything, those callbacks were groan-inducing moments.

Now, obviously, it could have been worse. Jod’s origin – that he was trained by a Jedi on the run from the Empire – was better than the cliche “he escaped Order 66 and has been in hiding ever since,” but it could have been more interesting if his Force talents were self-taught, something he learned to survive on his own. There was never any need for him to find a lightsaber. Introducing that the New Republic could come and save the day was fine, but it would have been more impactful if the kids led the people of At Attin to save themselves. At the very least, there could have been a new fighter or ship introduced, ones that weren’t callbacks to the ships of the original trilogy.

These callbacks were safe choices that actively hurt the story. They were “‘member berries,” meant to remind everyone that this is Star Wars. The audience doesn’t need to be beaten over the head with that fact – we know this is Star Wars because it’s in the title. Skeleton Crew was going in unique directions and all the callbacks did was make it seem like Lucasfilm didn’t trust that it would be good enough.

Star Wars Needs Innovation

When George Lucas created Star Wars, he took inspiration from many different things – Flash Gordon and the various movie serials of his youth, Kurosawa samurai movies, Joesph Campbell’s heroic myths – all of which are a part of Star Wars’s DNA. However, the reason why Star Wars worked so well was because the films were able to take those familiar things and create something entirely new from them. Star Wars innovated and that’s why it became such a huge part of pop culture.

Star Wars doesn’t innovate anymore because it gets to bogged down by callbacks. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew used the Star Wars universe to tell a story that the franchise hasn’t told very much – a group of sheltered children find themselves led through dangers they never imagined by a shady “guardian” – and there was the potential to tell its story without any of the common callbacks. Of course, that’s not what happened.

Look at the most panned pieces of Star Wars media since the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm. What do they all have in common? Nostalgia driven callbacks. If Star Wars is ever going to grow, it needs to leave the past behind. Star Wars has always been an amalgamation of influences, but if it just uses itself for influence, it will never be able to reach the heights of success it once did.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is streaming in its entirety on Disney+.