This review contains full spoilers for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Season 1, Episode 7.
After a galaxy-spanning adventure through pirate stations, planet-wide battlefields, and a luxury spa, who would’ve thought the key to getting the crew back home would just be… going back home? Despite all of the secrecy over At Attin’s location and its impenetrable barrier, it turns out that all you need to do is point your spaceship at the planet and fly in (provided you have the right spaceship, which the kids have naturally had this whole time). Not enough happened in this penultimate episode, and what did happen occurred far too easily, making for a rare Skeleton Crew disappointment.
On paper, it seems like this is an eventful episode: The kids and the pirates all make it to At Attin, Jod goes full Bad Guy and executes both Captain Brutus and (apparently) SM-33, and then he finally makes it to At Attin’s legendary treasure hoard. But these events are purely plot points. Previous episodes have given us little emotional explorations of who these kids are, or stories of what it’s like to grow up in a world where adults are either completely absent or checked-out. Sadly, episode 7 just has some things happen and then ends on a frustratingly abrupt and somewhat inexplicable cliffhanger.
Let’s start with that ending, because it drags the whole episode down. Before landing on At Attin, Jod repeatedly snaps at the kids as they try to do their “disarmingly chatty” thing. He ultimately threatens to brutally murder all of their parents (having seen what they look like in the unnecessary message that they sent up through the planetary barrier) if the kids reveal that he’s actually a pirate and not an emissary from the Republic. And yet, having come so close to his dream of infinite money that he seems to be literally on the verge of tears (a great bit of face acting from Jude Law), he decides to risk it all by disrupting the kids’ reunion with their parents, whipping out the lightsaber he nabbed a few episodes ago.
Then the episode ends. The kids don’t blab to their parents. The parents have no reason to believe that Jod isn’t who he claims to be. All Jod needs to do is act cool until he can figure out how to signal the rest of the pirates in orbit. With this cliffhanger, though, we’re left to wonder what happens next: will he attack them or not? If he does, it’s a silly, senseless mistake for him to make. If he doesn’t, then why end the penultimate episode with such a needless question mark?
Nobody in this episode really has to do anything and that saps Skeleton Crew of exciting narrative momentum.
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This might not prove to be a problem at all come next week’s finale episode, and Skeleton Crew could certainly resolve this in an interesting way, but the loose logic of the situation drags this episode down. It contributes to making episode 7 a weaker part of what has otherwise been a strong series. And, unfortunately, it’s not the only issue with “We’re Gonna Be In So Much Trouble.”
A few scenes in both this episode and prior chapters have reinforced the idea that it’s impossible to get anything through At Attin’s planet-wide shield – even just a signal. And so the crew’s parents rig up some kind of little transmitter so they can send a message out to space… except the kids are already in orbit. The show solves its own problem before the characters create a solution. Furthermore, the message’s key information is an explanation of how to get through the barrier’s fake lightning storm… which turns out to be irrelevant because the Onyx Cinder was apparently stolen from At Attin and can pass through the storm unharmed anyway.
Before all that, SM-33 reveals that a rule within the Pirate Code dictates that a pirate can only be the captain of one vessel. By killing Brutus and taking over the pirate frigate, Jod therefore cannot be captain of the Onyx Cinder. So, by declaring that the ship is for “kids only” (which, credit where it’s due, is funny), Fern is able to effortlessly retain control of the ship from the pirates—albeit briefly. Nobody in this episode really has to do anything – events just fall into place and all would’ve happened one way or another – and that saps Skeleton Crew of the exciting narrative momentum it had early on.
There is some good stuff here, like an early scene in which the kids toss a ball through the halls of their ship and fondly reminisce about how fun their adventure has been, despite (or because of) how often they’ve come close to dying. It’s a nice moment that lets the kids act like kids, which is when the show is at its best.
