Easter Eggs, Fan Theories, the Timeline – The 'Star Wars: Skeleton Crew' Showrunners Answer All Your Questions

With Disney+'s Star Wars: Skeleton Crew now streaming, Collider's Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to sit down with the cast and crew to pick their brains about the all-new adventure. As showrunners and co-creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford prepared for Season 1 to launch on the streamer, they spoke with us about their approach to the story, addressed the fan theories, and tons more.

The series, led by Jude Law, has drawn many comparisons to The Goonies for its premise about a young group of kids who stumble upon an abandoned Jedi Temple, but Watts and Ford are adamant that Skeleton Crew isn't a "kid's show." Drawing inspiration from both Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope and "pirate movies from the '30s," this New Republic-era show is yet another self-contained story within the universe, somewhere around The Mandalorian and other recent Disney+ series. Despite its young cast, the duo explain their intention was to "create a real sense of danger out in the galaxy."

During this interview, Watts and Ford talk Star Wars timelines, having "total freedom" from producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to "push the boundaries," and making their mark on the ever-evolving Star Wars legacy. They also dig into creating the lore of their planet, At Attin, including familiar species from the franchise, returning to practical aliens and matte paintings of Star Wars past, and the plans and potential for Skeleton Crew Season 2. In addition, they also talk about where on the Star Wars timeline the series takes place, who decided on including the Teek from Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, and so much more. Check out what they had to say in the video above or you can read the conversation below.

Where Does ‘Skeleton Crew’ Take Place on the Star Wars Timeline?

COLLIDER: I’ve got a whole bunch of questions, and I’m going to try not to get you into trouble. So, there's a lot of debate between fans on whether Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back is better. Which film do you rank as the number one?

CHRISTOPHER FORD: Oh, no, now we’re gonna get in trouble. Someone asked me that, and I said Return of the Jedi.

Well, that's not the right answer. That’s just wrong.

FORD: That’s why I'm in trouble.

JON WATTS: Empire for me. I like down endings, so I'll always like that one the most.

Sure, the debate for me is without Star Wars , there's no Empire , but Empire is just such an amazing film. So, when does Skeleton Crew take place on the Star Wars timeline?

FORD: Post Return of the Jedi.

Is there a number of years? Because there's been a lot of conjecture online.

FORD: Yes. I mean, we definitely had an idea going into it. I think because of learning what it's like having kid actors who age up, we might have some wiggle room in terms of if we do more, how it's going to all connect better.

WATTS: Yeah, slotting it in exactly.

FORD: That's the behind-the-scenes answer. So, it's a little bit of we're not exactly revealing that yet.

WATTS: There's no moment where it ties in exactly where we can say.

It's just after Return of the Jedi .

WATTS: Yeah. [Laughs]

How much freedom did you have with Lucasfilm and Disney in terms of designing the planet they're from and all the little things that are in this that could lead to bigger things?

WATTS: That's the crazy thing is, we felt like we had total freedom. [Jon] Favreau and [Dave] Filoni are our producers, and they're like this giant safety net underneath us, and we just went and did exactly what we wanted to.

FORD: We would push the boundaries, and if we were going too far, they would be like, “Let’s consider this.”

WATTS: But everything is safe here because it's going through the Lucasfilm design team. You pitch things to Doug Chiang, and then his team pitches you back, like, 10 versions of your idea that are the most perfect, incredible execution of what's in your head possible. So, you're just picking from a list of great options.

As the show continues, the planet they're from is going to become more of a thing, and I'm just curious, it seems like that's something that could…

FORD: Could become like a real housing development in Florida. [Laughs]

WATTS: There are so many potential repercussions from things that happen in the show. You make something and then there are other things being made, and the way they could intersect is kind of an open question.

What was something that you each fought for, that you were like, “This has to be in the show,” and someone else was pushing back, and you're like, “No, this has to be in the show?”

WATTS: Not necessarily pushing back, but I really wanted to make sure that hologram in Episode 1 was there — the hologram that Neel’s brothers and sisters are watching. That one I was pretty insistent on.

