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Skeleton Crew

The Real Good Guys (Skeleton Crew - S01E08) - Live Action

Series: Skeleton Crew

Title: The Real Good Guys

Season: One

Episode: 8

Original Air Date: January 14th, 2025

Runtime: 38 minutes

Credits: Review & Text: Thomas; Page layout & Design: Chuck Paskovics

Discuss the latest Chapter! (Discussion)

Son, you are talking to a level 7 systems coordinator! SPOILERS.

Meet the droid behind the curtain!

The finale of one of the best Disney+ Star Wars series released on Tuesday... and chances are barely anyone watched it. Which is probably indicative of the sad state Star Wars is in currently but also tragic, because many people missed out on something that had a laser sharp focus on fun and adventure. But maybe Star Wars and Treasure Island meets Goonies simply is nothing most people want, when Lucas' original Star Wars was built upon things like old Flash Gordon serials (pulpy SciFi), Japanese samurai movies, World War 2 movies with some Vietnam War on the side and in the prequels Lucas also added ancient Roman history or maybe Weimar Germany in the 1930s and how a republic can easily become a dictatorship.

James T. Kirk would greatly approve of disposing of computers controlling an entire planet

But if you can accept that Star Wars can be different things as well then Skeleton Crew more than delivered. And the finale is, for the most part, no exception. Everything comes together beautifully, we get a (mostly) complete story that had a beginning, a middle and and ending, but, as is usually the case these days, it also felt more like the first book in a trilogy with potential for more had the series been more successful.

Agressive negotiations

The final episode "The Real Good Guys" gave every major character a moment to shine, each kid had their moment, Jod had his moment, and the two main parent characters, Wendle, the father of Wim, and Fara, Fern's delightful mother, also got their spotlight. Skeleton Crew was a true ensemble show that showed how even kids can overcome the odds through the power of friendship, their ingenuity and good old heroism,

As a bubble bath fan myself I can relate!

Since the series finale was very much about action and not so much about plot, the story itself is not too complicated. Jod, in a most hilarious manner, sends all kids but Fern back to their homes, under the supervision of security droids, and they are told to shut their mouths, literally. The kids know that if they say anything the droids may shoot (with stun blasters). Jod, Fern and Fara then make it to the supervisor's office. And even though one could have thought that maybe Captain Rennod may play a part here (we never saw his face, remember), the riddle of the supervisor has a much more obvious solution.

The pirates arrive in force

As it turns out At Attin is controlled by a super computer or "droid", given how all of security are droids that may not be a complete surprise. The adults all know about this, they just keep it a secret from all of their kids for no apparent reason. Jod lies to the supervisor and tells him he is both a Jedi and an emissary, but the supervisor received Order 66 all those decades ago and "knows" all Jedi are traitors. Jod's disguise is blown but he wastes no time and kills the computer with his lightsaber. He then threatens Fern and Fara with his saber and makes Fara give him access to communications and also makes it possible that the pirate frigate can pass the defense grid.

Vane, the unluckiest pirate in the galaxy?

Killing the droid computer supervisor has some side effects, the droid controlled all of At Attin and all security droids power down, the energy grid goes offline and At Attin is basically without power or security, other than the defense grid in orbit. As soon as Wim realizes what's going on he tells his dad about everything and after a short while it is decided to take the kids speeder bikes (all other vehicles are offline) to get to the Onyx Cinder. The plan is to take the ship into orbit to send out a distress call.

Not-Hedwig makes a return!

The pirates launch various skiffs to terrorize the citizens, we get some destruction and mayhem, and once the pirates realize that someone is using speeder bikes to go somewhere the kids and Wendle who has the time of his life  are shot at. Neel is shot from his bike but otherwise ok. The bubble bath loving boy (he actually took a bubble bath first thing he returned home, he has all the right priorities!) is alright though and has a plan, he wants to go to a turbolaser battery to do some damage. He even manages to fire a shot or two, until the pirates take aim, but Neel escapes unharmed once again. But once the gang is at the ship another issue arises, it's still secured with docking clamps... and since Wim's father is a "Level 7 Systems Coordinator" and thus the poster boy for all system admins ever, he knows how to release the clamps  in the supervisor's office. So Wim and Wendle go to the office, where Wim tries to distract Jod by telling some outrageously silly story that Jod does not buy for one second, but it allows Wendle to disable the clamps so they retract. But then he's apprehended by Jod as well.

