Last week I skipped doing an Easter Egg post for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew episode 4 because there just wasn’t a long enough list to make it worthwhile. But combining episodes 4 and 5, the latter of which is entitled “You Have a Lot to Learn About Pirates,” gives us a cumulative 25+ Easter Eggs to get through, so let’s get going!
The last name of the Onyx Cinder’s former pirate captain Tak Rennod must be a backwards homage to director Richard Donner, who famously helmed 1985’s The Goonies, the Amblin children’s adventure movie that rather undeniably had the most influence on Skeleton Crew.
Skull Ridge Mountain could be a reference to the pirate hideout Skull Rock from Peter Pan, a location which has also been represented in Disney’s theme parks.
In addition to using the Force and warning Wim against attachments, Jod also directly quotes a line spoken by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace: “Your focus determines your reality.”
The pleasure yachts reminded me of the one the villainous Dryden Vos owned called the First Light, from the movie Solo: A Star Wars Story.
SM-33 says the planet of Lanupa is also called “The Demon’s Rest” and “Battle World”, all of which are new names to Star Wars lore, though the latter will be familiar to fans of Marvel Comics and especially the Secret Wars crossover events.
Basic is the language spoken in the Star Wars galaxy that we in the audience understand as English.
Wim’s disguise on Lanupa looks an awful lot like the costume worn by actor Bill Nighy as the pirate-god Davy Jones in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
Guests are adorned with leis upon arriving on the resort planet Lanupa, much like tourists when arriving in Hawaii in the real world.
SM-33 is fitted with a restraining bolt, which were first used to rein in the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO in the original Star Wars film.
The Intergalactic Banking Clan first appeared in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and was associated with the Muun species, who can be seen occupying the hot springs on Lanupa.
The name “Dash” has been used in Star Wars before, but for most longtime fans it will conjure up the image of Dash Rendar from Lucasfilm’s mid-90s multimedia project Shadows of the Empire.
The actress who plays Pokkit is Kelly MacDonald, who is best known to Disneyphiles as the voice of Merida in Pixar’s Brave. Coincidentally, another Disney Princess also recently joined the Star Wars galaxy: Ming-Na Wen, who famously voiced Mulan in the 1998 animated feature of the same name, plays Fennec Shand in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
Pokkit says she is going to take a bacta soak, which is pretty much what Luke Skywalker did in the healing liquid in The Empire Strikes Back.
Pokkit also calls Jod a “sleemo”, which is a Huttese insult meaning “slime ball” and was first used on-screen by the podracer Sebulba in The Phantom Menace.
There’s a Hutt in the mud baths at Lanupa. The servant he eats is of the Troglof species, which first appeared in Star Wars: The Last Jedi at the Canto Bight casino.
Scipio is an ice-covered planet that first appeared in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Rennod’s lair being under the spa could be a nod to One-Eyed Willie’s similarly booby-trapped tunnels having been dug under the land that occupies the Astoria Country Club in The Goonies.
The name and appearance of the enormous creature Cthallops is clearly derived from H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic entity Cthulu, which first appeared in his 1928 short story “The Call of Cthulu.”
The initial decapitating booby trap our heroes encounter in the tunnels reminds me of the first one Indy endures in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “Only the penitent man will pass.” Also Jod tells the kids “Don’t touch anything,” which is what Indy tells Short Round as they’re trying not to activate the booby traps in The Temple of Doom.
You probably know what a lightsaber is. It’s best not to ignite them upside-down.
A scomp link is what droids use to access local computer systems, like SM-33 does in Rennod’s lair. We’ve seen R2-D2 do this a bunch.
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Going back to episode 4 of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which was entitled “Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin,” there was what looked like a Rubik’s Cube among the kids’ belongings on the Onyx Cinder. This was a popular toy (on Earth) in the 1980s.
Eopies first appeared in The Phantom Menace, but I don’t believe we’d seen horned ones before.
The hovertank being used by the Hattan army on At Achrann resembled Trade Federation AAT Battle Tanks from the prequel trilogy.
And lastly for this week, I thought the helmets worn by the Troik clan also kinda looked like the helmets worn by AT-ST drivers in Return of the Jedi, with other helmets in the Star Wars galaxy also having been influenced by this design.
The first five episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+.