Matt Kennedy/Lucasfilm
"Skeleton Crew" is a delightful show that takes the "Star Wars" franchise to new and exciting places. While it may tell a story that skews a bit younger, it also doesn't shy away from reminding viewers that it takes place in a dark and dangerous galaxy — one filled with pirates.
A big part of what makes "Skeleton Crew" so good is the cast. The show's kid actors are not only good on their own, but they also have great chemistry, making it feel as though they really have known each other for years. Things only get better when Jude Law's Jod enters the picture, as he finds himself constantly exasperated having to deal with a bunch of loud children. As much as the show's central mystery about the planet of At Attin is intriguing, it's the joy of getting to watch these kids go from wide-eyed excitement to absolute terror as they adventure through space that makes "Skeleton Crew" worth checking out. As good as the kids are, however, the fact that they're kids also poses a problem. What if the show gets a second season (or more)? How do you deal with a cast full of actors who are rapidly growing up?
Fortunately, it seems "Skeleton Crew" co-creator Jon Watts already has a solution. Speaking with Collider, Watts revealed there are already plans for what season 2 would be about and, perhaps just as importantly, how the series will deal with the kids' ages. "By the time we would get production going, we know what age [the kids] would be. So, we would be writing towards that," Watts explained. "You'll be growing up with the kids." He added:
"It would be something like [a three to four-year time jump] 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."
Skeleton Crew would grow with its cast
Matt Kennedy/Lucasfilm
"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," co-creator Christopher Ford noted in the same interview. "There are so many repercussions. It's like, you kind of want to catch up later."
If "Skeleton Crew" were to continue, the prospect of it jumping ahead and growing with its young actors would be rather exciting. We've seen this happen before in "Star Wars" animation, as both "The Clone Wars" and "Star Wars Rebels" allowed its youngest characters to grow and develop with each season. "Rebels," was particularly good at this, as the show started when its protagonist Ezra Bridger was 14 years old and saw him go from a wide-eyed street urchin to a mature leader and Jedi who makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the day in the series' finale. At the same time, "Rebels" had Ezra make mistakes through some very dark chapters along the way rather than having him act mature and experienced beyond his years.
Likewise, we could potentially see a future where the kids of "Skeleton Crew" grow older and perhaps even become pirates themselves, growing in notoriety and influence as they evolve into full-fledged rogues and scoundrels. Having the show skip forward in time also sounds like a much better idea than somehow forcing it to tie into whatever big event Lucasfilm Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni is planning to unite the various Disney+ "Star Wars" series he's involved with as a producer. "Skeleton Crew" might take place in the same era of the franchise's timeline as other Filoni-backed shows like "The Mandalorian" and "Ahsoka," but it's otherwise dramatically different from those series (which is also what makes it great).
New episodes of "Star Wars: Skeleton Crew" drop Thursdays at 6 pm PST on Disney+.
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