Star Wars: The Smart Reason Why Skeleton Crew Didn’t Have MandoVerse Cameos

Fair warning — there are spoilers ahead! Now that Star Wars: Skeleton Crew has wrapped up its season, we can say for sure that there were no cameos from other franchise characters, or crossovers with other shows or movies. This breaks a trend for Star Wars Disney+ streaming shows, and it surprised many fans since we got confirmation that Skeleton Crew is set in the same time period as The Mandalorian and other shows of that era. In a new interview with Screen Rant, series co-creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford explained that they simply never felt like a crossover would have enhanced their story in any way.

Ford said that they were “open to” the idea of crossovers and cameos in the early stages of planning Skeleton Crew, and fans may be pleased to hear that Disney and Lucasfilm did not try to force any synergy on the showrunners. Watts explained, “It’s not like anyone at Lucasfilm was like, ‘You can’t do that.’ If anything, they were like, ‘Yeah, if any opportunities come up, we’re totally open to that,’ but we were focused on making our stories work. It was kind of a scenario where we got to the end of writing the first season, and we made it through without needing any cameos.”

“And then when we’d look back and be like, ‘Could we stick one in?’ It would mess it up, so we didn’t,” Ford added. “We built this little thing.” Of course, Star Wars has become a very intricately connected franchise, and Watts said that they are excited to see if and how their new characters might slot into the galaxy somewhere down the line.

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“I’m much more interested in the idea of getting people to like these characters without using cameos as a crutch,” he said. “And then potentially in the future, seeing our characters as they grow up, [we’d see] how they would fit into the larger galaxy. I think there’s a lot of possibilities there.”

It’s nice to hear that crossovers were not required for this show after previous Star Wars titles have been criticized for cameos that felt forced. In particular, the Mandalorian interlude in The Book of Boba Fett was condemned by many fans for feeling like a complete diversion from the plot — and for complicating the process of watching The Mandalorian itself. Fans who opted to skip Boba Fett would have missed some important parts of Din Djarin’s story.

Skeleton Crew is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+, and so far the studio hasn’t announced whether or not this show will be renewed for another season. The next Star Wars title on the way is Andor Season 2, premiering on April 22nd, 2025 on Disney+.