Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Wants to Explore a New Age of Space Piracy

The new Star Wars series’ post-Return of the Jedi setting makes for a lawless galaxy far, far away.

The next Star Wars TV show is whisking us back to the post-Return of the Jedi setting of the likes of Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and The Mandalorian, which we’ve already seen plenty of as a pretty lawless place. Bounty hunters running amok, private mercenary forces filling the gaps the New Republic is struggling to cover, whole shipyards full of Imperial loyalists hijacking hyperdrives like they’re going out of fashion. But while that’s been on the fringes of those other stories, Skeleton Crew wants to make this piratical resurgence its core foil to its young heroes. ““Pirates are talked about so much in Star Wars,” Skeleton Crew co-creator Christopher Ford told Entertainment Weekly in a new preview of the upcoming series. “People would call Han Solo a pirate and he’d be like, ‘How dare you?’ And we’ve seen some awesome pirates in the animated shows. So this was something where both [executive producers] Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau were really excited to do more pirate stuff.” We’ve seen a few glimpses of just what Skeleton Crew means for that already, re-introducing us to Vane, Marti Matulis’ Nikto pirate who appeared in The Mandalorian season 3, and a new motley crew he’s working with, in the footage shown at D23 this summer. A new look give to EW today also revealed that crew is expanding to include Jaleel White as a cyborg named Gunter. But why is piracy such a big thing in the show? Well, you can thank a lack of Imperials for that. “With the era we’re in, we’re kind of getting to play with that lawless thing,” Ford added. “The Empire is gone, and so we’re playing with a part of the galaxy that has a resurgence of piracy.” The criminal underworld thriving in the face of wider galactic tumult has long been a thing in Star Wars. From Hondo Ohnaka hamming it up all the way through Clone Wars, to Han’s own position as a scoundrel and smuggler in the original movies, and then up to contemporary Star Wars TV playing in that space more than it does the Rebel/Republic vs Imperial side of things, it’s been an area that Star Wars has mined repeatedly between its tales of galactic conflict. Hell, we just got Star Wars Outlaws, which, while set a few years before Skeleton Crew, was pretty much about the same thing. The only thing that’s really different at this point is that the ruling power in the galaxy is the “heroes” of the New Republic, compared to the Empire, but as these shows have already shown us in fits and starts, to many that change of hands is not really much of a difference at the end of the day. But Skeleton Crew isn’t just saving that new generational thinking for its piratical foes: it’s apparently saving it for Jude Law’s mysterious Jod Na Nawood, too. Speaking of executive producer and Lucasfilm Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni’s faith in Star Wars canon, Ford briefly teased the show’s idea for Jod, who we already knew was Force-sensitive, as something unlike Jedi we’ve seen before. “And he gets both sides of that because [Dave] did that [mentoring under] George Lucas. So he gets that thing of, ‘I want to make a whole new kind of a Jedi,’ and then someone being like, ‘Okay, hold on. A lot of people have thought about this. Let’s do this the right way.’ And it’s so helpful.” A new kind of Jedi, for a new age of pirates? We’ll have to see what else Skeleton Crew‘s kid heroes get themselves wrapped up in when the show hits Disney+ December 3. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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