This evening saw the debut of the third episode of Lucasfilm’s new live-action series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew on Disney+, entitled “Very Interesting, As An Astrogration Problem,” and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
At the end of last week’s two-episode premiere of Skeleton Crew, our four protagonists had met the character named Jod Na Nawood (played by Jude Law), who can evidently use the Force and claims to want to help the children escape from the brig at the Port Borgo space station. But episode 3 begins back on At Attin, where Wim’s father Wendle (Tunde Adebimpe) and Fern’s mother Fara (Kerry Condon) have partnered with the parents of Neel and KB to try and figure out how to get their kids back home. We also learn a bit more about how cloistered this planet is from the rest of the galaxy, while back at Port Borgo, Jod and the others sneak their way back to the ferry and off to the Onyx Cinder, which looks gross and dilapidated even to an outcast like Jod. But once they’re back aboard, the kids refuse to leave the station without SM-33 (Nick Frost)… though it takes some convincing to get Jod to head back and retrieve the droid.
Here we get confirmation that Jod and Captain Silvo from the beginning of the first episode are indeed one and the same, as the pirates scramble to find their escaped prisoner somewhere in Port Borgo. But Jod evades them as he makes his way to a droid workshop where there are some fun cameos by a few familiar models (like a battle droid from the Star Wars prequel trilogy), eventually coming across SM-33 and putting his parts in a cart to take back to the ship. Sadly, on his way out Jod runs into an old crewmember who recognizes him and threatens to report him to the newly crowned Captain Brutus (Fred Tatasciore). There’s a smash cut to Jod desperately fleeing the pirate forces while the children debate whether or not he really is a Jedi, and then once everybody is back aboard the ship they’re able to jump to hyperspace, although still being attached to a surprisingly well-made fuel line means that they cause quite a bit of damage to the station upon their egress.
Jod takes the kids to an “old friend” on a remote moon, who I was briefly certain would turn out to be Pirate Queen Maz Kanata from the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but who instead turned out to be a fun, owl-like new character named Kh’ymm (charmingly voiced by Alia Shawkat, AKA Maeby Fünke from Arrested Development). Jod doesn’t trust Kh’ymm entirely, and with good reason– once they use her equipment to track down a list of possible coordinates back to At Attin, they realize that she has reported them to New Republic Security, who send two X-wing starfighters to bring Jod into custody– ostensibly for the good of the children. Oh, along the way we also learn that Jod / Silvo is also known as Crimson Jack, a reference that goes all the way back to Marvel’s 1977 Star Wars comic book. I’m not entirely sure if that makes sense in the context of the current canon (considering Crimson Jack has already appeared in the 2022 Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser – Halcyon Legacy comic and doesn’t quite match Law’s depiction here), but who knows what’s really true with this guy.
Anyway, Jod/Silvo/Jack/whoever and the kids jump off into hyperspace again, and I’d say this is another very entertaining though not-terribly-long episode that further endears us to all these characters and the inventiveness of the show’s creators. There’s some great action, truly wonderful production design, a lot of funny lines, and even more callbacks to the lore of Star Wars past and present. The only question now is where all of this is going, with five episodes left to get these kids home and figure out what’s really going on with At Attin and why it’s been hidden away for so long– unaware of even the destruction of Alderaan during the Galactic Civil War that ravaged the rest of the galaxy. It’s gonna be a long wait until next Tuesday!
New episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are released on Tuesday evenings, exclusively via Disney+.