‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’: Space Goonies Never Say Die

Growing up during an era in which the idea of any “new Star Wars” seemed like a beautiful, impossible dream, the concept that one day we might actually experience a franchise content overload feels so mind-blowing, you’d think Bor Gullet had scrambled our collective brains. And yet, here we are in 2025, with a new film, television series or cartoon from a galaxy far, far away popping up like pesky Jawas seemingly every other week. The latest of these is Skeleton Crew, a live action, family-friendly adventure featuring Jude Law and a cast of children in what is unmistakable an homage not just to the original Star Wars trilogy, but to Stephen Spielberg’s oeuvre, Robert Louis Stephenson, Peter Pan, Stephen King, and, of course, the most seminal work of Xennial media in existence: The Goonies.

Wait a second…is Star Wars actually doing Space Goonies now? The answer is an enthusiastic, unambiguous “YAR!!” Rarely amid the ever-rising tide of Lucasfilm content do we find a series that truly captures the joy and wonder that captivated the imaginations of an entire generation of children, and, eventually, their kids, and even grandkids. Skeleton Crew is precisely that series, and it might in fact be the most genuinely fun and memorable entry into the canon since the first season of The Mandalorian.

Skeleton Crew finds us on a planet we’ve yet visited in the Star Wars universe, a place wholly unexpected. Is it a lava planet? A city planet? A scary red planet with zombies, witches and rancors? Maybe a lush forest moon with man-eating teddy bears? Naw, they played all those out years ago. Instead, we get a planet that is philosophically a communist utopia, and practically 1970s suburban Southern California. That’s not a metaphor, either. As we see in the premiere episode, the planet At Attin looks nearly identical to the neighborhood where Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore lived in E.T., right down to the cookie-cutter houses, gently sloping hills, and the fact that every hour seems to exist 45 minutes before sunset.

Much like another Spielberg-produced 1980s classic, the protagonists here are a band of feisty, adorable kids. Their planet is the Platonic ideal of peace and harmony. No one here wants for anything material, adults have jobs doing something complicated and boring called “The Great Work,” kids go to school, ride their hover bikes, and live with the knowledge that they, too, are headed for a life of complicated, boring jobs just like their moms and dads (or also, here, moms and moms, another hint about the egalitarian nature of the place).

Nanny/police droids keep order, which doesn’t seem like a difficult task on At Attin. Naturally, some of the kids rebel and cause trouble, like Fern, the defiant one. Others, like the dreamer, Wim, fantasize of escaping their dull fates to have grand adventures in the universe like the Jedi of the High Republic. We also have KB, a brilliant yet troubled cyborg, and Neel, the kind, funny, pudgy one. He’s this ensemble’s “Vern” from Stand By Me, only he’s a pachyderm-esque species like Jabba’s bandleader Max Rebo, who is definitely not a blue elephant.

Trouble and antics ensue when Wim crashes his bike into a ravine on his way to school and discovers a buried artifact. When the four children sneak out at night to dig the thing up, not only do they discover that it’s a spaceship, it’s a piratespaceship, complete with a working first mate droid with a single eye and requisite peg leg, named SM-33. (“Smee!” Get it?!)  They also inadvertently launch the damn thing into outer space in the process, finding themselves beyond the stormy emerald nebula that obscures At Attin from any prying galactic eye-stalks, adrift in the cosmos with little idea of how to return home.

Already in the first couple of episodes, we have deeply loving and obvious nods to E.T., The Goonies, Flight of the Navigator, Treasure Island, Stand By Me, Explorers, and Space Camp, among others, and that should give you a big indication as to the tone and nature of this series. Now, in unskilled hands, this kind of gambit could easily tip into a bantha-sized vat of cloying, pandering schmaltz. Fortunately for us, the hands behind Skeleton Crew do an amazingly adept job balancing nostalgia and crafting a compelling story with characters we actually care about, not to mention some exciting action, fantastic sets and costumes, and more than a few colorful villains. And of course a bajillion easter eggs and references, because this is Star Wars, after all.

As the story unspools, Wim, KB, Fern and Neel scavenge for clues as they attempt to return home from the big, scary galaxy. In short order, they’re brawling with pirates, fleeing cannon fire, and eventually landing themselves in jail with a mysterious, charismatic stranger who may or may not be a Jedi, much to Wim’s giddy fascination. The stranger, Jod Na Nawood, played with hammy gusto by Jude Law, swiftly breaks them all out and convinces the scamps to take him along on their newfound pirate ship.

While clearly adept in the force, Jod turns out to be a scurvy space dog himself, with a bounty on his head by his former crew, to boot. Once he discovers that the kids’ home planet is the subject of pirate fairy tales about a lost world of endless riches, he becomes desperate to discover the universe’s ultimate treasure trove, manipulating his newfound wards at every turn.

Each episode treats us to another adventure and yet another step closer to their goal, the tension mounts as greedy pirates pursue our heroes and desperate parents scheme to illegally contact their lost kids, with plenty of climbing, chasing, speeding, fighting, and daring last-minute escapes. And also a few heartfelt, emotional notes and character development tossed in to balance the adrenaline. There is of course a huge finale featuring high-stakes action on the ground, with spaceships in the air, and between characters. Obviously, the heroes prevail and the baddies lose , because, again, this is Star Wars. Well, not Andor Star Wars, but Star Wars Star Wars.

While there’s a lot to love about Skeleton Crew, the most exciting aspect of the new series is the fact that, for the first time, we finally have a Star Wars tale that’s actually about kids, and not just for them. George Lucas always believed that the franchise was for 12-year-olds, but his idea of playing to that audience after the original trilogy included goofy, quasi-racist aliens stepping in poop. Skeleton Crew, like the movies that inspired it, presents its children as fully realized people with fears and dreams and complicated emotions, not just lovable sidekicks.

To that we add Jude Law absolutely devouring his heel turn as Space Long John Silver – his alias is literally “Captain Silva” – and a host of new creatures both good and evil. On the nefarious side, we get the werewolf-like Captain Brutus as our main antagonist, a species we haven’t seen since A New Hope that eventually drifted to the cutting room floor in Lucas’s “special edition,” a fantastic cameo from Kelly MacDonald as a conniving bounty hunter, and Kim, a diminutive owl/cat cartographer that aids the kids on their journey, and may end up selling a fortune’s worth of stuffed dolls. Which is not to say that there aren’t enough callbacks to Star Wars 77-83. In fact, the entire opening segment of the series is a direct homage, almost shot-by-shot, to the opening of A New Hope, and it sets the tone brilliantly.

I feel it’s safe to say that, amid many of the newer Star Wars series that have tried and failed to capture even a slice of the childlike wonder that made so many of us fall in love with the franchise, Skeleton Crew finally sticks the landing, and it is indeed a joyous thing to experience. No word yet on future seasons that will undoubtedly grapple with the challenges of a swiftly aging child cast like the ones in Stranger Things. But even if left to a single installment, it’s fun and exhilarating enough to stand out from the content deluge as a memorable, delightful addition to a galaxy far, far away.

Most importantly, we finally have the perfect opportunity to combine Star Wars Day with Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I for one am fully invested in it. Or I will be, right after I head to Tosche Station to pick up some pow-arrrrrrrr converters.