Star Wars: Skeleton Crew‘s finale episode finally revealed whether Jude Law’s rascally character, Jod Na Nawood, was a Jedi or not. And the answer is: sort of. In an emotionally charged confrontation with fantasy-fixated protagonist Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Jod tries to shatter the young boy’s whimsical sense of the Jedi by revealing what the “real” Jedi experience is like. That involved Jod talking about his own painful backstory: being an impoverished youngling living on the streets in the Imperial era, who was discovered by a surviving Jedi Master and inspired to become a padawan. However, the Empire soon hunted his master down and killed her, leaving Jod’s fantastical dreams forever replaced with a pirate’s cynicism and hunger for selfish gains.
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Jod Na Nawood was always positioned to be a dark mirror reflection of Wim’s character, and Skeleton Crew‘s finale landed the plane on that subplot, impeccably. Jod killed Wim’s imagined luster of roaming the galaxy facing evildoers, and the lonely boy’s bonds with family, friends, and his community. However, before Skeleton Crew reached its conclusion I wrote a piece about why Jod is major pivotal character for the Star Wars franchise – especially if he turned out to have no real connection to the Jedi. Even though that Jedi connection was ultimately established, it doesn’t change the fact that Jod being a breakout character is major milestone victory for Star Wars.
More Fantasy, Fewer Callbacks
The entire thematic point of Rian Johnson’s divisive film Star Wars: The Last Jedi is that the wonder of Star Wars shouldn’t be relegated to just a few “chosen one” characters like the Skywalkers. Johnson liked the everyman appeal of that original Star Wars: A New Hope movie (with its depiction of Luke Skywalker as an archetypal hero) and sought to return that to the franchise, widening the scope of Force-user characters we could explore to include literally anyone in a galaxy far, far, away, while also questioning the black-and-white notions of good (Jedi) and evil (Sith) Force users. However, thanks to the immediate retcons of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker the franchise re-established that iconic and legacy Force-user characters (somehow, Palpatine returned) and factions (Jedi, Sith) would remain the go-to staples of the franchise.
Since Star Wars has moved into its TV phase via all those Disney+ series, the franchise has still been gunshy about putting a spotlight on Force-user characters that aren’t Jedi, Stih or legacy characters connected them in some way. That’s changed with the arc of Jod Na Nawood, who is a one-man proof of concept that Star Wars can tell great stories within the fantastical framework of its universe (as opposed to a show like Andor, which avoids that fantasy element entirely), without leaning into staples that have been throughouhly exhausted by now (the Jedi, the Sith, the Skywalkers). A Force-user pirate adventurer with complicated ethics and questionable morality is not only a fun addition to an ensemble show like Skeleton Crew – it’s the kind of character more viewers would love to follow into future projects, and see more examples of throughout the franchise: All the fantastical fun of Star Wars, without any of the heavy lore burdens. The franchise would do well to learn from Jod’s example.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is now streaming on Disney+.