FORD: That's interesting. For me, we create our own little piece of new lore about the planet category that At Attin comes from, like the Jewels of the Old Republic. That was really interesting to get to make up a new little piece.

WATTS: Like a piece of history.

FORD: Exactly. I wanted to be able to do that because we could have not done that. But what I love in Star Wars is there’s always a little bit more than you know about. There's always like, “Oh, well, you'll learn about this thing, but that's only one piece of a larger piece.”

WATTS: I don't know that we ever had anything that was dramatically pushed back on.

FORD: No, I mean, that's the crazy thing about this whole project, was working with the team we were working with. We were so protected and encouraged.

WATTS: You feel very safe with the team we had.

FORD: Because Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, having themselves made Disney+ Star Wars shows, now be kind of overseeing us, being our mentors in this, they knew all the pitfalls, and they knew what we were going through more than if they had just been producers from the start and hadn’t been making their own shows.

WATTS: Exactly.

Who was the one who said the Teek from Ewoks: The Battle for Endor is now canon? Who is the one who said we need to make this happen?

WATTS: I think you wanted the Teek, and then I made him look really rough because the Teeks are really fluffy.

FORD: Yeah, the Teeks we know from Battle for Endor is well taken care of.

WATTS: Yeah, and this is more like a Teek that's fallen on hard times, so it was a lot skinnier and a lot of his fur has fallen out.

Was it one of you that came up with it, like, “We need to do this?”

FORD: We talked a lot about and we had pulled other references to, like, [Caravan of Courage] An Ewok Adventure? I wonder if it was from someone on Doug Chiang’s team.

WATTS: It might have been pitched back from Dough Chiang.

FORD: He’s like, “Look at this piece of art,” and we’re like, “Whoa, yes!”

WATTS: The thing that we both definitely wanted to make sure we did, though, was that he moved fast, and trying to do that in a way that doesn't look old and weird and dated was a challenge. It was like, “Here it is moving at the actual speed of the Teeks.”

FORD: Yeah, there were a lot of options for how fast it can move. Because it shouldn't be like an X-Man speed.

WATTS: It has to just be fast enough that it feels referential.

Be on the Lookout for These Star Wars Easter Eggs

Are there any Easter eggs or other creatures that audiences should be looking for?

WATTS: I mean, everyone figured out the Fuzzball from Captain EO in the trailer. Yeah, there are quite a few things.

FORD: And what's really cool is that they'll go in the archive if we're looking for, say, a big, monstrous alien, and I don't know if it was literally old Dagobah unused sketches for different creatures, but that's in there.

WATTS: Yeah. Some of the ships are Easter eggs if you look closely in the background.

FORD: Oh my gosh, yes. There are a lot of parked ships. So, you gotta look in deep.

What episode should people be looking for this?

WATTS: You see that in the second episode.

FORD: [Episodes] 2 and 3.

Oh, I know what you're talking about.

“Skeleton Crew” Is Not a Star Wars “Kids Show”

How much did you guys debate the opening text and the opening shot and what you were going to do? Because it's like iconic Star Wars.

WATTS: Yeah, it's a lot of pressure when you think of what those words are going to be. We had a lot of drafts.

FORD: We went through different options. One of the options was a song. We tried it.

WATTS: Almost opening with a pirate chanty. Didn't work. Didn't do that.

FORD: That’s in there somewhere. You can hear it in the background.

WATTS: It's all about distilling down that text to be exactly what you need to set the story up, but not too much, and have the right language so that it feels like it fits in.

The opening shot specifically is you're in outer space, a ship is coming by, and I'm like, “Oh, he's nodding to Star Wars .” And then there's a nod to Star Wars at the beginning when they're coming into the ship, and there's a masked individual who has troops, and I'm like, “Oh, they're doing a hard nod.”

WATTS: Yeah, it's a little bit of a feeling of like, “Yes, this is Star Wars.” Because after that, then we go to the world of the kids, which is a very calm, more peaceful place.

FORD: For me, having those parallels with the opening of Star Wars, as you call it, really highlighted how the pirates are different, which is what we wanted to call out.

