Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Review: PLEASEEE WATCH THIS SHOW

Leo Josse ’28 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer 

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I am and forever will be a Star Wars fan. I grew up with the Star Wars galaxy and have remained loyal to it ever since. I will watch everything and anything set in the Star Wars chronology. Despite this, I am quite disappointed in the quality of recent projects and the state of the fandom. 

Disney has not been able to get an original movie off the ground in over five years. The Mandalorian & Grogu (Favreau, 2026) doesn’t count, being that it’s a spin-off movie of one of the Disney+ TV shows, and more than half of the content released to Disney+—such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, and The Acolyte, has been okay at best. Okay is even quite generous to some of these shows, especially if you check online fan reactions—The Acolyte, I’m looking at you. I may have enjoyed moments from these shows, but it’s hard to defend their overall quality: each one feels like an overstuffed movie. Even Disney’s darling Star Wars show, The Mandalorian, suffered a massive drop in quality for its third season. The only good show—not ruined by future material—is Andor, and each day, its success feels more and more like an outlier. People don’t care about Star Wars anymore, and at this point, it’s hard to blame them. There really isn’t any incentive to stick with it. So when Skeleton Crew released, it flew right under the radar. No one outside of the diehards seemed to give it a chance.

Which is a shame because the show is surprisingly great. 

Considering the state of Star Wars, I didn’t have high expectations for this show. But to my amazement, each week I turned on something engaging, well-written, and enjoyable, set in the Star Wars galaxy. This show does exactly what all Disney+ Star Wars shows should do: it exists in a vacuum, away from the main story, but it uses the Star Wars sandbox to heighten the stakes and character drama. It’s a simple adventure story, harking back to the classic Amblin adventures of the 80’s—ala The Goonies (Donner, 1985) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982). Many might find it reminiscent of Stranger Things, as it employs a similar Amblin adventure feel. 

Before I sing the show’s praises, I want to preface that this is not the best TV show I’ve ever seen. Frankly, it’s not even my favorite Star Wars TV show. But more than any other show, this one needs to be seen. I’ll get more into that in a bit. 

Jon Watts and Christopher Ford—the creators and showrunners of Skeleton Crew—deserve a lot of praise here for the show’s creative success. Unlike some of the shows I mentioned before, this one is competently written around character drama instead of being built around fan service. 

Skeleton Crew is centered around four kids from the ultra-boring planet of At Attan, who live unassuming lives. The conflict of the story begins when one day, they find a mysterious ship and are jettisoned away from their planet into the scum and villainy of the Star Wars galaxy, on a classic Amblin adventure. Shortly after finding themselves lost in the galaxy, they cross paths with a mysterious man, who promises he can help them get home. The twist? The man is seemingly… a Jedi. 

The show is set post-Return of the Jedi, around the same time as The Mandalorian and its spin-off shows, but you don’t need to have seen any of those shows to follow this one. Frankly, you don’t need to have seen any Star Wars media before watching this show. Skeleton Crew contains bits for longtime fans to enjoy, but the show stands alone enough for anyone to watch.

The acting from our leads is fantastic. Each of the four kids is compelling and together have such great banter, delivered perfectly by the four wonderful child actors. You feel their friendship grow over the season, and the show also is great at individually exploring each character’s personal growth. Each character has at least one moment where you get to experience this, and each child actor conveys all the emotions that come with that with such authenticity and relatability, making it hard not to love all four of them by the end of the series. Jude Law also delivers a stand-out performance, not just for this show, but for the larger Star Wars catalog. His character is built around a mystery, and Law perfectly embodies this. His character is instantly charming, but you always feel there’s more to him than he’s leading on. The show keeps up this charade till the very end so that you never really know what his next move will be.

Watts and Ford also assembled an all-star crew of directors for the season. You have David Lowery—director of A Ghost Story (2017) and The Green Knight (2021), Jake Schreier—director of multiple episodes of Netflix’s Beef (2023) and the upcoming Thunderbolts* (2025), and Lee Isaac Chung—director of Minari (2020) and Twisters (2024), who also directed an episode of The Mandalorian. They also got Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, more commonly known as the Daniels—Oscar-winning directors of Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), and Emerson alums! But there is one director that stands above the rest.

Every time veteran Star Wars live-action television director Bryce Dallas Howard is given an episode of these Star Wars shows, it’s ASTOUNDING. She has a clear sense of mixing high-stakes intense action with really personal character moments. Her episode, titled “Zero Friends Again” was my favorite of the season, with a big part of that being due to her directing. Since her episode is in the back half of the season, I don’t want to give away too many details, but I will talk a little about it. “Zero Friends Again” is the most character-focused episode of the series, taking place when our characters are at their lowest point. Howard deftly directs the episode, focusing closely on the relationships between the characters so we care more about them going into the final episodes—I’m trying to be vague here. The episode also ends with a thrilling action sequence, which again proves that Howard can handle the seamless blending of a story’s action and emotional beats—something she demonstrates each time she directs a Star Wars TV episode. In my opinion, she is way past due to direct a Star Wars movie. If Disney is still afraid to make original Star Wars movies, they should have her direct a Marvel movie. If Jac Schaffer isn’t interested in directing her Scarlet Witch movie—assuming that’s in the works—I think Howard would do a great job with that. It would be a mistake to not take advantage of the talent she has behind a camera.

This show deserves so much better than the circumstance it was dealt. People’s lack of enthusiasm for Star Wars has caused this show to have the lowest viewership of any Star Wars Disney+ show. The only shows that seem to do well anymore are the ones completely built around fan-favorite characters and nostalgia. This to me, is completely backwards, and I think if more knew about this show they would agree. This show should expand with more seasons, fleshing out the character’s relationships and the established mysteries. There is a glimmer of hope for this show: like Andor, because of the positive word of mouth, it seems the viewership for Skeleton Crew is growing. It would be such a shame if this became a limited series. Disney can’t just continue to rely on nostalgia, as they will not gain any new fans that way. 

I would like to provide a solution to Lucasfilm’s Star Wars problem. One of the biggest reasons Star Wars lacks the relevance it once had is because there have been no movie releases since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. Star Wars is a movie franchise first, and these Disney+ shows just don’t have the reach that a movie does. That doesn’t necessarily mean they need to stop making them, but they should reorganize their strategy in deciding what is told on the big screen versus the small screen. Stories like Skeleton Crew fit perfectly into the TV model, while large-spanning narratives should be seen in theaters. 

Star Wars may never have the same cultural relevance it used to have. But as a diehard, I will never give up on this franchise. I want to see it succeed. I want quality content, and I want more of it. If you’re a Star Wars fan of any kind, or a fan of things like The Goonies, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, or Stranger Things, give Skeleton Crew a chance. Even if none of those things apply, you’ve made it to the end of this article, so why not turn that first episode on? You don’t need to have seen anything else from Star Wars, the episodes are short and there’s only one season, as of now. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.