This evening saw the debut of the fourth episode in Lucasfilm’s live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, entitled “I Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin,” and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
At the beginning of this week’s episode, Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) and his four young companions have followed the coordinates stolen from Kh’ymm at the end of the previous chapter, at first believing they have indeed found the children’s homeworld of At Attin at the other end. Also still along for the ride is the surly pirate droid SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost), and the kids leave him “babysitting” Jod as they head off to explore, even though this planet– which we come to learn is called At Achrann– doesn’t quite feel like home. They find a suburban neighborhood similar to the one they grew up in, but it’s all been abandoned and grown-over, and eventually they discover that there are two warring factions hiding in the civilization’s rubble: the Hattan and the Troik, sort of like the Hatfields and the McCoys, one of which has stolen the other’s Eopies.
Taking refuge among the Troik in the their headquarters based out of At Achrann’s equivalent of At Attin’s middle school, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and KB (Kyriana Kratter) train as child warriors– as is the practice on this planet– while Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) befriends a hardscrabble girl named Hayna (guest star Hala Finley from Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance). Meanwhile back on the Onyx Cinder, Jod attempts to jog 33’s memory about where he’s been in the past, but when they attempt to venture out into the environment they are ambushed by members of the Hattan clan. Back at the derelict school, the Troik’s leader (Amélie’s Mathieu Kassovitz) enlist our youthful protagonists to lead a mission into the city, which they do, only to find that Jod has settled the Eopie issue by “borrowing” some of Wim’s Old Republic credits.
The remainder of this episode sees our main characters traveling to what would be the Supervisor’s Tower on At Attin, at the top of which they find pillars representing the Jewels of the Old Republic and their coordinates in space, except the ones for At Attin have been blasted off… and SM-33 claims to have done it himself the last time he visited At Achrann. Here’s where Fern gets frustrated with their lack of progress, but then suddenly remembers how she’s able to override the memory of her housekeeper droid at home, applying the same logic to 33. Of course this makes the droid go berserk when he remembers that his previous captain had instructed him to dismember anyone who comes looking for the treasure. Luckily thanks to Neel’s bravery and Jod’s accuracy in diving for 33’s off-switch, they are able to avert disaster, and this episode ends with Neel passing out from shock underneath the torso of the collapsed droid.
I thought this episode was just okay, and it’s kind of ironic that the installment that has excited me the least so far is the one helmed by the most high-profile directors at the moment– namely Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known collectively as The Daniels). For filmmakers known for their quirky style, I didn’t feel like “Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin” had much going on with it that made it identifiably theirs. I understand that’s often the task of directors who come in to make a single episode of a television series they didn’t create, but I guess I’m not really sure what they brought to the table in the end if their goal was to blend in.
I also thought this episode contained a few ostensibly emotional moments that weren’t really earned by the story that preceded them, with the most prominent example being Neel’s bonding with Hayna. That subplot definitely could have used more time devoted to it, but at the same time I understand why the powers that be would want to get to the far more interesting climax in the tower. I did really enjoy seeing a backwards, war-torn version of At Attin, in service of deepening the mystery of what exactly happened with the nine Jewels. Unfortunately the middle section here somehow both dragged on for too long and felt underdeveloped, which isn’t a great combination. I should note that this marks the halfway point of Skeleton Crew, so let’s hope it picks up from here, even though the narrative has reached something of a dead end.
New episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are released Tuesday evenings, exclusively via Disney+.