We’ve made it to the, uh, man, behind the curtain. Sort of.
Recap
Jod tells the families that reuniting is what he does and disengages his lightsabers. When Fara asks if the children are in trouble, he claims that they were difficult throughout the journey and in a great deal of trouble. He has security droids monitor the families at home. Wim tries to tell his dad the truth, but they’re being watched, and his father only wants to talk about him taking his Assessment. Wim tries to contact Neel over the walkie-talkies, but Neel is also being watching by droids. When the security droid at Wim’s house begins to question him, Wim pretends that he was just playing with his action figures. Fern and her mother are taken with Jod to see the Supervisor, as Jod is clearly most worried about Fern letting the truth about him slip. Fara is very excited for her daughter to meet the Supervisor at such a young age.
The Supervisor sits at the top of a tower and turns out to be a large droid that runs the entire planet. He (Stephen Fry) greets them, and praises Fara and Fern for her return. Jod introduces himself as Emissary and Jedi, and asks the Supervisor to let him land his second ship. When Fara asks why the ship can’t simply land as the first one did, Jod tells her that she asks too many questions and must simply obey. The Supervisor is in agreement, as adherence to authority is how At Attin has managed to run so well down the years. But the Supervisor has an inquiry; you see, the last message from the Republic indicated that all Jedi were traitor, so the Supervisor wants to know if Jod is lying about being a Jedi or an Emissary. Fern blurts out that he’s a pirate trying to invade the Mint, which is what the Supervisor expected, but before Jod can be arrested, he stabs the Supervisor and destroys him. A planet-wide power-outage commences, including all droids.
Jod asks how to get his ship through the Barrier, threatening to take it down. Fara tells him she can get the ship through without removing the Barrier’s protection, despite Fern protests. The pirate frigate comes through and an invasion begins, starting with bombardment of the surface. Wim realizes the droids are out and tells his dad the truth about what’s happening. Wendle tries to get their speeder working, but it’s affected by the power outage—Neel and KB arrive because hover bikes aren’t affected. They want to get the Cinder out past the Barrier to call Kh’ymm for help. The kids jump on their bikes and go, with Wendle following on his own bike. They’re pursued by pirates of skiffs, so they head into the woods. They have to jump the ravine where they found the ship, but all make it over, Wendle included. (He’s very excited to have done so.)
As they continue, Neel gets knocked off his bike, but tells them to keep going. He thinks the ship is going to need cover to take off, so he goes looking for some, finding a turbolaser. Back on the Onyx Cinder, they find out that they cannot take off due to docking clamps. They only way to fix it is to restore power, which means that Wendle and Wim need to head to the Supervisor’s Tower. Fara is bemoaning the fact that the Barrier didn’t keep her child safe from the galaxy. Fern tells her mother than even though the outside galaxy was scary, there were good people everywhere too, and that her mother has to trust her. Wim arrives and tells Jod that he’s already called the New Republic because he found a secret “Crystal of the Founders” that lets you bypass the Barrier’s communication block. He tells Jod that Jedi are coming to stop him. Jod tells them that the story needs a lot of work, but he’s been distracted enough not to notice Wendle sending power to the docking clamps, allowing KB to leave with a reactivated SM-33 as copilot. She gets the message out, but is shot down by pirates.
Jod blames the children for this outcome, pointing out that no one can help them with the Barrier in place anyhow. Fern tries to reach the lever that destroys the Barrier, and a fight ensues. Wim tries next, but Jod holds a lightsaber on Wendle. When Wim accuses Jod of not being a Jedi, Jod tells him that he was was a starving orphan when he was a child, and an old Jedi found him and told him he had potential. She only taught him a little before she was found and killed. Wim walks away from the lever to save his father, but Wendle punches Jod and the fight recommences. Wim gets his hands on the lightsaber, and Wendle and Fara pull the lever together, bringing down the Barrier. The citizens of At Attin see stars for the first time.
The New Republic arrives and begins to fight off the pirates, who retreat immediately. The kids rush to the Cinder, leaving Jod behind, and he simply watches as his crew crashes to the planet’s surface. Neel meets up with the group at the crash site, and KB turns out to be okay. The group hugs and then all get out from under the ship before it crushes them. Fern points out that Wim won’t have to take Assessment anymore, and Wim looks up to the X-Wings soaring through the air as a New Republic frigate arrives.