WATTS: Because it's sort of a combination between the opening of New Hope and then pirate movies from the ‘30s. So, we wanted to sort of mash those two things together, create a real sense of danger out in the galaxy, and then jump to this very quiet world of the kids.

FORD: Especially people who are coming to this thinking, “I heard this is like a kid's show.”

WATTS: [Laughs] We wanted to start off by letting people know that it's not.

The thing is, as you said, the beginning is very much Episode IV until it's not, until it takes a left turn. So, there are eight episodes; which is your favorite and why?

WATTS: I'm not going to just say my episodes.

Which ones did you direct, actually?

WATTS: First and last. I did the beginning and end. Take the plane off and land the plane.

FORD: For me, I would say the last one, just because that one for us was the hardest.

WATTS: The third act of any story is always the hardest when all the threads have to come together. I really like Episode 6, that Bryce directed. It's a really emotional story between the kids, and it's really beautiful. That's the one where we have some stop-motion animation. So, I like that one, too.

How Long Are the 'Skeleton Crew' Episodes?

I'm curious about the runtimes. The first one is, like, 50 minutes.

WATTS: I don't even know what the runtimes are now. We've been working on it for so long.

FORD: The first one is a little bit longer.

The second one's, like, 30 minutes, the third one's like 46 or something. How does it go with Episodes 4-8? Is the finale a longer one?

WATTS: Finale's long. Working in streaming is great because it's just as long or as short as you want it to be. There were no requirements. We just made the story.

FORD: Well, there was a requirement, but we didn't listen to it.

WATTS: Oh, there was a requirement. Yeah, but we didn’t do it. [Laughs]

FORD: I think it actually ended up being fine.

WATTS: We were fine.

So what about Episodes 4-8? Are they mostly 30 minutes? And how long is the finale? Is it an hour?

WATTS: It's like 45.

FORD: It's not an hour.

WATTS: No, it's not a full hour.

FORD: Episode 2 is the shortest one. That’s the most breezy.

WATTS: Everything's, like, 35-40.

What do you think fans are going to say after they see the finale?

WATTS: Hopefully, they're going to say, “Wow, we want to see more adventures with the Skeleton Crew.”

FORD: “What happens next?” [Laughs]

WATTS: There are some pretty big potential repercussions for the larger galaxy after the last episode.

FORD: I'm really interested to see the discussion and how people interpret what happened and what they think will happen next, and interpreting stuff about the characters and what they say.

I don't want anything spoiled, but I am curious what people are going to think.

WATTS: Yeah, we are, too, because when you have a really well educated and mythology versed fan base like Star Wars does, you take a couple of big swings and you really want to see how people interpret it. I can't wait for that. I can't wait to see what people think about what we did.

What Can We Expect From 'Skeleton Crew' Season 2?

"This isn't like it would take place the next day."

So this show definitely has a Goonies vibe. The Goonies famously never got a sequel. Talk a little bit about what the discussions have been like behind the scenes now that Disney and Lucasfilm have seen the show and know what you were going for. It's a long runway to make a show like this, so how much have you guys been working on scripts or ideas in case Favreau and Filoni are like, “Let's do more?”

WATTS: We 100% have an idea for a second season and know what we would do.

FORD: It's built into it that it would be a bigger time jump forward because it does take so long to get things moving. This isn't like it would take place the next day because the kids are going to be older.

WATTS: Yeah, we have a built in ticking clock of the kids and their age, and by the time we would get production going, we know what age they would be. So, we would be writing towards that. You’ll be growing up with the kids.

Basically, to be clear, if you were to make a second season, it would be, like, three years later.

WATTS: Yeah, it would have to be something like that to make sense. We haven't seen the kids in a while, so it just depends on how tall the kids are. But we wouldn't do like a Stranger Things thing where we’re like, “It's the next day,” because it won't be.

No, well that would be stupid.

FORD: There are so many repercussions. It's like, you kind of want to catch up later. I think that's the difference between The Goonies and this, because the end of The Goonies is they did it. They saved their town. They got the treasure. It's good. I guess the fact that there is no sequel meant that their lives were just good, therefore boring.

