
The season three premiere of The Mandalorian set up plenty of different story threads that the show will likely pick up on this season, but it also served as a reminder about how it’s part of a larger ‘Mandoverse’ of shows as well. It picked up on elements from The Book of Boba Fett (even showing glimpses of it in the recap), and it seemed to be foreshadowing Ahsoka with the glimpse of purrgil in hyperspace.
But there’s another show that’s connected in this same time period, one that we know very little about. Skeleton Crew is presumably coming later this year, another series executive produced by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. It’s led by showrunner Jon Watts and stars Jude Law, and all we know about it is that the show will focus on a group of kids trying to find their way back home in the galaxy. Is it possible that The Mandalorian is also hinting at that series too?
According to a recent report from Bespin Bulletin, the answer would appear to be yes. They picked up on another report that said Skeleton Crew would be about a teacher (Jude Law) and his students who have a run-in with pirates. Bespin Bulletin reports that the pirates seen in The Mandalorian “Chapter 17: The Apostate” will serve as antagonists in Skeleton Crew, which presumably means pirate king Gorian Shard, and perhaps Kane too.
We should, of course, take all of this with a grain of salt until there’s more confirmation about it, but I think it makes perfect sense. It’s a way to make another connection with the new series for casual viewers, hopefully helping to drive more viewers to Skeleton Crew when it releases. But it also is exciting from an in-universe story perspective, as the brief glimpse of Shard that we saw in the premiere was cool and intriguing, and these pirates seem like the perfect kind of antagonist for a series like this.
We’ll likely find out a bit more about Skeleton Crew at Celebration next month, as right now we don’t know much about it whatsoever. But some of the Star Wars projects that have flown under the radar have turned out to be among the best, and I really like the idea of a group of kids up against these pirates and sparking an adventure.