Commentary
No denouement, huh? Just a little twirl and we’re done?
Some bits o this finale were very cute. I loved bringing the bikes back in for the last hurrah, connecting the story once again to its parent genre. I liked that Wim and Wendle seem to be on a path toward mutual respect and understanding. I like that Fara had to learn to trust her daughter through this process. I love that these kids have learned how to work together and trust each other, and have become so much more than their families could conceive of.
We got some confirmation that the population here is being actively brainwashed, even if we didn’t get nearly enough information on that. Again, just the concept of trapping an entire population of people on a planet for the purpose of making your money seems barbarically unhinged, and could use a lot more context.
If Jod is telling the truth about his background, that is… heartbreaking. And certainly makes sense of his cruelty and disillusionment. Of course he’s survived this whole ordeal, which makes it likely that we’ll see him going forward—possibly in the upcoming films set during this period? He’d be a real pain in the tuchus for Din and Grogu to deal with, at the very least. Unless the New Republic puts him through their rehabilitation program (which we saw in S3 of The Mandalorian), a thing I’m still having a hard time squaring.
Having said that it’s not particularly hard to believe when, as far as we’re aware, the New Republic just swooped down to At Attin and blew everything to hell without so much as a check-in to confirm that those were the pirates they were looking for, or a confirmation that no one wanted to surrender, or maybe even a confab about where planet citizens were congregating so that no one got hit by friendly fire. And they then proceeded to damage the pirate ship to point where it crashes, causing who knows how much collateral damage and/or loss of life. It’s not even the most convenient aspect to this finale, but it sure is the most negligent and disappointing.
It speaks to a real misunderstanding of how to use the visual vernacular of Star Wars, rendering down some of the most powerful points of the series to “good guys mean X-wing show up go boom,” and I do not care for it. I dislike it even more when it’s treated as a special calling to Wim in the final shots of the show. “The Real Good Guys,” as the episode is titled, did not carry out their roles well here. If the script had wanted to be clearer on the point of the “real good guys” being the kids, I would’ve been thrilled.
We also have some massive issues with regard to how power outages work on this planet. It’s silly enough to suggest that speeders are somehow connected to the planet power grid when hoverbikes aren’t, but the idea that it would be so much easier for Wendle to restore power to apparently only the docking clamps than a much larger swath of the planet’s systems is absurd. Or the fact that the elevators to the Supervisor’s Tower are working. It’s all very hand-wavey in a way that could have been nipped in the bud with a tiny bit more exposition.
There’s practically no emotional closure here! It’s great to see the kids work as a team, but that’s not what the majority of this journey has been about for them. It feels like the show got in some excellent moments where it remembered to take its time in the middle, but the finale is having MCU problems: A great big fight with no consideration for the aftermath. Presumably we’ll see more of this crew—I have no idea if there was hope for more seasons, or spinoffs, or what—but this was an awkward place to leave them in the interim.
At least SM-33 made it out 500% okay. I love when droids have to carry their own heads/other body parts, so that’s a major win for me. I’ll console myself with that and spend the next several decades ranting about the materials needed to make money and why Old Republic dataries are so valuable in a economic system that shouldn’t be bothered with them anymore….
Spanners and Sabers
- Having Jod activate his lightsaber with menace at the end of the previous episode, only to have him immediately power it down at the start here, was so cheesy and bad. Don’t do cliffhangers if you’re not going to use them! (Unless you’re trying to make a joke, which is not what happened here.)
- Lots of great homages in the supervisor, from the use of Stephen Fry to the occasionally red eye giving HAL vibes to the Wizard of Oz mechanization aspect taken to its furthest conclusion.
- A lot of the action in this episode had video game vibes to it, which can work sometimes, but felt very out of place in this particular narrative. I wanted things to feel more homespun—the jump over the ravine was pretty much the only place where they achieved that.
- Using the images from Wim’s book for the final credits and adding the kids’ story into it at the end… I teared up, not gonna lie. Also, I miss that old book-as-a-frame-device thing, and love seeing it applied in a cute futuristic context.
So that’s all for the Skeleton Crew, as far as we know. Andor’s final season approaches, so at least we’ve got something great to look forward to…
