This evening saw the debut of the sixth episode of Lucasfilm’s live-action series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, entitled “Zero Friends Again,” and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
“Zero Friends Again” begins with our four young protagonists having escaped Tak Rennod’s lair via a booby trap that led to a very Goonies-esque series of slides, eventually dumping them out on the frozen surface of the planet Lanupa beneath Skull Ridge Mountain. Once the other three get their bearings on the ground below, they realize that KB (played by Kyriana Kratter) has not recovered from the fall. Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) explains that KB’s cybernetic augmentations have corroded due to her time in the spa and musty tunnels last episode, but after a quick reset she seems to be okay again. Then there’s an argument over how they should proceed in getting back to the ship, with Fern simply wanting to climb back up the mountain and Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) planning to get help from a group of seemingly sentient crab-like creatures who have taken junk and droid parts as shells.
Meanwhile, Jod (Jude Law)– AKA the Mad Captain Silvo– climbs out of the lair through a manhole leading to the hotel’s landing pad, only to find Gunter (Jaleel White) and the other pirates waiting for him. They zap SM-33 (Nick Frost) with an ion blast, incapacitating the droid once again, and take them both hostage aboard their ships, leaving the Onyx Cinder and the kids behind. Speaking of which, the younglings split up, with Fern taking poor Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) along on her arduous climb and KB joining Wim to follow the crabs to a big garbage pile where the resort evidently dumps its trash. There they encounter the enormous queen crab– skillfully executed via stop-motion animation by Tippett Studio– while Neel struggles to keep up with Fern’s “spider legs.”
Reunited with Captain Brutus (Fred Tatasciore), Jod is given equal time under the Pirate Code to argue his case before being executed for treason, and he manages to convince the other scalawags that there may indeed be treasure worth plundering on At Attin. We also finally get lyrics to the sea shanty about Captain Rennod and his legendarily doomed journey, and Brutus declares that Jod’s survival is contingent on this new quest actually paying off. Back on Lanupa, Wim must help KB replace a delicate but essential part in her “augs,” and the kids are brought back together when custodial droids drag the Onyx Cinder to the trash pile. Lastly, they must put aside their differences and combine their skills to maneuver the ship out of the destructive path of a huge incinerator droid.
I definitely wasn’t expecting the Onyx Cinder to be set free from its own shell, emerging as a much sleeker, cleaner-looking vessel with half as many engines, but I suppose that’s a metaphor for the changes toward the better these children are going through on their travels. This episode was a short one, but deftly handled by director Bryce Dallas Howard, who has already proven her mettle on Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. I suspect the remaining two installments will function as a sort of two-parter, and “Zero Friends Again” was mostly intended as a way to get all the pieces where they need to be for the season’s culmination. It works on that level, but was kind of middle-of-the-road for me otherwise. Not nearly as exciting as last week’s episode, and Chekov’s lightsaber hasn’t even been ignited on-screen yet. More to come!
New episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are released Tuesday evenings, exclusively via Disney+.