This 'Skeleton Crew' Storyline Took Me Completely by Surprise

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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

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Kyriana Kratter as KB in Skeleton Crew Image via Disney+

Born prematurely and partially blind on the day the prequel trilogy began, I was always destined to be a Star Wars nut, yet I have always had mixed feelings about its portrayal of blindness. Previous characters have often been underutilized at best or reinforced stereotypes at worst, which is why Skeleton Crew has personally become such a pleasant surprise. Rather than just a crutch or path to superhuman abilities, KB (Kyriana Kratter) experiences her unique form of blindness as another fact of life, using it as a tool to navigate the world around her. By allowing KB to feel vulnerable without infantilizing her, Skeleton Crew keeps her story much more relatable, and the reboot of her failing processing unit feels closer to an actual rebirth, rather than death or loss.

Blindness Has a Complicated History in Star Wars

As a trope, blindness can trace its roots far back to ancient mythology, and it's not exactly a secret that Star Wars has been inspired by that same kind of lore. While the loss of a hand has remained a small tradition since the original trilogy, blindness remains almost as common in the franchise. Having grown up with Legends material first, the characters who first come to mind are Lucien Draay in the comics and Kreia in the video games, where her unique philosophy is reinforced by her use of the Force in place of physical sight. Notably, all of these characters are Jedi or Force-sensitive, which reflects a common stereotype of the wise and blind mystic.

In the current canon, this old trend has continued to flourish. In Star Wars: Rebels, Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) loses his sight from a lightsaber strike to the face, portraying blindness as a kind of sacrifice or form of spiritual death in the same way that so many other stories have done. Other stories have recently earned praise for humanizing disability and the rehabilitation arc of Kanan could have been just as compelling, but I felt that his new disability was rarely given the attention it truly deserved, and was even ignored outright at times. Another major recent example is Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) in Rogue One, where the cause of his blindness is never revealed but also enhances his superhuman abilities in a way that still feels overly romantic.

Bryce Dallas Howard for Skeleton Crew

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For KB, Blindness Is a Fact of Life in 'Skeleton Crew'

 Skeleton Crew Image via Disney+

When I first watched Skeleton Crew, I was a bit unsure what KB’s condition actually was, since the show deliberately avoided discussing it; the only thing we know is that she was in some kind of horrible accident. This by itself feels refreshing, since the series never tries to make KB’s blindness the core of her character, and it's not important to the story for viewers to know the major details. Rather than her being implicitly “punished” through trauma, blindness is just part of KB’s normal everyday life, and not even her best friend Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) sees it as unusual. As someone who was left partially blind from a premature birth and never knew a time without it, this storyline feels uniquely personal. Unlike other blind characters, KB also makes great use of assistive technology by wearing a visor linked to a cybernetic implant, showing how visually impaired people can still function in society through alternative means. Furthermore, the physical damage is not to her eyes, but to her brain, a far less common yet very real cause of visual disability.

For so long, KB has often acted like a living supercomputer, being the only crew member with the unique ability to navigate the Onyx Cinder, and she herself convincingly keeps up this front. When she finally exposed her true self both figuratively and literally during her time with Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) in the sixth episode, I was impressed with how much she had grown, but also shocked at the sensitivity with which the scene was handled. Thanks to the direction of Bryce Dallas Howard and a surprisingly nuanced performance by Kyriana Kratter, the series makes KB feel helpless not as a disabled person, but just as a lost little girl, one who still stays calm and knows what to do when technology fails her. When she is rebooted, it's treated as a discovery of purpose and confidence, rather than a loss of it.

Authentic portrayals of blindness like this are becoming more common, but they still remain rare and can therefore be greatly surprising to me when they do actually appear. As a blind girl, KB is not superhuman, and she would be the first to tell you so, but she has been an unlikely source of representation in Star Wars, one for which I'm profoundly grateful.

The Star Wars: Skeleton Crew finale airs on Tuesday, January 14 at 9 PM EST on Disney+ in the U.S.

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Four kids make a mysterious discovery on their home planet that leads them to get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy.

Release Date December 2, 2024

Creator

Cast Jude Law , Ravi Cabot-Conyers , Ryan Kiera Armstrong , Kyriana Kratter , Robert Timothy Smith , Nick Frost , Fred Tatasciore , Jaleel White , Dale Soules , Geoffrey Lower , Marti Matulis , Sisa Grey , Dominic Burgess , Vivienne Sachs , Esai Daniel Cross , Shane Almagor , Paloma Garcia-Lee , Alan Resnick , Anthony Atamanuik , John Gemberling , Tunde Adebimpe , Kerry Condon , Alia Shawkat , Cass Buggé , Geneva Carr

Seasons 1

Franchise

Main Genre Sci-Fi

Streaming Service(s) Dis

Directors David Lowery , Bryce Dallas Howard , Jake Schreier , Lee Isaac Chung , Daniel Scheinert

Watch on Disney+

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