Review: 'Skeleton Crew' Plays With Star Wars' Jedi Obsession
By Roxana Hadadi, a Vulture TV critic who also covers film and pop culture
For as long as there has been Star Wars, there has been a consumerist element to its sprawling universe, because that’s what modern fandom is: buying stuff to prove that you like something. The new, aggressively Amblin-influenced Star Wars: Skeleton Crew takes that paraphernalia-as-personality quality a step further with a main character who, while living within this galaxy far, far away, is also a fan of this galaxy. He’s got Jedi and Sith action figures and comics, and an endless interest in Jedi lore to the detriment of his education and his relationship with his single father, giving Skeleton Crew a meta flair that is, in the first three episodes of that were provided to critics, by far the most interesting thing about the new Disney+ series.
Created by Christopher Ford and Jon Watts, Skeleton Crew is yet another coming-of-age story in a franchise full of coming-of-age stories. But unlike Luke Skywalker’s hero’s journey, this one’s less influenced by the original trilogy’s chosen-one narrative and more directly nodding toward the misfits and unlikely friendships of Steven Spielberg and John Hughes. Skeleton Crew takes place after the Rebel Alliance overthrew the Empire (post–Return of the Jedi, pre–The Force Awakens), and although the New Republic is working to “maintain order” within the galaxy, piracy is on the rise. That crime feels very far away from At Attin, a pleasant planet seemingly consisting only of well-to-do suburbs and well-maintained downtown areas. For tween Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), though, his home is an absolute bore. He’s desperate for adventure, and for him, that means a Jedi-involved romp.
While his classmates are studying for a career-assessment test that will tell them what they should do with their lives (one of Skeleton Crew’s many tropes from ’80s and ’90s teen-focused entertainment), Wim is portrayed as being childishly ensnared in Jedi lore. He’s mimicking Jedi and Sith voices as he plays with action figures; staying up late to read stories about Jedi conquests on his “storypad” tablet; and using a spaceship toy as a lightsaber to act out duels with his best friend, Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), on their way to school. And when Wim finds a massive structure hidden in the hill between his house and school, he’s convinced it’s a Jedi Temple — so much so that even though it’s clearly a spaceship, and he promises his classmates he won’t touch anything, he presses a button that turns the vessel on and sends them into hyperspace. Bad-girl Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and her super-smart best friend, KB (Kyriana Kratter), already thought Wim was immature, and their dislike only deepens once they, Wim, and Neel are all stuck in space together, with no idea of how to get home.
What’s fascinating about Skeleton Crew’s early episodes is how they position Wim’s fandom as something he has seemingly buried himself in as a way to deal with his own loneliness, his obsession with all things Jedi just pushing him further away from kids who might otherwise befriend him. (For a shared-Disney-overlord comparison, this isn’t that dissimilar from how Kamala Khan is first presented in the TV adaptation of Ms. Marvel as a girl whose Avengers mania sets her apart both from her classmates and her more conservative Muslim family.) When Wim and Fern meet in front of their school proctor’s office and she asks what he’s “in for,” she’s impressed by his hover-bike antics until she realizes they’re secondary to his Jedi interests. Later on, when they argue about whether to trust a mysterious rogue played by Jude Law, Wim’s insistence that his use of the Force automatically makes him noble doesn’t fly with Fern; she basically rolls her eyes at Wim’s energized description of Jedi as “defenders of justice and keepers of peace in the galaxy.”
Aside from the prevailing “toys are for babies” opinion of Wim’s father and peers, Skeleton Crew hasn’t fully fleshed out exactly why Wim’s Jedi adoration is seen as so uncool — is it because his obsession with the Jedi’s role in the overthrow of the Empire means he’s basically a history nerd? Or is it simply an indicator of his immaturity, a way to mark Wim’s current identity before he’s inevitably changed during his journey in space? Regardless, that approach is at least a change of pace from the rest of Skeleton Crew, which with its by-the-numbers scenes of kids riding bikes, bickering, and growing together feels derivative of the similarly Amblin-influenced Stranger Things a little too often. It also introduces two compelling tensions into the Star Wars universe. The first is one The Acolyte already tackled, albeit in an abbreviated way: What if the Jedi weren’t always virtuous, what if people with Force abilities aren’t so easily slotted into good or evil, and what if this society’s enshrinement of them is a massive cover-up? The second is Skeleton Crew’s willingness to be self-referential about how narratives are commodified, and how we transform and package stories — both to endure and to sell.
Skeleton Crew plays a bit coy with which elements of Episodes IV through VI first became myth, then product. Wim’s action figures resemble Luke Skywalker in white and Darth Vader in black but aren’t explicitly shown to be those characters, and the lightsaber fight Wim and Neel act out, with one combatant reacting to an injured arm, seems to evoke The Empire Strikes Back without actually naming it. Still, Skeleton Crew’s willingness to include this winking bit of self-awareness, and present it as a borderline character flaw for Wim, is an unexpected breaking of the mold that opens up all kinds of other questions about the Star Wars galaxy, how the people within it processed the downfall of the Empire, and how the Rebel Alliance’s actions were portrayed for future generations.
There’s still plenty of time left in Skeleton Crew’s eight-episode season to undercut these tensions and turn Wim’s obsession with Jedi lore and paraphernalia into a virtue. But there’s also time for the series to continue playing with the presumed goodness of Law’s yet-unnamed character and what lessons he may pass onto the tweens. If Skeleton Crew were to spend the rest of this season exploring whether Force users can be flexible virtuously but not quite Jedi or Sith, those shades of gray would fit right into a coming-of-age story. And to take another beat from the impressionable-youngster/kooky-older-weirdo relationships of the Amblin era, maybe Law’s character’s influence is what encourages Wim to grow up, to think more seriously about his future and less about Jedi exploits past, and what good he can do for society with or without the Force. Just don’t make Wim’s Jedi and Sith toys the key to how the kids make it back to At Attin — please, Skeleton Crew, anything but that.