I love The Goonies . Every time I see Josh Brolin or whoever I'm always pitching The Goonies 2: Goonies Never Die . I've come up with a million ideas. They just need to do it.

FORD: Maybe wait till they're all old. It's like one of those group of old people movies.

WATTS: Like Cacoon? That's what everyone wants to see.

FORD: Goonies meets Cocoon.

Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes?

WATTS: No.

FORD: Not a lot, but some.

WATTS: There's some good stuff.

FORD: And that's what's really nice about the process we got to work on is in the end, we wanted to tighten things. We wanted every episode to be jam-packed. So, sometimes that meant losing pieces here or there that just made the episodes better. We loved those moments, but…

WATTS: There's nothing that you look back on and think, “Oh, man, I wish that was in there.” Everything that's not in there is not in there because it made the episode better.

With Disney+, I've always wondered why they don't put more extras. They've recently been doing it. Do you think any of that stuff will end up on Disney+?

FORD: I don't know, I think it'd be interesting. It just creates a weird, outside-canon version of things.

That's what I mean.

FORD: I would never want it to be like the “director's cut” that's longer and worse than the official version, you know?

WATTS: I don't know if there's anything that we cut that would dramatically change the story. I'm more of a fan of, like, you have the amount of time to finish the thing you're working on, and what you finish is the director's cut.

Which shot or sequence of the eight episodes ended up being the toughest one to pull off?

WATTS: Tonally, there's a couple moments in Episode 7 that Lee Isaac Chung directed. He executed it beautifully, it's just for us on the writing and showrunning side of it, making sure the tone was balanced.

FORD: Because when you have funny things and then serious things…

WATTS: Yeah, walking that tightrope.

FORD: But I'm so glad he directed that one because he had the ability to.

WATTS: Yeah, he could really straddle those two worlds. But yeah, 107 it starts to get really intense.

'Skeleton Crew' Creators React to Fan Theories

How much have you guys been reading what people are predicting about the show, like Jude Law's character? How much have you been laughing and how much have you been like, “Oh, that's a little close?”

WATTS: [Laughs] I love reading all of it.

FORD: I mean, the earlier stuff, when they didn't really have anything to go off of, was pretty off base. It was like, “That'd be a good idea for a show. It just doesn't happen to be what we made.”

WATTS: The thing is, I don't want to set up the expectation that there's going to be some giant character cameos that happen. This is definitely more of its own self-contained story, so I don't want people to be disappointed when those things don't happen. But I like reading Reddit theories because it happened a couple of times on Spider-Man where there'd be a million different fan theories of what it could be, and then every once in a while, someone would be exactly right.

If you keep guessing, you're eventually going to guess. There are only so many choices.

WATTS: I don't think we've seen anyone that have have guessed it yet.

FORD: No, that's true, actually. Because there are a few more components in there.

How much have you designed, thought about, bibled , if you will, the planet that they're from and its implication in the larger galaxy?

WATTS: We’ve built that planet from the inside out.

FORD: There's the history of it and everything. It just matters for the story.

Sure, but it also could matter for future things, too.

FORD: And that's the weirdest part is sometimes we would be asking Dave Filoni or asking people, like, “Okay, does this exist or can we do this?” And they would say, “Well, it exists now.”

WATTS: “If you believe in the show, it does.” It's like, “Whoa, that's a lot of responsibility.” That's a lot of weight to carry.

Jon Watts Gives a Disappointing Update on 'Wolfs 2'

What's the status of a Wolfs sequel? People are wondering. It’s a big hit on Apple. And do you know what you're directing next?

WATTS: I don't know what I'm directing next, and I don't think there's going to be a Wolfs sequel, probably.

FORD: What about a prequel?

WATTS: Who knows? I haven't worked anything out yet.

Got it. Because I know you did a first-look deal with Disney, so I'm curious what that means and if there is any other IP that you're like, “I would love to play with that?”

WATTS: There are a lot of fun things at Disney. That's a pretty big toy box to be digging around through.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is now streaming on Disney+.