Josh Reviews Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is the latest new Star Wars show on Disney+.  It seems to be flying somewhat under the cultural radar, which is shame, because I found it to be an absolute delight!  This is well-worth the time of any Star Wars fan out there!  (By the way, so too is the last Star Wars show, The Acolyte.  That series received an avalanche of online hate, and Disney was incredibly cowardly in cancelling it.  The series isn’t perfect, but it’s an awesome show with an array of wonderful new characters and some kick-ass action.  Check it out if you missed it!  OK, now back to Skeleton Crew…!)

The series has a brilliant premise: it’s about four suburban Star Wars kids who grew up loving Star Wars and then go on a Star Wars adventure!  The series captures the magical kids-on-an-adventure tone of Amblin in the eighties, of films like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and The Goonies.  This hit all of my joy buttons.  The show has four kids as its lead characters, but this isn’t a kiddie show.  It’s an all-ages show in the classic Star Wars tradition.  It’s fun and exciting, and while there are a few dark turns, everything turns out all right in the end.  Creators Jon Watts (who directed all three wonderful Spider-Man MCU films) and Christopher Ford (who was one of the screenwriters for Spider-Man: Homecoming) have made something special here.

Is this “essential” Star Wars viewing?  No; it has very few connections to the broader Star Wars saga.  There are no Skywalkers or Mandalorians to be found.  But that’s also very much the show’s charm!  There is little baggage to this show; you don’t need to have seen five other shows to enjoy this one.  It’s pleasingly stand-alone and accessible to all audiences.  Again: just like Star Wars should be!

I love that the show begins in a Star Wars suburban neighborhood; something we’ve never seen in Star Wars before!  We’re on the planet At Attin.  It turns out the planet has a secret; a reason it’s been isolated away from the rest of the galaxy.  But the kids who live there don’t know that yet; they don’t realize the degree to which they’ve been sheltered from all the various Star Wars happening across the Star Wars galaxy during the events of the main “Skywalker Saga” films.  (Skeleton Crew is set around the same time period as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, though you don’t need to know that; so we’re several years after Return of the Jedi and still a ways before the rise of the First Order and the events of The Force Awakens and the sequel trilogy.)

The show focuses on four main kids, and I loved all four of them.  Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) dreams of Jedi and their adventures.  In school, he’s distracted and unfocused.  When the show opens, he’s about to take an important exam that will set the course of his life and career, but his penchant for chasing dreams means he bungles that big-time.  Wim’s best friend is Neel, an elephant-like alien who is a kind-hearted innocent.  He enjoys having fun with Wim, but Neel has no interest in breaking the rules.  Neel was voiced and performed by Robert Timothy Smith, along with performance artist Kacie Borrowman.  Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is a smart but headstrong girl, rebelling against her rules-following mother who has an important position in their city.  Fern’s best friend is KB (Kyriana Kratter), a brave and fiercely intelligent girl with cybernetic implants (which she got after an accident).

I love all of those kids, but Neel is easily my favorite.  I love this sweet, goofy, innocent kid (who just wants to be able to take a bath uninterrupted!).  Visually he’s incredible — a fantastic combination of amazing animatronic prosthetics, visual effects, voice acting and physical performance.  The result is an indelible character.  (I also love that the one alien kid in the group of kids has the most normal name: pronounced “Neal”.  That’s absolutely perfect.)  As I’d noted above, it’s fun that the show sets up these kids — particularly Wim and Neel — as Star Wars fans.  To them, it’s “in-universe” fandom; but Wim reads about the Jedi and dreams of being one just like so many “real” kids have done since 1977… and when they show Wim and Neel having a pretend lightsaber fight (including the kids’ making the sounds!!) I was so happy!!

