Alright, it’s getting late on New Year’s Eve (already into January 1st on the east coast) but let’s go through the Easter Egg list for this week’s new episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, entitled “Zero Friends Again.”
The very beginning of the episode with the booby-trap slides is, again, right out of The Goonies. Parts of it also resembles the ventilation shaft that Luke Skywalker fell through in Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back.
Among the alien species that greet Jod at the landing pad is a Xi’Dec, the same bulbous race as opera singer Ubbla Mollbro from Canto Bight in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
The pirate named Beef uses the term “bilge rats”, which is an insulting phrase among pirates and pop ups often in pirate-related popular culture.
Wim’s Trash Crab “friends” remind me a little of the (somewhat larger) Noti from Star Wars: Ahsoka. Maybe they’re distant cousins? One of them notably wears a protocol droid’s lower leg as its shell.
The big stop-motion crab monster was stop-motion animated by Tippett Studio, which was founded by Industrial Light & Magic legend Phil Tippett, perhaps best known for his contributions to the original Star Wars trilogy, including the AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back. Tippett Studio previously crafted some stop-motion effects for The Mandalorian.
One might also argue that the enormous, junk-collecting crab shares an awful lot in common with the villainous Tamatoa from Disney’s animated feature Moana.
The character of Snobbius Snee is voiced by actor and comedian John Hodgman, who has also played characters in Disney’s animated series Phineas and Ferb, Wander Over Yonder, Milo Murphy’s Law, Hamster & Gretel, and the 2017 DuckTales reboot. But mostly I just wanted to mention him because I’m a fan.
Anyway, not a whole lot this week, but as the show ramps up to its finale I’m sure there will be plenty more Easter Eggs to come. The first six episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are now available to stream via Disney+.