Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Finally Contributes to a Franchise Tradition

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew waited until Episode 7 to participate in the franchise’s longest running gag. This week, we heard Nooma (Geneva Carr) deliver the classic line: “I have a bad feeling about this,” as many other Star Wars greats have before her. Read on for more but fair warning: there are spoilers ahead!

Fans across the galaxy will need to update their supercuts this week. Nooma, Neel’s mother, gave them a fresh take on the classic “I have a bad feeling about this” catchphrase, as she was interrupted and unable to finish the line. It still counts in the annals of Star Wars history, which go back nearly half a century now. For those unaware, “I have a bad feeling about this” has become memetic within the fandom since the release of A New Hope in 1977.

You may recall the first delivery of this line — as the Millennium Falcon approached the Death Star, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hammill) muttered: “I have a bad feeling about this.” A few scenes later as the walls of the trash compactor began to close in, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) was a bit more fatalistic as he said: “I got a bad feeling about this.” Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) got to take the line for a spin in The Empire Strikes Back when the Falcon landed inside the belly of a space slug, and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) rephrased it again in Return of the Jedi as he and R2D2 walked into Jabba the Hutt’s palace.

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All the utterances of this line have been tallied up by fans in various places online. It’s present in all nine films in the Skywalker Saga, as well as Solo: A Star Wars Story and Rogue One. It’s repeated many times in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels and once in Star Wars Resistance. On Disney+, the line has been included in Ahsoka, The Acolyte and now Skeleton Crew. Meanwhile, its use in books, comics and video games is extensive, especially when counting the Legends timeline and all of its content.

It’s hard to say how and when exactly the phrase became self-referential. Lucas wrote the screenplay for A New Hope himself, but handed those duties over to Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan for the rest of the original trilogy. He wrote the prequel trilogy, though shared co-writing duties with Jonathan Hales on Attack of the Clones. The sequel trilogy is much more scattered, with Kasdan notably credited on The Force Awakens.

It’s easy to imagine that many writers in the franchise were paying homage to Lucas, though some fans online also mock him, calling this line trite and predictable. For most, it’s the kind of harmless Easter egg that provides a little casual continuity as this franchise morphs and grows through different technology, corporate owners and creative hands.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is streaming now on Disney+. The final episode of the season premieres there on Tuesday, January 18th.