Star Wars Skeleton Crew Trailer was released at the Star Wars Celebration 2023. We had a bunch of new footage, a bunch of Easter eggs, and connections to Ahsoka and The Mandalorian. The show is set during the same time period. It’s meant to be part of the Mando verse. So I’ll explain how everything is connected.
Jude Law is the main character. It’s about a group of kids in the outer rim who get swept up in a larger adventure with Jude Law’s character. This show has the tone of “Stranger Things” meets Stephen King‘s “Stand By Me” meets “Goonies” in the Star Wars universe. They also referenced the classic Steven Spielberg “Amblin” movies.
Star Wars Skeleton Crew Release Date
Originally Star Wars Skeleton Crew was supposed to be released at the end of this year, 2023. But then Disney pushed all the Marvel and Star Wars series just a bit. So everything is just spread out more. Now, this sounds like it’s going to premiere in the first half of 2024. They didn’t give an exact release date, so I’m assuming the first half of 2024.
Jon Watts was the person who created the series. He actually said that he was talking to Jon Favreau about creating it while they were filming Spider-Man No Way Home because most of you remember him from all the Spider-Man films. And Jon Favreau plays Happy Hogan in those Spider-Man films. So naturally, that’s the Star Wars connection. That’s how Jon Watts wound up doing a Star Wars series.
We got footage of Jon Watts talking about the series at the Star Wars Celebration. Watts wasn’t present there we just got a video of him saying that they are actually at work shooting the spaceships for the series. And then he ended his message by calling out Jude Law and Jude appeared live on the stage.
Star Wars Skeleton Crew Cast
Jude Law is the main character. The actual Star Wars Skeleton Crew trailer starts with a Droid teacher in the main character’s kid’s class. We meet the kids there are four of them. This first one is Ravi Cabot-Conyers. They didn’t say what the characters’ names were, we just saw who the actors were.
They jumped to a shot of two of the other characters, the female characters kids talking to each other with Kyriana Kratter and Ryan Kiera Armstrong, who plays the Gwen character. She’s meant to be the daughter of Jude Law’s character.
The only reason why we know her name is Gwen is that Jude Law’s character literally says it in the trailer. She questions her friend about whether or not she wants to do something more exciting with their lives like it’s really boring on their planet.
The scene is meant to be in the same vein as Luke Skywalker in A New Hope complaining that he’ll never find a way off this rock Tatooine. Complaining he never gets to do anything interesting, dreaming of having space adventures.
And just like Luke Skywalker gets swept up in the rebellion, the larger galactic Civil War against the Empire with Obi-Wan Kenobi, these kids go through something similar getting swept up in this part of the timeline. But the conflict is against Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Imperial Remnant and Moff Gideon.
Kerry Condon And Tunde
Then we have Kerry Condon back on the home planet that they actually took off from playing one of the major characters of the series, telling Tunde’s character, “Something is wrong”. We don’t really know what their connection is to Jude Law’s character or the other kids. They might be related to one of the kids. Kerry Condon is also an amazing actress some of you might remember her is Iron Man‘s Friday too.
Then there is another scene of the Ortolan character on the ship. Then a scene is in an office building. The architecture of the building is the same as Kerry Condon’s character is in with Tunde. It’s a wider shot of their officers. Not sure what they’re actually doing in this office or what they do at the office. But there’s another droid watching over them.
The voiceover is coming from Tunde telling Kerry Condon’s character that they need to find the kids. So that’s why I say they’re probably on the planet that the kids took off from with Jude Law, and it sounds like they’ll bounce back and forth between these different locations in the galaxy. Like it won’t just follow Jude Law’s character and the Kids into the unknown regions. You also come back to the regular part of the galaxy where they’re from.
Then there is just another scene of Kerry Condon in that same office building. I’m not sure which planet this is, but the scene of the main ship is flying over the city here.
Director And Writers
They have a murderer’s row of directors’ talent working on the series. As I said, Jon Watts, one of the executive producers who directed the series, wrote a lot of the series. They have the Daniels brothers who just did Everything Everywhere All At Once. Isaac Lee Chung just did Minari. Also, he just directed The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 3. Sounds like that was a bit of a test run for him.
They have Jake Schreier doing some of the episodes. He’s doing Marvel’s Thunderbolts right now and did Steven Yeun’s Beef series. Steven Yeun is going to play The Sentry in the Thunderbolts movie in the MCU. Bryce Dallas Howard is doing an episode and David Lowery, just did the Green Knight. So these have amazing directors working on the series.
