In the first scene of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, pirates raid a freighter and breach its sealed vault. “At long last,” proclaims pirate captain Silvo, “I’ve brought you to the only thing that matters: cold, hard credits.” Except, when Silvo steps into the vault, he and his hearties behold a haul that wasn’t worth the fight: a single stinking credit. The crew revolts—a mutiny, in a moment of triumph.
Lucasfilm’s leadership might be feeling a little like Silvo these days because it’s been quite a while since Star Wars last had an unqualified win. From the much-covered closing of luxury hotel and immersive experience Galactic Starcruiser and the underwhelming third season of The Mandalorian in 2023, to the cancellation of The Acolyte and disappointing reception to and sales of Star Wars Outlaws last year, the franchise has suffered a series of misfires or middling releases in multiple media—all while flailing on the film front. Thus, Skeleton Crew’s December premiere provided another opportunity to take the temperature of too-big-to-fail but faltering IP.
It’s unfair for every series to be forced to serve as a referendum on an almost-50-year-old franchise, but Skeleton Crew makes for a fascinating data point. On the screen, Silvo eventually leads his crew to the treasure he promised: not just one vault but hundreds of them, each overflowing with a fortune in antique currency. Yet in the season finale, which went live on Disney+ on Tuesday, the pirates don’t prosper: They reach the precipice of a massive score but can’t bag the booty. That’s not a bad metaphor for Skeleton Crew’s combination of good process and—in terms of viewership—meager results.
Cold, hard ratings aren’t the only thing that matters to Disney—Skeleton Crew boasts robust review scores from critics and users alike—but they rank toward the top of the list. And by that metric, this latest live-action release ranks toward the bottom. Skeleton Crew is one of the best live-action Star Wars series. It’s also probably the least watched. Star Wars needs a win, and Skeleton Crew is one, from a certain point of view. From another perspective, though, this isn’t the hit Lucasfilm is looking for.
I come to praise Skeleton Crew, not to bury it, so first let me stress that the series was a pleasant surprise in several respects. Its eight-episode season both fulfilled and transcended its “Goonies in Star Wars” mandate, paying homage to a multitude of classics—from Star Wars to Amblin and beyond—without feeling like a pale imitation of any of them. Its dizzying array of references to Treasure Island, Treasure Planet, and The Wizard of Oz, as well as every era of Star Wars, mostly enriched the spectator experience without crowding out the original settings, story, and characters. (The last couple of episodes alone contained callbacks to all three trilogies, some of which were subtle.)
Tasty memberberry smoothies aside, the series succeeded on so many levels. For instance: by telling a family-friendly story that mostly avoided being mawkish or cutesy. (In fact, it was sometimes surprisingly violent and dark.) By being one of the best-looking Star Wars series, from its use of puppets and practical effects to the visual inventiveness of its creature designs; by doing a darn good job of casting its kid actors; by not only adding Jude Law to the roster of Star Wars acting talent but also giving him a meaty part to play; by frequently making me laugh.
For me, the most unexpected (and rewarding) aspect of the series was its assortment of mysteries—some of them more compelling than those of The Acolyte, which was more explicitly structured as a mystery show. The finale, “The Real Good Guys,” wasn’t especially surprising and ended a bit abruptly, but it did pay off virtually every plotline and answer almost every pressing question. At Attin’s Supervisor was revealed to be a Hal 9000–esque droid; Jod finally confirmed his Force sensitivity and explained the origins of his rudimentary Jedi training. (He’s not an Order 66 survivor, but he briefly trained under one until she was killed.) The only way in which the series sort of left us hanging was by opting not to explain when and why At Attin and its sister worlds were isolated. The secrecy surrounding a mint might be self-evident, but what were the other hidden planets’ tasks?
Ultimately, tying up loose ends like that doesn’t matter as much as doing justice to characters, which Skeleton Crew accomplished in slightly subversive ways. Jod doesn’t start slaughtering younglings, but he doesn’t earn a redemption arc, either. The parents aren’t shocked by the Supervisor reveal; unlike the kids, they’re aware that their boss and leader is a droid, and they’re cool with it. Every kid seizes the spotlight at some point: Neel uses Chekhov’s turbo-laser, foreshadowed in Episode 4, to provide crucial ground-to-air support; KB finally flies the Onyx Cinder; Wim holds his saber the right way up; and Fern talks her mom into going against protocol. But the kids don’t save the day by themselves; their parents pitch in and reconnect with (or discover) their own inner adventurers. Wim’s dad’s declaration—“Son, you are talking to a Level 7 systems coordinator”—is one of the episode’s standout lines.
Most impressively, Skeleton Crew’s finale established the series as something as rare and precious as a well-preserved Jewel of the Old Republic—a Disney+ series that both seemed to be roughly the right length and told a largely self-contained story that didn’t function primarily as a vehicle for crossovers or setup for a subsequent project. Sure, the discovery of an untapped treasure planet may have implications for the larger lore; At Attin’s riches might make it a target for Grand Admiral Thrawn. But aside from the utterly extraneous presence of Vane, a pirate from The Mandalorian, very little linked Skeleton Crew to the rest of the Mandoverse. One could watch and enjoy Skeleton Crew without extensive Star Wars history or an eye toward future tie-ins, which was as liberating as boarding a buried ship and soaring through the Barrier.
In short: fun show. I wouldn’t say Skeleton Crew is Star Wars at its peak, but its creators set out to make a certain sort of series, and they not only hit their marks but overdelivered. The result felt as fresh and enticing to non-Disney diehards as anything since Andor, while still displaying a love for the franchise’s roots.