Will this turn out to be a blood bath?

But KB, who is piloting the ship with a barely repaired SM-33, who literally holds his head in his hands, take off, but not without the pirates noticing it. But KB makes it to orbit and contacts the one person she knows may be able to help, the not Harry Potter owl Khymm, who knows how to contact the New Republic and to call for help. Which she promises to do immediately. But then the pirates manage to damage the Onyx Cinder and it falls back to the planet, crashing in the distance making very naive audiences think that maybe KB may be dead now.

The kids mean business

However, one major obstacle remains: the defense grid, because any New Republic force that may arrive has no means of getting to At Attin. Things heat up in the supervisor's office where Jod struggles against everyone else for the override switch that would disable the barrier. Fara is scared to do so, but Fern convinces her mom that while the galaxy out there may be a scary place, that it also has good people in it everywhere, which is a nice message here. In this scene we also finally learn who Jod really is. He is a force sensitive person who was found as a kid "living in a hole in the ground" by an Order 66 survivor. She saw potential in him and trained him, because Jedi never give up. But then she was found and killed and her killers made Jod watch it, while he was still a kid. He doesn't say who killed his teacher, if it were criminals, bounty hunters or the Empire, he also doesn't say why he wasn't killed too, since he was technically a Jedi. But Jod's outlook on life was formed in this moment, he considers the galaxy a dark and brutal place, with just a few pinpricks of light. But time for talk is quickly over when Fara tries to disable the barrier after Fern's pep talk. Jod now goes full Jedi and uses his telekinetic powers to seize people left and right, but Wendle has another big moment, because when Jod is distracted for but a moment, he just launches at him and knocks him over with a well placed fist punch. Wim gets hold of the lightsaber and after his fumble from a few episodes ago he now knows how to properly operate it.

Isolation is a dead end

The barrier switch is operated and the energy field goes offline. Jod knows it's over. And what is interesting that despite all his threats and posturing he explicitly says that he does not want to hurt anyone... and he actually doesn't. He could have easily slaughtered each and every person with him in the office, but he doesn't. Jod may be a selfish, greedy, cynical bastard, but probably not irredeemable after all. He is left alone in the office when everyone else storms out.

Here comes the cavalry!

The minute the barrier goes down a whole squadron of X-Wings and even two B-Wings descend upon At Attin and immediately attack the pirates. The New Republic is shown as the good guys and girls for a change here. I do however question who at Lucasfilm is overseeing continuity. The thing is: we had a very similar basic plot in the The Mandalorian season 3 episode "The Pirate", where pirates attacked Nevarro... Karga sent out a call for help as well, which even reached the New Republic outpost... but Teva said in this episode that he has to relay the request for help to Coruscant and that may take weeks to go through all the proper channels. Implying the New Republic is a bureaucratic mess and ineffective. Yet in Skeleton Crew the New Republic acts immediately, in a matter of minutes really, and comes in full force. So what is it, Lucasfilm? Is the New Republic an ineffective, bureaucratic behemoth that is too dumb to survive... or are they the "real good guys" who act swiftly and get things done?

B-Wings finish the pirate frigate, which promptly makes a crash landing, damaging a good portion of the town

The pirate frigate stands no chance against the squadron of attack fighters and makes a beautiful swan dive down to the ground, taking whole chunks of the town with it, until it crashlands into a canal. The pirates are finished! But one question remains... what happened to the Onyx Cinder? Was it destroyed in the crash landing? So the kids rush to the crash site. But since Skeleton Crew is a feelgood show with wholesome messages and family entertainment and not some Quentin Tarantino movie, it turns out that the Onyx Cinder crash landed into a dome, but still mostly intact.

Little pinpricks of light...

Jod watches it all from the window of the supervisor's office. He knows it's over and you can see the faintest of smiles forming on his face as the episode cuts away, leaving Jod's fate entirely unresolved. It's up to the viewer to decide if he was apprehended by the authorities or somehow managed to escape. It is one of the few unresolved plot points that would have allowed them to set up a second season. But it will not be.

Another happy landing!

