The following contains spoilers for “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” season 1, episode 4, “Can’t Say I Remember No At Attlin.”
As Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) attempts to locate At Attlin both to take Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), KB (Kyriana Kratter), and Neel (voiced by Robert Timothy Smith) back home and for his own purposes, the Onyx Cinder lands on a planet that’s shockingly similar but nevertheless completely different. “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” season 1, episode 4, “Can’t Say I Remember No At Attlin,” reveals that the eponymous planet is of great interest to other space pirates, too — namely, SM-33’s (voiced by Nick Frost) mysterious old captain, who’s made sure to leave a few surprises for people who attempt to follow his footsteps toward the mystery world. For this episode, however, the action takes place on At Achrann — a post-apocalyptic, warring version of At Attlin that serves as a surprisingly grim entry in the planet series that makes up the so-called Jewels of the Old Republic.
“Skeleton Crew” enjoys paying homage to other projects, and At Achrann adds a heaping helping of “Fallout” to the “Star Wars” show’s overall vibe. With At Attlin’s debut, viewers were introduced to a retro-futuristic suburbia that bears similarities to the world of “Fallout” before the nuclear war. With At Achrann, we get the “after” part of the picture, and the ravaged planet looks a whole lot like the wastelands where the majority of the “Fallout” franchise’s narrative takes place. The planet’s eternal state of conflict even seems to nod at the “Fallout” property’s famous logline: “War. War never changes.”
Could Skeleton Crew’s mystery planets be similar to Fallout’s Vaults?
The interesting thing about the show’s increasing “Fallout” vibes is that episode 4 also confirms several other hidden “jewel” worlds: At Aytuu, At Atrissia, At Aravin, and At Acoda. Since At Attin and At Achrann feature virtually identical locations, it makes sense to assume that the others do, too. Both planets also share a creepy “Supervisor’s tower,” which hides interesting information and serves a mysterious purpose.
Considering the “Fallout” influence on the two Jewels of the Old Republic we’ve seen, it’s easy to wonder whether the identical planets and their ominous Supervisor’s towers are secretly similar to the Vaults. In “Fallout,” the Vaults are massive nuclear shelters that are purportedly meant to help their residents survive through the apocalypse. In reality, however, the inhabitants are subjected to all sorts of cruel tests and (sometimes literally) inhumane conditions, which are generally supervised from the Overseer’s office.
As it stands, this theory makes a surprising amount of sense. The peaceful, controlled At Attlin and the chaotic At Achrann are virtually identical but their residents are subject to dramatically different conditions, and their Supervisor’s towers seem to serve a similar narrative purpose as the Overseer’s offices do in the Vaults. At Attlin’s reputation as a treasure trove could even indicate that it’s a control “vault” that has been spared from the terrifying fates of other jewels … though, considering the strange bureaucratic dedication the planet has to the so-called Great Work, it may very well be conducting a strange experiment of its own. Future episodes of “Skeleton Crew” will reveal what life is like on other Jewels of the Old Republic, and we’ll see just how far down the “Fallout” rabbit hole the show is willing to crawl.
New episodes of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” drop Tuesdays at 6 pm PST on Disney+.
