‘Skeleton Crew’ Review: The New Disney+ Show (Eventually) Recaptures the Wonder You First Felt Watching ‘Star Wars’

Star Wars fans know all too well that there’s been a great disturbance in the Force lately when it comes to Disney+‘s slate of live action originals. While the first seasons of The Mandalorian and Andor dazzled critics, more recent installments have left audiences colder than the ice planet Hoth. The Acolyte failed to nab a second season order, leaving Leslye Headland’s inventive, queer-coded tale of the fracturing Old Republic unfinished. Ahsoka seemed only designed for hardcore obsessives of Dave Filoni’s animated offerings and the less said about the narcoleptic hero of The Book of Boba Fett, the better. So where does that leave Disney+’s latest live action outing, the family-friendly Star Wars: Skeleton Crew? In the unenviable position of having to win back a once loyal fandom with a wholly original concept for the franchise.

Although Skeleton Crew gets off to a bumpy start, the new Star Wars series truly launches at the end of the first episode, when four misfit kids find themselves hurtling through “the Barrier” that separates their picture perfect suburban planet from the rest of the wider universe. The kids are overwhelmed by a mix of fear, panic, and then wonder. “What are those?” “I think they’re…uh, planets.” One girl shakes her head and says, “They’re stars.” From there, Skeleton Crew ceases to feel like something we’ve all seen before and truly begins to channel the spirit of adventure that intoxicated us when we first saw Star Wars.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew was created by Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, the same team that brought Tom Holland’s version of Spider-Man swinging into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. From the moment the project was first announced, it was pitched as a “coming-of-age” story, reminiscent of the glory days of Amblin Entertainment. A group of kids would find themselves lost in space in the Star Wars universe with only a mysterious Jedi named Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) to guide them. After screening the first three episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, we can confirm that’s exactly what that show is, but with one or two enticing twists…

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew takes place in the early years of the New Republic, but its initial focus is on the strangest corner of the Star Wars universe yet: suburbia. On the new (to lore) planet At Attin, residents live in cookie cutter homes that open onto manicured green lawns. Latchkey kid Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) gets a heap of credits for lunch money at the beginning of his father’s busy workweek, while rebellious rich girl Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) reprograms her housekeeper droid to lie to her well-to-do mother (Kerry Condon). There are alien kids, like the blue elephant-looking, baby Max Rebo-esque Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), and part cybernetic kids, like tech savvy KB (Kyriana Kratter), but they’re still all kids. They have rigid schedules, standardized tests to take, and unfettered dreams for adventure.

When the hapless Wim oversleeps and misses the school bus, he takes a shortcut to school through the woods that brings him face-to-face with a mysterious hatch. He lets it slip in front of the clever Fern that he believes it’s a secret Jedi Temple. Naturally, the boys, Wim and Neel, and the girls, Fern and KB, soon find themselves in a standoff for possession of this curiosity. The problem is it’s not a Jedi Temple, but a crashed starship. Thanks to Wim’s incredible lack of impulse control, the ship is soon whisking the four kids on an intergalactic adventure, far from the security of suburbia, among the stars.

When the kids find themselves captured by pirates, they soon strike up the acquaintance of Jude Law’s enigmatic Jod Na Nawood. He’s been stuck in the cell next to the four children and wins the impressionable Wim over by using the Force to liberate them. (Skeptical Fern naturally has questions.) Jod Na Nawood makes it his mission to get these kids home, whether all four of them like it or not.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew definitely succeeds in capturing the tone of Amblin classics like The Goonies, but it has a few stumbling blocks to overcome from the start. First, the Jon Watts-directed premiere episode moves slowly. Nostalgia-bait moments, like Wim and Neel playacting a lightsaber duel, feel cliche in a landscape that already has Stranger Things. However this issue is soon rectified as soon the kids embark on their intergalactic journey, with director David Lowery imbuing Episodes 2 & 3 with his trademark brand of wonder.

All the child actors do spectacular work, with Robert Timothy Smith managing to stand out particularly under Neel’s cumbersome prosthetics and VFX, but two pint-sized characters feel doomed to be polarizing. Fern could rub some (sexist) viewers as “bossy,” as she quickly takes on the role of de facto leader and has a Tom Sawyer-esque penchant for manipulation. Meanwhile Wim just eagerly rushes into stupid, life-threatening situations, evoking Mister Magoo more than a Goonie. Of course, without Wim’s impetuous streak, the kids would have been tucked safely back into bed at the end of Episode 1 and we wouldn’t get the joy of what comes next.

The good news is that Star Wars: Skeleton Crew still bewitched me. I personally liked Fern’s brand of “no fools tolerated” leadership and fell madly in love with Neel’s cerulean shnozzer at first sight. Kyriana Kratter’s KB slowly emerges as the team’s stealth MVP with her calm demeanor and technical smarts. Jude Law funnels his infectious movie star charisma into Jod Na Nawood, giving the mystery man real old school swashbuckler energy. Oh, and Nick Frost is delightful as a hyper loyal pirate droid.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew‘s biggest strength is its ability to recapture the awe you first felt as a kid watching Luke Skywalker stroll into the Mos Eisley cantina. So many of Disney+’s Star Wars shows have simply regurgitated the past, but Skeleton Crew gives us the strange and familiar hand-in-hand. Disney only sent critics the first three episodes to screen, but it’s hard not to be cautiously optimistic that future directors like Bryce Dallas Howard, Lee Isaac Chung, and the Oscar-winning Daniels will take up the directorial baton from Lowery and bring their own flair to Star Wars.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew takes us to a strange corner of the Star Wars universe where it’s still possible to feel small and not wholly cynical. Stars are curiosities, while the everyday normalcy we take for granted could just very well be magical. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is beautifully-made and sweetly innocent, making it a radically rebellious take on a franchise that sometimes seems lost in its own lore.

The first two episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are now streaming on Disney+.