And when the kids finally arrive at the crashed Onyx Cinder they see it sitting askew in the dome, loading bay open, a pile of gold on the floor... and an exhausted but entirely healthy KB rolls down the ramp. Even SM-33 is still alive (still with head in hand). We get the mandatory group hug. This adventure turned the kids all into friends for life, something they will tell their potential grandkids about. And then Wim looks up through the broken dome and sees a New Republic corvette approaching. Life on At Attin will never be the same again. They are now part of a new galaxy, a galaxy they know nothing about.

Life is about to change for the citizens of At Attin

But when you think that surely we'll get to see how some New Republic official approaches the citizens of At Attin, maybe Wendle and Fara, or at least that we get to see a happy a celebratory reunion dinner party with all the kids and their parents the show merely gives us brief look at At Attin's quite earthlike looking moon and fades to black. It's the viewer's imagination that has to decide whatever happened next. We will never learn, since the chances of Skeleton Crew getting a second season are pretty minimal.

All in all the series finale was a really fun episode once again. However, I did not like, at all, the very abrupt ending, it almost felt as if they ran out of money 5 minutes before the end and had to call it a day. Would it have killed them to film one proper ending where the kids and their parents get to celebrate properly and maybe even include a Mon Mothma cameo or so as she emerges from the ship, welcoming the citizens of At Attin into the New Republic. We get none of that though which is somewhat disappointing.

But other than that the finale was pretty satisfying. It answered all major questions, it mostly resolved all important plot points, it did not explicitly set up a second season, but left some things open ended enough that a second season would have been possible. That being said I do have a few gripes about plot logic here. If the supervisor on At Attin was able to receive broadcasts from the Old Republic (like Order 66) why then did the supervisor never tell the citizens about all Jedi being labeled as traitors who must be detained? Why did the supervisor never know (apparently) that the Old Republic has fallen and thus their whole operation has become pointless? Was the supervisor not able to listen to any other broadcasts that would have told him the Empire is now ruling the galaxy? And why did the citizens of At Attin never bother to ask why no one is withdrawing their ever growing supply of credits in more than three decades? You'd think someone would have thought that something must be amiss. Another issue is that apparently the New Republic does not know about At Attin or its location. The series suggests At Attin was a major mint for the entire Old Republic, literally making the currency everyone pays with is a pretty important task, you'd think there are countless documents and files about all that, even if classified, somehere. So how come the New Republic had no clue? Why had the Empire no clue? They certainly would have come up with ways to destroy the barrier. It makes no sense for a planet like At Attin to disappear from even secret records that either Emperor Palpatine and/or the New Republic would have discovered in the archives.

But other than that I have nothing much more to say that hasn't be said before. The kids were likable. Jude Law was good as always. Each kid got his and her moment in the spotlight, Wendle and Fara, the two main adult characters other than Jod, finally got something to do as well. Wendle especially had a really funny line. It all ended well, no one died, Jod may be a bastard, but not a murderous bastard. I bet the New Republic would love to recondition him.

What remains is a really fun show that never connected with audiences. Skeleton Crew will either become a future cult classic to be rediscovered by future generations... or it will forever be an obscure footnote in Star Wars history.

Skeleton Crew absolutely deserved much better. John Ford and Christopher Watts, the two showrunners, delivered really solid work, the best work since Andor, even surpassing the pretty uneven The Mandalorian season 3. But maybe Lucasfilm should stick to making content about space wizards with laser swords, dysfunctional families and an epic battle between light vs dark. Both Andor and Skeleton Crew prove that as soon as Star Wars deviates from that formula, no matter how great it is, people will not tune in. And that is maybe a major lesson to be learned here for Lucasfilm, even if it is a sad one, because it means people have a pretty limited idea about what Star Wars can and can't be. And it seems they want it to be this one thing only. Of course you can't blame them. At the end of the day space wizards with laser swords are the unique selling point of Star Wars. Pirates are not.

But the most disheartening lession, potentially, is that maybe people have lost interest in Star Wars after a string of shows that got worse and worse and a show that was eventually so disruptive, so offensive, so insulting that people now think that this is all they can tolerate. If Skeleton Crew had been released after The Mandalorian season 2 it probably would have enjoyed a lot more success. Lucasfilm can only blame themselves. Not the fans.

Added: January 16, 2025
Category: Skeleton Crew
Reviewer: Thomas
Score:
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