The finale of Skeleton Crew included many thrilling moments, but one of the biggest came when the New Republic forces showed up on At Attin to fight off the pirates ravaging the planet.
It was very exciting to watch, not least of all because it featured the B-Wing’s composite laser for the first time in live-action. The X-Wings and B-Wings took out the pirate cruiser, liberating the legendary treasure planet, as the crowds watch on and cheer the heroic pirates. These X-Wings are, as the title suggests, “the real good guys”, after the kids mistakingly thought they were the villains in an earlier episode thanks to Jod’s deception. Watching the crowds cheer, that this is the exact response elicited in the viewer as we watch the heroes sweep in and win. Yet it hit me, watching this, that it’s maybe the first time we’ve gotten to have that kind of experience with the New Republic in live-action on-screen material.
We saw precious little of the New Republic in The Force Awakens before it was destroyed, and we learned that the government didn’t really take the First Order threat that seriously, which forced Leia Organa to form the Resistance to fight back. We certainly had this joyous reaction to seeing the Resistance in the sequel trilogy, but that’s not quite the same thing as the New Republic. So The Mandalorian era has been exploring stories set during this New Republic era, but even in that show (and others connected to it), the New Republic hasn’t exactly been overly heroic. Their pilots are mostly patrolling for pirates and bounty hunters, which means they initially have a tenuous relationship with Din Djarin. But even once one of those pilots, Carson Teva, becomes an ally, the rest of the New Republic doesn’t really. Teva’s pleas go unheard, and the New Republic doesn’t pay much attention to the growing threat. We see that the government is mired in bureaucracy. All of which is really helping to set the stage for the sequel trilogy, to its credit, but is in the process painting the New Republic as something short of heroic. Even in Ahsoka, when some New Republic heroes do show up and help, the mission our heroes are on has to be unsanctioned.
In short, though we’ve seen quite a bit of the New Republic in recent years through these shows, we had not yet see them really swoop in for a battle in which they are the heroes coming to save the day against the enemy. There had not been anything with the government that elicited the feelings of the Rebellion in the original trilogy, or the Resistance in the sequels. Until now.
Skeleton Crew will surely tie in to plenty of other material down the line, but to its credit, it is not so focused on setting up events a few decades later that it misses the chance to give the New Republic a hero moment. This is what the original trilogy heroes fought for. And it’s great to see it show up on the screen.
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