Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premieres with its first two episodes on Disney+ on December 2, 2024. New episodes stream weekly on Tuesdays by way of January 14, 2025.
There’s a familiarity to Star Wars: Skeleton Crew you could really feel in your bones. Disney+’s newest spinoff sequence is enjoying with a pointedly acquainted premise, nevertheless it finds one thing compelling to do with the truth that except you’re the identical age as its younger forged you’ve most likely seen one thing very very similar to this kids-vs-pirates journey earlier than. It may all very simply verge into obnoxiousness, nevertheless it gracefully manages to keep away from that within the first two (of eight) episodes due to the best way it hints at one thing underneath the floor.
That acquainted feeling comes from a nostalgic vibe that Skeleton Crew proudly wears on its sleeve: The plot follows a gaggle of children, every with at the very least one simply identifiable defining persona trait, who strike out seeking pleasure and finally discover themselves aboard a pirate ship whereas on the run from bloodthirsty criminals. Yes, it’s all explicitly impressed by The Goonies, but in addition any variety of kid-friendly (or at the very least kid-starring) adventures like E.T. or Stranger Things–although a gap scene of pirate brutality makes it clear that this present isn’t solely for the littlest Star Wars followers within the household.
Rank The Star Wars Movies and TV Shows
Rank The Star Wars Movies and TV Shows
The plucky youngsters of Skeleton Crew stay on the off-putting and vaguely ominous suburban sprawl of a planet known as At Attin, the place dad and mom work late and depart their youngsters dwelling alone after college, the place the cool youngsters race bikes and the place everybody has a yard, a lawnmower, and a two-car storage. You get the sense that there’s a Space Target simply down the street and that the adults are involved about their New Republic property taxes (we’re in the identical post-Imperial, pre-The Force Awakens time interval as The Mandalorian).
Or you’d, if there have been anybody sufficiently old to be scruffy-looking on At Attin. That’s one of many first issues that implies that there’s one thing attention-grabbing (and maybe genuinely good) occurring right here: Other than the dad and mom of foremost child Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) and his Milhouse-coded greatest buddy Neel (a Max Reebo-style elephant boy performed by Robert Timothy Smith), these youngsters hardly appear to come across any adults. Their bus driver is a droid, their trainer is a droid, the safety guards watching the college are droids, and the one grown-up at college is a lady who provides the children a primer on the enjoyment of contributing to the “Great Work” of At Attin with boring, bureaucratic authorities jobs. Jude Law, Skeleton Crew’s foremost grownup forged member, makes solely the briefest of appearances within the premiere episodes.
There are lots of questions surrounding an odd hatch (maybe a not-so-subtle nod to the TV work of Star Wars’ personal J.J. Abrams?) nevertheless it takes some help from two extra At Attin youngsters to get happening that: Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) who has a Bad Attitude however could be very good and good at college, and her buddy KB (Kyriana Kratter), who has a tech-y headset and might do pc stuff. The youngsters are all fairly broad when it comes to characterization and efficiency, however that’s not routinely a difficulty. Real youngsters aren’t absolutely developed people but, and so it is smart that these specific adolescents don’t know who they’re and are most likely going to find out about that over the course of this journey (once more, even whether it is straightforward to sum them up by one character trait, identical to Mouth, Chunk, and the opposite Goonies). So far, they’re all likeable–which isn’t at all times a given within the Star Wars cannon.
Luckily, there’s additionally plot momentum to give attention to in these first two episodes, with the children (actually) stumbling into journey and by accident rocketing out of their in any other case peaceable and uneventful patch of the suburbs and up into area in a pirate ship. In what might be Skeleton Crew’s cleverest hook, although, they don’t depart that new Star Wars setting they spent a lot time creating solely behind; The deceptively boring suburban planet of At Attin is outwardly dwelling to some bizarre mysteries.
It’s all enjoyable, if just a little barebones (skeleton pun meant) however how enjoyable it is going to be over the course of the season – and if it earns one other one, in contrast to The Acolyte and The Book of Boba Fett – goes to rely solely on whether or not or not Skeleton Crew can preserve a great steadiness between the area journey and the children having alternatives to behave like precise youngsters. If the motion is simply too intense, it loses the breezy, family-friendly enchantment of a present primarily about youngsters; if the children are too childlike and annoying, then it turns into a present a few robotic babysitter—and that sounds awful.
Speaking of the robotic babysitter, the ship that the children by accident hijack has a single crew member: A broken-down pirate droid named SM-33 who’s voiced by Nick Frost and hits a barely discordant comedic observe. Now, Skeleton Crew already has an endearingly groany humorousness about piracy, with each glimpse into the universe of Star Wars’ area pirates being full of extra cartoonish imagery than the common miniature golf course: all people has a hook hand, or a peg leg, or a yarrrr accent, or a helmet that appears like a tricorne sailor hat (we haven’t correctly met the pirate villains but, however at the very least one of many buccaneers was even a part of Gorian Shard’s pirate crew in The Mandalorian’s third season). After all of that, it’s actually naming a personality after a well-known Disney pirate that’s too cute by a parsec.
If there’s one notable challenge in these early episodes past that groan, it’s that every part exterior of the sensible set of the children’ spaceship feels very “filmed on The Volume”—the digital set know-how used on The Mandalorian and different Star Wars reveals. The downside with The Volume is that it seems to be good, and it encourages extra attention-grabbing, all-digital units than what you’d’ve seen in The Phantom Menace, nevertheless it at all times feels hole and empty. Just large, vacant expanses of Star Wars that lack the gritty, lived-in really feel of the unique trilogy it’s emulating. And whereas there’s no purpose to doubt we’ll have some flashy area motion sooner or later, there’s not a lot to talk of to this point.
