Star Wars: Skeleton Crew 1×05 Review – ‘You Have A Lot To Learn About Pirates’

Mutiny it is! This week’s episode of Skeleton Crew, ‘You Have A Lot To Learn About Pirates’ is the episode we all knew we would get. But Jod’s mutiny didn’t hurt any less.

Jod, or Dash Zentin as he was called this week, has been playing along to get along for much of his time on the Onyx Cinder. We, the audience, have been waiting for him to betray the children when he finally got what he has always wanted, treasure.

But each week we felt like he was a good guy playing a baddie, like Han Solo – saving the kids several times and even in this episode doing his best to console Wim when he gets homesick and begins to think the adventure wasn’t worth it. He even saved Neel from falling into a pit trap after figuring out where the data port was in the treasure room. We all felt when they found Captain Rennod’s treasure room, Jod was really there for the kids.

Jude Law has been playing Jod Na Nawood so brilliantly. He’s charming and brave, but there is a sinister glint in his eye. As good as the kids have been in the show, Jude is been just a step better.

The kids got a huge smack of reality this week. The episode started with them getting ‘Story Hour with SM-33’, as he conveyed stories of his old captain, notorious pirate Captain Tak Rennod. They even played dress up when they landed at the new spa resort now on top of Skull Ridge Mountain, the former hiding spot of Captain Rennod’s treasure. Once in their room, they began to jump on the bed while Jod was trying to make a plan to get the coordinates to At Attan before Brutus’s crew came to kill them.

It wasn’t until Jod betrayed them, calling to challenge Fern for captainship, that they began to understand that this was not just a fun little adventure; it was serious and had serious stakes.

Wim tried his best to stand up to Jod after he found a lightsaber. But being Wim, he turned it on when it was upside down and almost cut off his foot.

Fern was so reluctant to give up command that she refused to yield to Jod until he had her a knife point. She had been holding on by a thread over the last few weeks of the show. I wonder how this is going to affect them. At home, she has no control over anything in her life because of her overbearing mother and the social expectations placed on her by being at the top of her class. She’s going to struggle now, losing the one thing she had control over.

Throughout this episode, showrunners Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, as well as the director of this episode Jake Schrier, reminded us that Jod is a Force user. When he was consoling Wim, he used the Force to put his datapad back into his hands. He used the Force to block a swing by Fern when she tried to surprise attack him after he challenged her. There is something there with all that because the last shot of the episode was Jod Force-pulling the lightsaber to his hand.

We will get into what that could mean in Speculation Corner.

Some Easter Eggs I caught this week. Jod saying “Your focus determines your reality” is straight from Qui-Gon Jinn’s mouth. I wonder if he knew him or if it was something he picked up along his travels. Jod is called Dash Zentin by Pokkit, a bounty hunter and former acquaintance of his. Dash is a play on Dash Rendar, a smuggler and friend of Han Solo that has appeared in several books and games.

Captain Rennod’s treasure room had a ton of visual references to Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Goonies, giving us some more of those Amblin feels. The two biggest to me was the giant crystal-like skull. It could be a reference to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but much more likely it’s a reference to the 1980 book Han Solo and the Lost Legacy by Brian Daley. It’s shown up in a few other stories within Star Wars through recent years, most notably in Solo: A Star Wars Story on Dryden Vos’s ship.

The other was the table full of food where the switch was for the data port. It felt very Goonies to me. With the table all set, it was led to a trap. A nice subtle touch.

And we got a Hutt! With the announcement that Jeremy Allen White will be playing Rotta the Hutt in the upcoming Mandalorian and Grogu movie, this has to be a backdoor introduction to the character for those who don’t know about Sticky. 

Now: Speculation Corner.

First: Jod now has a lightsaber and a smile. He most definitely has had some Jedi training. We were speculating on our podcast that maybe he was given away by his parents at an older age and the training never stuck. Now he blames everyone else for his actions and doesn’t care about anyone but himself. I have really enjoyed his character up to this point.

Second: It’s now a race to the ship, right? The kids escaped through the trapped door at the table but now what? KB might be able to fly the Onyx Cinder or one of the other pirate ships from Brutus’s crew. And I believe only SM-33 has the correct coordinates. Are the kids going to save themselves or is Jod going to step in when the pirates go after them?

Third: When SM-33 played the video message from Captain Rennod, he said that At Attin is the last of The Old Republic mints. That would be why the kids had fresh Old Republic credits. The legend of At Attin is that it is a ‘treasure of endless wealth’. Well, if there is a mint there, that would be it. It was when Jod learned of the mint that he challenged to be captain. I believe that Captain Rennod is The Supervisor, for now. He would be old, like the Wizard of Oz, but that would make sense why he wouldn’t want anyone in the outside galaxy to learn about At Attin.

Fourth: This really isn’t a speculation, more of a want. I want to learn more about KB. She seems to be the only character we don’t know much about. I want to know more about her backstory and what her medical issue is.

Fifth: The parents covertly trying to send a signal out to the kids needs to be addressed. They are making such a big deal that there can’t be any outside contact; there has to be a reason. Maybe it’s from Captain Rennod or more likely, the planet is run by the programing of the droids and there is no Supervisor. Either the parents or the kids or both are going to find the truth about At Attin before the end of the series.

Episode fives in the Disney+ era have been the big important episodes of the series. This had that same feeling. Jod’s mutiny may have been inevitable because he’s a pirate after all, but the entire episode ratcheted up the tension making us the audience sit closer and closer to the edge of our seats. Maybe my favorite episode of the series so far but this series has been a win for me across the board.

Next episode, Tuesday, December 31st, 6 pm PT. 

Author: Sean Miley

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