There are a lot of young heroes in Star Wars, but rarely as young—or rarely as prominent, focal perspectives—as the stars of its next live-action series, Skeleton Crew. We’ve had teens like Ahsoka and Ezra, even kids like Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s young Leia Organa, but it’s high time that the series thrust those young heroes into the spotlight. But what does it actually mean to have children lead a Star Wars story? For series creators Jon Watts and Chris Ford, the reality was as interesting as the fantasy.
“Starting with those kids, we knew that they had a feeling of wanting an adventure, wanting something more exciting to happen in their lives. And what you learn growing up in real life, is when you want those things, if they happen to you, sometimes it’s bad,” Ford recently mused to io9 over Zoom. “There’s a part of growing up that’s learning about the dangers of the real world. And we thought that was a really interesting story to tell in the Star Wars galaxy.”
For Watts, bringing the series back to its adventure genre roots for Skeleton Crew needed that dose of reality to heighten the stakes of it all, even when dealing with such young protagonists. “I do think of Star Wars as being an adventure story, but it’s just the fact that it’s this thing of, you know… so many people would say ‘Oh, I would love to go be in the Star Wars galaxy’,” Watts said. “Yeah, no. No, it’s called Star Wars. It’s kind of a bad place to go! You long for adventure, and then when you get it, you’re like ‘hey, this is a lot more intense than I thought it was.’”
“We really felt that push and pull between wanting adventure and in real life, the reality of what that is,” Ford added. “People avoid adventure in real life, for good reason! So that kind of unsolvable question was really interesting to us.”
We adults may try to avoid the kind of circumstances that would get us into a Star Wars-ian adventure in most of our day-to-day life, but for Skeleton Crew‘s young heroes, having that perspective shared with, and shown to, fellow young Star Wars fans was a vital point of connection. “It’s a lot of fun, and I think it’s so special that we’re now seeing a new perspective in the Star Wars universe, following it in the eyes of children,” Ravi Cabot-Conyers, who plays Wim in the show, said of the meaning behind leading a crew of kid heroes on the show. “Children bring such a wide-eyed innocence to the galaxy, I feel like it’s really special.”
“We’ve never had something like this, I don’t think we’ve had one Star Wars show that really had, like, kids that really have a big part in the live-action material,” Robert Timothy Smith, who plays Wim’s best friend and the immediate adorable breakout of the show, elephantine alien Neel, added. (You’ll forgive the very young actors who were not alive to witness the Ewok TV movies to be largely correct in their assumption of contemporary Star Wars media.)
“It really is so special… it’s so important to have this concept for kids, it’s relatable because the circumstances are so real,” Cabot-Conyers continued. “Even though the stakes are so high and exaggerated because it’s in the Star Wars universe, there’s a lot of real things that these kids are going through that kids in the real world might go through too. It’s important that, even though it’s a huge Star Wars series, kids can still relate to something real in it.”
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew begins streaming on Disney+ starting December 3.
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