This evening saw the release of the first two episodes of Lucasfilm’s new live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on episode 2.
As the second episode of Skeleton Crew begins, our young protagonists are hurtling through hyperspace toward an unknown destination, and when they drop back into realspace they are at a loss as to how to find a way home, with their only guide on the Onyx Cinder being the droid SM-33 (voiced by actor/comedian Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead). But before SM-33 can help them, the kids have to convince the surly droid that his previous pirate captain is dead, and soon Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) has taken up that position. With the droid on their side, our heroes finally start to figure out how to operate the ship, but the only problem is they can’t quite express how to tell SM-33 to take them home– At Attin doesn’t seem to exist in his databases. So instead he takes them to a dangerous pirate space station called Port Borgo, where perils abound around every turn… and any mention of their home planet is treated as the stuff of legend.
It’s clear from the get-go that the kids don’t fit in at Port Borgo, and when Wim attempts to spend the credits his father gave him in the previous episode, the pirates start to freak out at seeing Old Republic currency. Soon the group is surrounded by menacing ne'er-do-wells, though SM-33 steps in to help them confront their foes. Unfortunately the droid gets hit by an ion blast, taking him out of commission, and the kids get sent to the brig. Meanwhile back on At Attin, Neel’s father (Tunde Adebimpe) scrambles to get the security droids to help him rescue his children, though they just seem confused that a starship would even be present on the planet, let alone be allowed to escape through the barrier that surrounds it. In the brig, the kids try to train a rodent that crawled out of SM-33’s eye to recover the key that will permit their escape, but that doesn’t go so well. Fortunately for them, their cell has another resident– Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law, finally showing his face after lowering his cloak’s hood), who apparently uses the Force to retrieve the key, causing Wim to assume that he’s a Jedi.
This episode is shorter than the first one by a good 15 minutes, and most of the existing runtime is spent with the kids experiencing the otherworldly sights and sounds of Port Borgo. Fortunately the production design and character creations are interesting enough here for that not to feel slight, and the ending is an intriguing cliffhanger for this first week’s worth of Skeleton Crew. The director for this entry was David Lowery, who helmed the 2016 Pete’s Dragon remake and 2023’s Peter Pan & Wendy (also starring Jude Law) for Disney, though cinephiles know him better for having made A Ghost Story in 2017 and The Green Knight in 2021. Lowery’s style goes a long way in keeping this episode visually arresting and energetically paced, and the Star Wars and 80’s pop-culture Easter Eggs continue to pile up in this series (see the forthcoming list I’m putting together right here at Laughing Place) with the cast remaining appealing. I predict the only major quibble with this chapter is going to be its abbreviated length, but that’s probably at least part of the reason why Disney and Lucasfilm chose to pair it with the premiere in this double-header debut. More coming next Tuesday!
The first two episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+.