Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episode 6 Review

The most underused member of the team gets a touching and much-needed spotlight.This review contains full spoilers for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Season 1, Episode 6.

After last week’s shocking betrayal (though just how shocking it was is debatable), the Crew has found itself on the back foot. That means it’s the perfect time for some of the characters to have a big, initially inexplicable fight about what their next step should be. It’s an obvious plot move, one that this kind of team always has to go through, but Skeleton Crew has proven over and over again that it is at least enormously competent when it comes to running familiar stories through its “Goonies but Star Wars” filter.

Much like episode 4 a few weeks ago, though less explicit than that one, “Zero Friends Again” is a showcase for one specific member of the Crew—and one that maybe should’ve gotten a showcase a little sooner. Previous Skeleton Crew reviews have danced around the fact that one of the kids never got much to do and therefore didn’t get a chance to showcase much personality, making her performance seem stiff and flat and emotionless. It didn’t help that we knew nothing about her beyond the fact that she had ill-defined technological abilities and some sort of robot visor.

This is Star Wars, and in terms of characterization, that’s like saying “oh, this character is just an elephant kid” when we now know that there’s more to Neel than that. But is there more to KB (Kyriana Kratter) than her robot visor and her flat emotional responses to everything? Every episode until now suggested that the answer was no, but now, finally, we get to see what else is going on with KB—and it’s actually pretty emotional.

It turns out that KB’s robot visor isn’t just some cool tech but part of a prosthetic of some sort. She makes a vague reference to being in an “accident” that changed her, and since then she’s been scared of letting Fern (her best and only friend before joining the Crew) realize that there are certain things she just can’t do anymore. Meanwhile, Fern has a problem recognizing that other people’s limitations are not the same as her own.

Wim thinks it’s sweet that Fern doesn’t treat KB any differently after this accident, but no, says KB, it means there’s all of this pressure on her now to not be different even though she is. It’s a powerful little sequence, with Skeleton Crew gently indicating that one of its kids was being unintentionally ableist, and it also underlines that the show is trying to make sure that the kids aren’t just archetypes. Plus, just to make sure it doesn’t feel too sentimental or “afterschool special,” KB cooly shrugs off the fact that Wim literally saved her life with some emergency maintenance by calling him “Jedi” and eliciting a silent “whoa” from the kid.

It’s all resolved immensely easy, which is fine, because another thing that is clear in this episode is that the kids act like real, believable kids. Young people get into little fights like this, and then they immediately move on, usually by doing little more than reaffirming their friendships. This is also yet another example of Skeleton Crew’s faith in its audience—we know KB and Fern love each other, we don’t need to spend a single second more than necessary with them having their feelings hurt just for the sake of drama.

All of that means that it’s really time for the adults of Skeleton Crew to start being more engaging. Jod Na Nawood only gets a couple of scenes in this episode, one with a great SM-33 moment (he comes to Jod’s rescue and is immediately shot) and the other with Jude Law putting on his charm and trying to win back his old pirate friends in front of the wolfman Captain Brutus. Law’s monologuing here is fine, and it ends with him rallying the other scoundrels together in a space-shanty about Tak Rennod’s lost treasure planet that more or less works, but this just feels like plot with the surprisingly meaty kid stuff going on.

Really, how did the people behind Skeleton Crew (including this week’s director, Bryce Dallas Howard) manage to make a show about space-pirates, starring famous handsome man Jude Law, where a bunch of kids are genuinely the most interesting part?

And though that’s not intended as a “damning with faint praise” criticism, it is a criticism. Now that a lot of the central mysteries are falling into place, there’s less narrative momentum driving Skeleton Crew. That means the scenes where the kids grow and learn about each other are good, and the scenes that aren’t related to that—like Jod on the pirate ship—are the ones that will have to justify their existence with interesting developments that are, hopefully, more interesting than what we got here.

Every Upcoming Star Wars Movie and TV ShowHell, the kids accidentally upgraded their ship in this episode with no help from Jod. How long was he around without that happening? That says something about how value to this team.

VerdictThe kids are carrying Skeleton Crew, even as they learn more about each other’s unexpected traumas and grow as young people. Who would’ve thought we’d be watching a scene of Jude Law singing a shanty with space-pirates while thinking “get back to the stuff with the kids”?

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episode 6 Reviewgood

The adults’ plot drags its feet, but the kids of Skeleton Crew boost the whole episode by reckoning with their anxieties.

Sam Barsanti