Skeleton Crew Is a Hidden Gem

Skeleton Crew, the latest and newest Star Wars show on Disney+, wrapped up its first season this week, and it was unexpectedly wholesome and delightful.

I've repeatedly preached about how I want Star Wars to be more than the same old callbacks to the Skywalkers and the Force, but even with that in mind I've got to admit that I wasn't immediately sold on the concept of this show. The trailer looked kind of weird to me: Goonies in space? Not off-putting exactly, but I didn't quite know what to make of it (I know it's considered a cult movie, but I wasn't actually a big fan of the Goonies myself).

That impression was largely confirmed throughout the first episode, where I couldn't have pointed out anything as objectively bad, but kind of got the impression that it was perhaps more squarely aimed at younger audiences than I had expected. (To be clear, there's nothing wrong with that; it's just not what I'm looking for in my TV nowadays.) However, once the kids in the show got out of their comfort zone in episode two, my interest increased exponentially, and I was soon actively looking forward to the newest episode every week. The child characters are both well-written and well-acted, which is to say they behave appropriately childlike without being dull or annoying, and Jude Law's Jod makes a great foil for them throughout. SM-33 is also easily the best droid sidekick Star Wars has had in ages (and droid sidekicks are pretty much always fun), a bit like K-2SO from Rogue One except more whimsical and pirate-flavoured.

 

Skeleton Crew teaser poster from the official Star Wars website

Narratively the show doesn't do anything revolutionary, in the sense that the plot is fairly straightforward with no major twists and turns, with each episode slowly laying the groundwork for what's going to come next while exposing the child protagonists to different situations for character development. However, all of this is well executed, with a good mix of action, emotional moments and humour, and simply having the story set in the Star Wars universe( while also infusing it with a pirate theme and a certain 80s aesthetic) provides enough novelty to keep things interesting.

Ultimately it did end up being a fun-for-the-whole-family kind of show, though I've read that younger viewers in particular loved it a lot, even if they weren't into Star Wars before - I could easily see Skeleton Crew end up being the next generation's Clone Wars, in the sense of being many children's entry point into the wider Star Wars universe.

As it stands though, reports seem to indicate that Skeleton Crew has been the least successful of the Star Wars live action shows so far in terms of viewership, and I think that's a shame, as its quality definitely deserves better. Even if it doesn't seem likely at this point, I'd love to see a season two. (I wasn't sure how well that would work initially, but after seeing the last episode of season one I could immediately imagine some interesting angles for a follow-up arc, even though it does wrap things up nicely.)

One can only hope that good word of mouth might eventually lead to the show finding a wider audience, after perhaps being a bit of a hard sell and difficult to market initially. (Jude Law is great for example, but I thought the choice of thumbnail for the show being a mugshot of him staring vaguely menacingly wasn't exactly very representative. Should've tried putting Neel or SM-33 on there!)