Early in their adventures, the kids encounter Jod (Jude Law) and help him escape from imprisonment.  Jod claims to be a Jedi and demonstrates Force powers, but everyone the kids encounter warn them not to trust him.  I love Jude Law in this role!!  He’s perfect as a a character who is fun and dangerous in equal measure.  We (and the kids) never know quite where we stand with Jod, and Mr. Law walks the line perfectly in his performance.  And he brings the Han Solo-like swagger that is so important for at least one character to have in a Star Wars story!!

The kids’ other ally (at least, most of the time) is the droid SM-33, voiced by Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Spaced, Truth Seekers).  Wow, here’s yet another wonderfully memorable (and lovable) Star Wars droid!  I love the look of SM-33; I love his shambling walk; I love the little rat that lives in his eye-socket, and I love the very piratey voice he’s given by Nick Frost.  (And I smiled at the joke in his name — a reference, of course, to Captain Hook’s boatswain!)

This whole show is very piratey, and I loved it!  There are lots of actual space pirates around to menace the kids (including one alien pirate who we saw in The Mandalorian season three), and all sorts of classic pirate-adventure tropes, albeit beautifully blended into the Star Wars universe.

The show looks fantastic.  There are some great space-ship fights, brought to life by a beautiful combination of CGI and traditional model-work.  And the show is jam-packed with fantastic creatures and aliens, many of which were performed utilizing gorgeous practical suits, masks, and animatronics.  There were so many wonderful alien pirates.  I particularly enjoyed Brutus (the werewolf-like creature, of a same race as one of the aliens famously seen in the Cantina scene in the original Star Wars).  I also loved the enormous Cthulthu-like alien who the kids befriend at the spa in episode five… and also the amazing trash-crabs, featured in that same episode!  (Click here for an interesting article exploring the show’s creature effects.)

This is a great show!  Go watch it!

Shall we dig in deeper?  Beware some SPOILERS ahead!

I loved the naming convention for the series’ episode titles, each taken from a notable line of dialogue in that episode.  That was cool!

I enjoyed that the show allowed us to also spend some time with the kids’ parents.  Tunde Adebimpe was wonderful as Wim’s nerdy, somewhat bumbling dad, and Kerry Condon (Better Call Saul, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, The Banshees of Inisherin) was great as Fern’s mom.

I loved the rat that lived in SM-33’s eye (and I gasped when I thought Jod was going to squish him late in the season!  I breathed a sigh of relief when Jod’s foot just nudged him aside).

I quite enjoyed both looks of the Onyx Cinder — the original beat-up look and the sleek, shiny look revealed late in the season.  A pirate show needs a cool ship, and the Onyx Cinder delivered for me.

I liked the owl-like alien map-maker Kh’ymm (voiced by Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat).  Kelly MacDonald (No Country for Old Men, Gosford Park, Choke, Brave) was terrific in a small role as the bounty hunter Pokkit, who causes trouble for Jod and the gang.  (I’d love to see more of her in a future Star Wars show!)  I smiled to see Jaleel White (Urkel from Family Matters!!) as a pirate, Gunter.  It was a pleasure hearing the voice of Stephen Fry (A Fish Called Wanda, Gosford Park, V for Vendetta, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) as the “Supervisor” on At-Attin.

I laughed a lot when Wim accidentally activated a lightsaber upside-down.

I enjoyed the way the mystery of At Attin played out over the course of the season.  It was nice to see this show, set in the Mandalorian timeline, also connect to the High Republic era of The Acolyte.  While I’d have liked the show to have given us some more specific answers to some of its central questions (why was At-Attin hidden away, along with the other planets?  When did that happen?  Why didn’t they know what had happened to the Old Republic?  Why didn’t anyone on the planet question why they were continuing their “great work” when decades had passed without contact with the outside universe?  Was there always a droid in charge, or did that happen after a living “supervisor” died off?  Did the other adults all know they were being ruled by a droid?), I was satisfied with the answers we got.  I can guess at most of what the show didn’t spell out.