Other Star Wars Skeleton Crew Cast
You also notice that Robert Timothy Smith’s character here in the motion capture suit, he’s playing the Ortolan character. They haven’t tuned it up in post-production because this is behind the scenes. So you’re not seeing the special effects.
It looks like Kyrie in Crowder’s character might be blind and she’s wearing an eye prosthetic. It totally looks like it’s inspired by Geordi’s visor on Star Trek The Next Generation.
Then there is this is just a behind-the-scenes shot of them on the volume, but the scene they’re filming might be on one of these alien planets just because of the terrain underneath them.
Star Wars Skeleton Crew Plot
In the footage they released, you can see the characters staring at a bunch of star charts trying to make their way home slowly. Jude Law’s character is kind of like the David Harbor/Hopper of the group trying to take care of the kids while they try to get home, trying to keep them from killing themselves, basically because they are a group of little kids.
Group of Kids getting into solving a bunch of problems like they cause a lot of the problems that they themselves wind up having to solve. Especially the inciting incident that gets them lost in what seems like unknown regions. Because one of the big differences with this series is that it’s going to a new part of space in the Star Wars galaxy that they’ve never visited before.
This I believe is meant to be the unknown regions. That’s basically where Grand Admiral Thrawn got lost with Ezra Bridger at the end of Star Wars Rebels, where he’s returning from during the Ahsoka series and The Mandalorian series.
Mando Verse Crossover And Thrawn
I did a big Ahsoka trailer article where we saw Grand Admiral Thrawn returning from the unknown regions and he becomes this big threat and they’re doing a version of the original Thrawn trilogy, Heir to the Empire in the Star Wars universe. During this part of the Mandalorian timeline. Skeleton Crew is meant to be a big part of that.
But Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, who are sort of like the overseers of this entire part of the timeline, they’re executive producers of all the different theories. They said the Skeleton Crew characters will not cross over on The Mandalorian Season 3. There might be some crossover with the Ahsoka series just because of the overarching connections with the Thrawn plot.
It sounds like they wind up getting lost in the same area of space in the unknown regions where Thrawn got lost. But the basic idea is that the little girls, as you see in some of the Star Wars Skeleton Crew trailer footage, find something the Grand Shard’s Pirates are doing. Like, they see something that’s going down on their way home in wind up running from them.
Everything Connecting To The Thrawn Plot
They haven’t fully explained what this group does that get them tied up in the larger Thrawn plot. But it sounds like whatever it is, it happens in unknown regions and has something to do with the imperial remnants. As we know Shard’s pirates are connected to the Imperial remnant. They’re going to address that during the Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 7 and the Episode 8 finale like they’ll tie back into the larger plot.
People have been complaining that we don’t really know what’s going on in The Mandalorian this season. “What is the plot of this season?” They basically answer that in the last two episodes of The Mandalorian Season 3, they’re supposed to be pretty big bangers.
But it sounds like the little kids witness something that the Pirates are doing that has something to do with the Imperial Remnant with Thrawn, they get lost in unknown regions. Then while they’re lost in the unknown regions, they also find things that connect to the larger Thrawn plot. Like you see them staring at this ancient fragment of a map here with all this riding on it.
Most of the Star Wars Skeleton Crew trailer footage they released is kind of vague. It doesn’t really give you a ton of the story, just kind of gives you a once in front of the characters. Like “This is what everybody looks like. This is kind of the vibe of the series”.
They probably won’t release a longer proper story trailer until we get much, much closer to the episode actually coming out probably right after the Ahsoka series comes out.
Ancient Text
There are a couple of other scenes that they released here like. One of the scenes looks like they find an ancient map fragment, and probably wind up using it as part of the information to find their way home, but the information is incomplete. Notice all the symbols on it are written in Aurebesh. That’s the main language of the Star Wars universe. So you see it written all over the place in the movies and all the series.
I can’t make out the figures at the bottom of the fragment. But in this other scene, as you see them in the same room with all these maps and star charts strewed out all over the place, it just seems like they try to piece their way back home slowly. Because there are no good complete maps of the unknown regions. This is why they can’t easily plot a hyperspace route back home.
That’s also why Thrawn was lost in the unknown regions for the entirety of the original trilogy, why he wasn’t around during A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi because he had no star charts to jump back home.