Too bad no one watched it.
Please pardon my hyperbole; obviously, plenty of people have streamed Skeleton Crew. But graded against the baseline for live-action, small-screen Star Wars, it didn’t do well. Skeleton Crew missed the Nielsen top 10 in its first week, despite coming out early in the week (and thus early in the Nielsen measurement window) and airing two episodes. The Acolyte’s two-part premiere made the Nielsen ranking; Skeleton Crew came in about 20 percent lower. The latter’s third episode also missed the Nielsen chart, and the series hasn’t been qualifying for Luminate’s leaderboards, either. Even if we don’t hold the series to the franchise’s high standards for audience size, it’s far from a hit.
Fans don’t profit personally from the Mouse’s hours streamed and sign-ups, so if you enjoyed Skeleton Crew, as I did, then you’re under no obligation to care whether anyone else watched it. However, viewership does have some bearing on both big-picture beliefs about the health of a franchise and more micro decisions about which kinds of content to make. If you want Disney to make more Star Wars, more stand-alone stories like Skeleton Crew, or a second season of Skeleton Crew itself, then you have a reason to root, root, root for its ratings.
Why wasn’t Skeleton Crew more popular? It could be because Star Wars is spiraling: Maybe too much mediocrity drove viewers away. It could be precisely because the events of the series aren’t obviously integral to the larger fabric of the franchise; it seemed less essential to tune in week to week. (We’re talking about TV shows, so none of them are essential, but you know what I mean: There wasn’t much risk of significant spoilers, or fear of missing out on must-see developments, even if character crossovers with Ahsoka or The Mandalorian & Grogu could occur.) Or it could be because most of the main cast members are kids and because the series was marketed—and to some extent, made—to appeal to a younger, inherently smaller (in size and number) audience.
As usual, the answer is probably a blend of all of the above, but I would wager most of my dataries on the third explanation. Some (such as George Lucas) would say that Star Wars has always been for kids, but there’s a Star Wars spectrum when it comes to catering to kids, with Andor at one end and Young Jedi Adventures at the other. Skeleton Crew falls closer to the latter extreme than its live-action Disney+ predecessors did. The perception—and, to a degree, reality—is that the show may have turned off a potential older audience. And there was a little less substance to dissect from week to week than in some previous Star Wars series, which is why it was the first live-action Star Wars series I didn’t recap weekly. (Though I certainly watched weekly.)
Essentially, the series seemed oriented toward the kind of audience that might be into the franchise’s animated shows, and it wound up with an animated-series-size audience. Which would be fine if Skeleton Crew had the budget of an animated show, but it reportedly cost about $136 million, a good deal less than The Acolyte but more than The Mandalorian. Perhaps subsequent Nielsen reports will show that Skeleton Crew, like Agatha All Along, gained viewers over time as positive buzz built. If not, its odds of renewal seem slim, unless Disney sees it as a loss leader that could encourage kids to take their first steps into a larger world of Star Wars streaming. Although its creators left room to extend their story and say they “100 percent have an idea for a second season and know what we would do,” the ratings may lack the strength for them to do it. At least Skeleton Crew’s finale provided closure, in contrast to The Acolyte’s, which ostentatiously planted seeds for a second season right up to its last shot.
Disney has done a lot of good during its stewardship of Star Wars, but less so lately: Reducing the quantity hasn’t helped the quality. This time, though, the “failure”—from a corporate, moneymaking, stock-price-boosting standpoint—was one of audience assessment and/or outreach, not one of creative execution. Lucasfilm still knows how to make refreshing, exciting Star Wars. That’s good news, even if the company can’t convince viewers to watch it.
Aside from Season 3 of animated anthology series Visions, there’s only one Star Wars project confirmed for the rest of 2025: Andor Season 2, which is slated to arrive on April 22. (By contrast, Marvel—riding the momentum of two 2024 hits in Deadpool & Wolverine and Marvel Rivals—has 10 releases on its 2025 schedule.) Andor didn’t draw giant crowds the first time around, compared to The Mandalorian or Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it will have been off the air for about two and a half years by the time it returns. Plus, just as Andor Season 1 competed for nerd-culture coverage in 2022 with the first seasons of House of the Dragon, The Rings of Power, and She-Hulk, Season 2 will overlap with The Last of Us Season 2, Daredevil: Born Again, Thunderbolts, and, perhaps, Ironheart. But its award wins and word of mouth might up its audience anyway. And unless Tony Gilroy has lost his touch, Andor will, at least, give Lucasfilm a few months of positive PR. (Even if the praise is more for Gilroy, specifically, than for the franchise.)
The pressure is on Andor to live up to its peerless first season, but the series isn’t positioned to “save” Star Wars any more than Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was to “save” the MCU. Guardians writer-director James Gunn had already left for rival DC before that trilogy capper came out, and the movie’s success only showcased how much he’d be missed. Similarly, even an excellent second act for Andor could highlight how bare the cupboard will be when the series ends this summer. Which truly puts the pressure on Lucasfilm and Disney to make a major announcement soon that could rally the faithful—maybe at Star Wars Celebration in April, just before Andor debuts, or on Star Wars Day in early May.
As for Fern, KB, Neel, and Wim—well, we’ll always have At Attin. Skeleton Crew brought warm feelings to the hearts of Star Wars fans who gave it a chance. But too few did to snap the Star Wars slump.
