Kids have it hard in the Star Wars universe. Take Anakin Skywalker, for example. He was born into slavery and later has to leave his mom because he’s at the center of some fate-of-the-world prophecy. If you’re a Jedi youngling studying at the temple, you barely have time to be a kid and must learn to suppress emotions we’d associate with that age. With the vast amount of planets in these galaxies, there must be a place with a healthy sense of fun and innocence paired with adventure. The first two episodes of ‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ are enjoyable because they are simplistic and familiar. At least initially, the show’s introduction utilizes the 1980s formula seen in ‘The Goonies and ‘E.T.’ Each of the four kids has prototypical personality traits you’d come to expect from these types of nostalgic-leaning stories, but it doesn’t damper the episodes.
It’s safe and fun because the world’s fate isn’t at stake. It’s just young people who want to escape the inertia of small-town life. If the Jedi and the Republic are out and about being the galaxy’s peacekeepers, somebody has to be reaping the benefits of living a regular life. There is peace in the ‘Skeleton Crew’ timeline as it is set shortly after the events of 1983’s ‘Return of The Jedi.’ At Attin is a planet that mirrors your prototypical perfect mirror image of suburbia with a splash of futurism. Nice houses, beautiful lawns, and speeder bikes replace bicycles and skateboards. Everything comes together to create the image of safety, even if the planet feels too insulated by design. Why is there a boundary everyone is forbidden to venture past?
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew/ Photo Credit: Disney
‘Skeleton Crew’s first two episodes show that adults are not the story’s focus. The kids are left to their own devices, and droids fill that parental void. They are bus drivers, teachers, helpers, and a de facto police force. Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) is a restless kid searching for something to shake up his daily school routine and studying for a “big” assessment. His father, Wendle (Tunde Adebimpe), is tied up with work and hardly around as much as he’d like. Win pals around with his best friend, Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), an elephant-looking alien who is awkward but bright and good-hearted. Win is more of the mischievous of the two, but their personalities level each other out. When Win goes off the beaten path to school, he discovers a big hatch in the woods. Is it a secret Jedi temple or something else? Much of the first episode, “This Could Be a Real Adventure,” is about finding that out. It is where we round on the foursome with Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), a speeder-racing rebel who doesn’t want to draw attention to her being a top student. Her best friend KB (Kyriana Kratter) is a tech wizard who wears a cool Star Trek-inspired visor.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew / Photo Credit: Disney
If you’ve watched any kid group ensemble stories in the past, these character archetypes aren’t going to be a surprise to you. But in these episodes, they work – especially together in how they interact with one another. The overall enjoyable oneupmanship occurs when both groups try to lay claim to what eventually turns out to be a dormant spaceship. With the push of a button, the kids are accidentally taken away from the safe and relatively uneventful streets of At Attin and into outer space. A thing this two-episode premiere does well is keep up its sense of forward momentum. These are kids, after all; they don’t have any revelatory life epiphanies to fill. They have to band together somehow and find a way home while trying not to get into too much trouble. ‘Skeleton Crew’ gives enough mystery to make us want to see how it all shakes out. While the empire might not be the main antagonist in this story, piracy is a massive problem in the galaxy. Other than a heavy firefight scene at the beginning of the first episode, the pirates in this show are rather silly – complete with the accent and all.
RELATED ARTICLES:
The Death of Anakin Skywalker: 15 Years of ‘Revenge of the Sith’
Jon Watts and co-writer Christopher Ford try to balance showing how perilous the outside world can be versus ensuring the kids are relatively safe. This isn’t ‘Andor’ or ‘The Mandalorian’ after all. The kids (Wim in particular) idolize the Jedi, but don’t have that burden of facing what previous Star Wars stories have faced. Perhaps it’s why this show feels like a breath of fresh air as this franchise is trying to figure out ways to write the ship. There’s a chaperone of sorts, a broken-down droid named SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost), and a mysterious stranger the kids meet in the brig named Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law), a pirate and force user. Other than trying to make their way home, the mystery of At Attin being referred to as “the lost city of treasure” looms overhead.
With six episodes to go, the show has a lot of work to do regarding keeping your attention. There is a tendency in Star Wars properties where they drift to a canon center to show, “This is a Star Wars property.” It feels like a relief that all of this is in the background, confined to comics and legends – for now. ‘Skeleton Crew’ has a chance to broaden the world through the eyes of a kid collective and deconstruct myths that aren’t so blunt but fit the show’s tone.