Thrawn Mandalorian Crossover
Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni said that the Skeleton Crew characters would not appear in The Mandalorian. I’m not expecting to see a bunch of Easter eggs in the last two episodes of The Mandalorian Season 3 for Skeleton Crew. We might see more Easter eggs during Ahsoka. So I will do more Skeleton Crew articles as we get more Easter eggs later this year.
But the larger plan is that because of the Thrawn movie, “The Heir to the Empire” Star Wars movie that they’re doing, where all these Mando verse shows will cross over. The Skeleton Crew characters, Jude Law’s character, and The Kids will also crossover with The Mandalorian, with the Ahsoka characters when they’ll have their final battle against Thrawn.
Dave Filoni confirmed that he’s going to be the one that’s making that movie. It is based on the expanded Universe Original Thrawn trilogy, which is why I say “Heir to the Empire”. That’s going to be the name of the movie.
Kids On An Adventure
You see the kids break into someone’s workshop after walking through the forest here. The next scene is at night in another part of the city, with Jude Law’s character coming home and telling what seems like his daughter Gwen that she needs to be doing her homework. He is trying to check on her, looking through their house for her. And they intercut with footage of his daughter Gwen and her friend running through the woods, crying out for him like she’s running from the pirates. Remember, this is Shard’s group.
It sounds like the inciting incident that causes them to all jumped the ship and into the unknown regions without a map, is the girl sees something shady that the Shard’s men are doing on their way home from their little field trip through the woods and The pirates come after them and they run.
They jump to a scene of their ship flying across an asteroid. This is the main ship during the series. They didn’t say what the name of the ship is, but it looks like a totally new design.
On the ship, you see the four kids and Jude Law’s character. You notice that one of the kids is Ortolan. And that’s the same race that Max Ribeau was from Jabba’s Band. They were also featured alive and well during the Book of Boba Fett later in the timeline playing in the club in the city. There’s another scene of the Gwen character getting ready to depart their ship, going to a different planet.
Unknown Regions Space Dock
Then there is this scene that seems like their ship space dock in another part of the unknown region they jump to. Like a new part of space wherever this place winds up being. The area they jump to is meant to be somewhere never visited in the Star Wars universe before. This is why I say the unknown regions, like the place where Thrawn basically got lost. There are a bunch of other alien ships docked there.
Then we have a scene of Jude Law between scenes with the kids on the bridge of their new ship with him in the pilot’s chair. So like I said, a little bit of “Stranger Things” mix with “Stand By Me”, mixed with a little bit of “Star Trek Voyager”. Like we’re lost in an unknown part of the galaxy and we slowly have to make our way home.
Having A Droid
Then we have s scene of the kids using the docking mechanism to leave their ship in what is probably them stepping onto the new alien planet in the unknown regions or one of the new plants they travel to. Notice that there’s a Droid character behind them.
They haven’t revealed what the Droid’s name is or who’s playing it, but there’s a long-standing tradition in the Star Wars movies and series that everyone has some kind of Droid companion or Droid main character. Like on The Mandalorian, he has R5 now and previously they had IG11.
Notice that they have a Rex Star Tours Droid. There are actually a bunch of them featured on The Mandalorian recently when they went into the Droid Bar.
Then we have a scene that is a little too potato quality, but it seems like they find a droid that’s broken down and deactivated. It might be the same droid that joins them on their mission to make it home. They might just wind up repairing it and becoming part of their crew.
Vane And Gorian Shard
Vane comes back and Shard comes back. The same group of pirates that we saw in The Mandalorian, Mando, and Bo-Katan fighting. They chase them down, trying to kill them. In order to escape, they jump the ship and head to the unknown regions without hyperspace coordinates. And it sounds like that’s how they get lost. And they basically have to find their way back home.
Kind of like Star Trek Voyager. If you didn’t watch Star Trek Voyager, basically the ship got lost in a completely different part of the galaxy, like a completely different quadrant and it is slowly making its way home.
In this scene you see the kids running through what looks like an alien marketplace on one of the foreign planes that they travel to in unknown regions. Like they’re exploring a totally new planet that they’ve never been to before.
Then there is Vane’s character coming back from The Mandalorian, Gorian Shard’s pirate picking up a gun off the floor, looking at what seems like the two little girls. And it seems like it’s connected to that earlier scene in the trailer when Gwen and her friend stumble into the pirates conducting business and then they chase them down trying to kill them. There is what seems like one of Gordon Shards’ other pirates working with Vane.
Also Read: 25 Amazing Facts About The Mandalorian
