- Skeleton Crew episode 3 pulls back the curtain on some of the show’s big secrets
- Its creators have been discussing what these reveals set up for the Star Wars series’ next five episodes
- However, they admit they had to be careful about “contradicting” pre-established franchise lore
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew episode 3 has landed on Disney Plus – and the show’s latest chapter has begun to pull back the curtain on its biggest mysteries.
Indeed, Skeleton Crew‘s third episode contains more teases about who Jude Law’s Jod Na Nawood really is, as well as some fascinating reveals about the planetary enigma that is At Attin, which I previously teased in my Star Wars: Skeleton Crew review. Armed with a small but significant list of questions about said mysteries, then, I probed series creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford for answers.
Major spoilers immediately follow for Skeleton Crew episode 3. Turn back now if you haven’t seen it.
Wait, Jod is both Captain Silvo and Crimson Jack?
Let’s start with Law’s duplicitous character, because episode 3 reveals that Jod may not be his individual’s real name after all. Indeed, two other characters – a pirate named Benjar Pranic and Kh’ymm, a owl-like astronomer – call him “Captain Silvo” and “Crimson Jack” at various points in the Star Wars show’s latest entry.
Both of these aliases are hugely significant reveals. Where Silvo is concerned, this is the same name of the tricorne-wearing pirate captain we saw at the very start of the eight-part series. He’s the individual whose crew mutinies against him after yet another New Republic vessel robbery fails to yield a huge monetary score.
As for Crimson Jack, he’s a male pirate who only made his Star Wars debut in a very recent comic book series published by Marvel. Titled ‘Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy’, the miniseries is set during the First Order-Resistance War – aka in the same time period as Star Wars’ movie sequel trilogy.
“Wait,” I hear you cry,” Skeleton Crew is set decades prior to the events of the sequel trilogy, so how can Jod be Crimson Jack?”. It’s a good question, especially as Watts and Ford previously confirmed to me where Skeleton Crew officially sits on the Star Wars timeline.
Clearly, the same pseudonym was either first used by Jod and later adopted by another pirate, or the Crimson Jack who appears in Halcyon Legacy is just an aged-up version of Jod. Unfortunately, but also understandably, Watts or Ford were reluctant to reveal more about Jod’s past and his various monikers because, well, spoilers.
“That’s a spoiler,” Watts uncomfortably said before Ford quickly added: “Yeah, that’s, uh – we’re being told not to answer that by someone [a PR team member] behind a curtain. You’ll have to watch to find out! But they’re certainly referenced in episode 3, yeah.”
Okay, what about At Attin and this new Star Wars language called Palmarish?
Thankfully, the last of 2024’s new Star Wars shows and movies, plus its showrunners, were less vague about the series’ other big mystery, which concerns At Attin.
During one of the best Disney Plus shows’ two-episode premiere, At Attin was revealed to be something of an old wives’ tale. Discussing the seemingly mythological planet with Wim and Neel, a group of Port Borgo-based pirates call it a “lost planet of eternal treasure”. In episode 3, Kh’ymm similarly describes it as one of the “Jewels of the Old Republic”, i.e. planets of wonder that were kept hidden from prying eyes. All but one of these worlds were destroyed, with At Attin being the sole survivor.
That isn’t the only curious thing we learn about At Attin in this episode. Noticing an unusual sigil on Fern’s backpack, Kh’ymm confirms the existence of another new addition to Star Wars’ extensive back catalog of symbols: Palmarish. This numerical system was, according to Kh’ymm, last seen on “proto-Republic artefacts”, which means it was used centuries or even millennia before the Republic’s existence. If Kh’ymm is referring to the Old Republic rather than its newer counterpart, Palmarish may even have ties to James Mangold’s forthcoming Star Wars movie that’ll reportedly explore the dawn of the Jedi.
But I digress. What’s the significance of Palmarish? And how will it, as well as At Attin and its fellow ‘Jewels of the Old Republic’, redefine or reshape Star Wars’ expansive history?
“[Palmarish] is just a numbers system,” Ford tells me. “But it was our way of trying to say there are more ancient levels of lore that goes way back and is potentially separate from the purely Republic or basic stuff we’ve seen in the past.”
As for At Attin’s importance to the wider universe, Ford added: “Introducing some potentially powerful and ancient lore was something we worked really closely on with [Star Wars’ chief creative officer] Dave Filoni and the Lucasfilm Story Group. The idea was that we didn’t want to establish anything that would contradict or step on Republic history. So, the idea would be that this is its own system of planets from long ago and has been largely forgotten.”
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