This evening saw the debut of the fifth episode of Lucasfilm’s live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, entitled “You Have a Lot to Learn About Pirates,” and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
“You Have a Lot to Learn About Pirates” begins back on At Attin, where Wim’s dad Wendle (played by Tunde Adebimpe) and Neel’s mom Nooma (Geneva Carr from It’s Complicated) are trying to work against the planet’s strict system of rules to get a signal out to their lost children. Unfortunately one of the security droids senses what Wendle is up to and interrupts, bringing their work to the attention of Undersecretary Fara (Kerry Condon). Then after the opening title we’re back aboard the Onyx Cinder, as Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) and the children debate whether to wake up the pirate droid SM-33 (Nick Frost), who attacked them at the end of the previous chapter. But Jod has tied down 33 so they take the chance, and everything’s apparently okay.
33 tells the crew about his old captain, Tak Rennod– a name that Jod is familiar with as “the most infamous pirate the galaxy’s ever known– and how he would have kept the coordinates to At Attin in his lair beneath a very piratey-sounding location known as Skull Ridge Mountain. After Jod gives Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) some advice about forgetting everything he ever knew or loved back home and creating his own adventures, he suspiciously drops a quote from Qui-Gon Jinn along the way and demonstrates his Force abilities once again. Then when they arrive on the planet Lanupa, they find that Skull Ridge Mountain has been recently topped with an adults-only luxury resort. Jod tricks a hotelier (guest star Julie Ann Emery from Better Call Saul) into believing that the kids are actually “wise elders” from an alien species that doesn’t speak or understand Basic. Plus Jod then has to hand over most of what’s left of Wim’s Old Republic Credits to get her to look the other way when they don’t have a reservation.
As if that weren’t trouble enough, Jod is also recognized and approached by a bounty hunter named Pokkit (Kelly MacDonald, best known to Disney fans as the voice of Merida in Pixar’s Brave) who calls him by another alias, Dash Zentin. Anyway, the gang gets a room and starts working on finding Rennod’s lair, while Pokkit calls in the bounty on their heads placed by Captain Brutus (Fred Tatasciore). Much of the remainder of the episode somehow manages to be even more Goonies-esque than the other stuff we’ve seen on this show, with Jod and the kids exploring underground caverns and dodging booby traps while the pirates pursue them. Eventually they make their way to Rennod’s chamber, where they must look for a device– Neel’s (Robert Timothy Smith) the one who figures this part out thanks to some rotten food– to trigger a holo-message from the old captain, though Tak’s image is distorted and unrecognizable, with his face concealed for story reasons that I’m sure will reveal themselves before the end of this season.
Regardless, the crew gets what they came for: the coordinates to At Attin (not to mention the revelation that the planet served as the last Old Republic mint), and then– just like pretty much everyone they’ve crossed paths with so far has warned them– Jod betrays the children, challenging Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) at knife-point to a duel for the rank of captain. During the search of the room, Wim had found an old lightsaber, but having never wielded one before he activates it upside-down and it tumbles to the floor. And just as 33 is about to take the kids prisoner at Jod’s orders, Wim thinks fast to activate one of the other booby traps, sending the younglings down into a trap door and leaving the new captain alone with the lightsaber, which he ignites just before the episode cuts to credits.
I gotta say this might be my favorite episode of Skeleton Crew so far, both because of how much it leans into the Goonies influence and just because of how much sheer fun it is. The design of the locations and environments is still wonderful, and I’m loving the introduction of new alien species like whatever Cthallops (voice actor Patrick Seitz) is supposed to be (obviously his name and appearance is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic entity Cthulu). And that reminds me of how funny this episode is as well– I love the detail of Wim still talking to Neel over the walkie-talkies even when they’re standing mere feet away from each other. So now I gotta wonder whether Brutus and his pirate underlings made it out of that acid bath alive, where that trap door leads to, and how much training Jod has actually had with a lightsaber… at this point I’m guessing he’s a former Padawan who escaped Order 66. Regardless, this is all extremely entertaining and exciting, and I thought director Jake Schreier (of Robot & Frank, Paper Towns, and Marvel Studios’ upcoming Thunderbolts*) did a really excellent job.
New episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are released Tuesday evenings, exclusively via Disney+.