I was also pleased with how the mystery of Jod played out.  It was obvious to me that Jod and the pirate captain Silvo (seen in the opening minutes of the first episode) were one and the same (though others in my household were surprised at that revelation).  My main question watching the show was whether Jod would wind up being a good guy or a bad guy.  I was pleasantly surprised they stuck with him being a bad guy in the end!!  I’d expected that at the end he’d give himself up to save the kids, as a sort of minor redemption, but I liked that that didn’t happen!  I loved the way Jude Law played this character.  Jod is a villain, but he’s not EVIL and he doesn’t want to see the kids suffer, he just wants to get rich.  (I loved how Mr. Law played Jod’s pure bliss when he discovers the enormous vaults of gold credits!)  Watching the show, I was also wondering whether Jod was faking his Jedi powers (a la Haja Estree in the Obi-Wan Kenobi show); I’m glad he wasn’t.  I have questions about Jod’s backstory (was he a padawan before the purge?  Or was he discovered by a Jedi on the run after the purge?), but the show gave me enough info for now.  (If there’s a second season, I’d love to explore Jod’s backstory further.)

I loved seeing the New Republic heroes arrive to save the day in the finale.  It was fun to see X-Wings in action against that huge (and awesome-looking) pirate ship.  And we got to see B-Wings in action in live-action for the first time!!!  That was amazing!!!  What a Star Wars deep cut!!  I loved getting to see the B-Wings use their laser.  (The B-Wing was designed for Return of the Jedi, but production problems meant the ship wasn’t featured in the battle scenes.  Star Wars fandom had a lot of fun expanding upon this ship over the years, until finally the ship and its super-laser made a canonical appearance on screen in the animated Star Wars: Rebels.)  My only complaint was that I really wanted to see an actual New Republic character appear.  How about getting to see Carson Teva from The Mandalorian?  Or how about Zeb or one of the other Rebels of Ahsoka characters?  That would have been really cool, and would have enhanced the impact of the arrival of the New Republic fighters in the finale.

I’m so glad the season didn’t end on a cliffhanger.  I’m very happy these days when streaming shows tell a complete story in one season, as opposed to ending on a cliffhanger and making the audience wait years for a resolution.  This is particularly an issue with these Star Wars shows.  (The Acolyte was cancelled, so we may never see its story completed, while Ahsoka is making us wait years for season two).

I do wish that final episode had given us another five minutes to tells us a bit more about what happened next.  How would the people of At Attin respond to learning the truth about what has been going on in the rest of the universe?  Would this cause chaos in their society?  Would they start now making money for the New Republic?  Would they restore the planetary shield, or would they now remain open to the universe?  I have so many questions!!  I wish we got a bit more of a sense of what was next for these people.  I also would have loved to have had one more scene with Jude Law’s character.  Was Jod at all remorseful?  Did he escape, or was he captured and imprisoned?  (I assume they wanted to leave his fate open, so if there’s a second season they could do whatever they wanted with him; I understand that, but nevertheless I wanted a bit more resolution for him.)

I thoroughly enjoyed Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.  I had a great time watching every one of these eight episodes.  This is fun, classic Star Wars storytelling.  If this one season is all we get, I’m satisfied, but I’d love to see this show return for a series two.  Come on, Disney!!

Please help support my work by:

• Purchasing a copy of my latest comic book, The Beast and the Booth, an all-ages Sukkot monster story!
• Purchasing a copy of my comic book, Brother’s Keeper, which tells a true story from Israel’s 1948 War for Independence.  Click here to order a print copy, or click here to read it FREE on Kindle Unlimited!!
• Purchasing a copy of my graphic novel, José and the Pirate Captain Toledano, a story of Jewish pirates that’s also a powerful coming-of-age story about “finding one’s tribe” and one’s place in the world.
• Purchasing my Star Wars/Highlander mash-up t-shirt from Woot!

Please support my website by clicking through one of my Amazon links the next time you need to shop!  As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.  That means I’ll receive a small percentage from ANY product you purchase from Amazon within 24 hours after clicking through.  Thank you!