STAR WARS: SKELETON CREW – Season One

It’s been a rough few years for Star Wars fans. Honestly, it’s been a rough few decades. Since Disney acquired George Lucas’s esteemed franchise in 2012, their films and television shows have been controversial. The question of who’s to blame for this difficult patch depends on who you ask. Some will say that the old-school, mostly male fandom is to blame for being too critical of new content and not wanting to accept change. Others say the fault lies with Disney themselves, producer Kathleen Kennedy, and the uninspired storytelling and lacklustre characters that emerged during this era. I tend to fall into the latter category.

While I’ve enjoyed some of Disney’s offerings (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, Rogue One: A Star Wars Wars Story, and The Bad Batch, in particular), I’ve been disappointed with much of the content released during Kennedy’s tenure. After the travesty that was The Acolyte (2024), I desperately hoped the next show set in the Star Wars universe would prove more engaging, with better plotting and stronger characters. When trailers were released for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, I was cautiously optimistic. I liked that it focused on children and gave off an 1980s Spielbergian Stranger Things vibe. Having now watched all of the first season, I can report that my initial optimism was, mostly, justified.

Skeleton Crew is a homage to the 1980s and 1990s “kid-centric” films that I adored as a child. It centres around a group of pre-teens from the planet At-Atin, a world that seems to have taken its culture from late-20th-century suburban America. When four kids, Whim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and KB (Kyrianna Krater), find an abandoned spaceship, they accidentally take off and find themselves flying through the galaxy on an adventure filled with pirates, treasure, and danger… guided by the mysterious Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law).

The show is, for the most part, as fun as it sounds. The kids are primarily strong actors and put their most adorable faces forward, especially Kacie Borrowman and Robert Timothy Smith, who will steal your heart as the performance and voice of sweet, shy, elephant-faced Neel. It can be hit-and-miss putting kids front and centre in anything, but I’m glad to say the young actors in this one, with one notable exception, are fantastic.

Another positive is the show’s choice of characters to become more diverse. And by diversity, I don’t just mean human skin pigmentation. Star Wars contains a galaxy with thousands of alien species, and, while other shows have been focused on humanoids, I was pleased Skeleton Crew didn’t shy away from focusing on more strange and wonderful creatures.

One such main character, Gunter (Jaleel White), is a Shistavenen, or a wolf-man. This hybrid of a wolf and human has been mentioned in Star Wars video games and pictured in several episodes of The Clone Wars, but an actual character of this species had never appeared on screen until now.

Likewise, the most likeable of these children, Neel, is an Ortolan. Star Wars fans briefly saw this elephantine species appear at the head of the Max Rebo band in the Original Trilogy. However, having this large-eared and trunked creature as one of the series’ main characters is new territory.

Unlike Jar Jar Binks’s unfortunate trial and error in Star Wars—Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), these characters come off as believable and acceptable players in this universe. This is partly because technology has improved drastically since the late-’90s and because these creatures are mostly practical. Make-up and creative costuming combine seamlessly with motion capture to create a world much more lively than Lucas’ CGI creations seen in the prequels and forced upon the Original Trilogy in his divisive Special Editions. While other Star Wars directors have taken note of the failure of prequel CGI to heart, (Yoda was, thankfully, back to being a puppet in Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Skeleton Crew goes full throttle.

Of course, Jude Law is as charismatic as ever. I swear, that man could read from the proverbial phone book and still be eminently watchable. His con-man-like character is also well done. Though the kids are forced by circumstance to trust him through most of the series, there’s always a question about who he is and where his loyalties lie.

He’s also the one who brings in the fascinating pirate lore through both legend and song. The addition of pirates to this universe is inspired. It both works with the scum and villainy side of Star Wars and harkens back to nostalgic tales of earth-bound swashbucklers.

With all the fun inherent in this concept, it’s not without its flaws. Though most of the child actors are charming, there is a notable exception. Ryan Kiera Armstrong’s tough, tomboyish, and brilliant Fern often comes off as both insufferable and unbelievable. Her hardened delivery of almost every line with no variation makes the viewer cringe on more than one occasion. Add that to the fact that she has all the answers to every problem, is never wrong, and never suffers any real consequences for her actions, and she becomes the type of character that old-school Star Wars fans have been railing against for years.

Please note that this is, in no way, Armstrong’s fault. Given her age and the material, she does the best she can. The fault lies with the writing, direction, and, likely, producer Kathleen Kennedy. Kennedy’s been known to insist upon female protagonists. It’s also evident in interviews and behind-the-scenes tell-alls from other directors that she has a hard time allowing male characters to take the lead or allowing female characters to make mistakes, need to be rescued, or have almost any flaws.

In Skeleton Crew, the first two episodes setup the boy, Whim, as the main character. He’s the one who has a fascination with pirates, the one of the group who truly longs for adventure. He’s the one who knows the lore about the Jedi and the Sith. However, the writers quickly thrust Fern into the spotlight once the adventure begins.

Suddenly, Fern is the one who knows pirate lore. She’s the one who becomes captain of the ship. She’s the one who thinks her way out of every dangerous scenario, leaving Whim, in particular, with almost nothing left to do. When the writers occasionally try to give Fern some depth, her issues are quickly and easily solved within a single episode.

The problems aren’t simply with the mischaracterisation of one character. There also seems to be a lack of interest by both the writers and directors in the previously established mechanics of the Star Wars universe. Driving a legendary starship is now, apparently, so simple that a literal child can do it. Space is no longer a vacuum; nothing flies out of a starship when it’s breached. And hyperspace can now be reached instantaneously by pushing a button.

Some might call this nit-picking, and I realise that, to some extent, it is. But, when creating a show within a well-known universe with previously established rules, you should at least attempt to follow them. Hopefully, enough will be made of this that they do better next time.

Aside from universal rules, the children’s parents on At-Atin are not nearly as charismatic or engaging as their offspring. Luckily, the show doesn’t focus too much on the adults, but when it does, it delves into boring territory. And, while most new creatures are welcomed, the one instance where full CGI is used with a sentient owl, we get the sense that we’re watching a Disney princess film rather than a Star Wars show.

Ultimately, while Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is fun, it doesn’t quite match up to the best of Star Wars’ Disney+ content. Upon its release, The Mandalorian brought the Star Wars fandom together in a way that was sorely needed after the sharp break that appeared in the wake of the film The Last Jedi. Now that The Acolyte and the possibility of future, similar content has divided the fanbase once more, it’s hard to imagine Skeleton Crew bringing it together. We need more than an entertaining and mostly charming 30-45 minutes to bridge the gap.

So, yes, I hope Skeleton Crew gets a second season. I also hope the producers let the writers craft stories that resonate without butting in. TV is, after all, a writer’s medium. And there’s a lot of potential in what the creators have done here. Hopefully, Season 2 can give us the spectacle and storytelling we need to heal the wounds of this continually divided fandom.

USA | 2024 | 8 EPISODES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Christopher Ford, Jon Watts & Myung Joh Wesner.
directors: Jon Watts, David Lowery, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Jake Schreier, Bryce Dallas Howard & Lee Isaac Chung.
starring: Jude Law, Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith (voice) & Nick Frost (voice).