Star Wars: Skeleton Crew: cast, plot speculation, and everything we know

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew follows a quartet of kids making their way home across a dangerous galaxy. Jude Law heads up the cast as their protector, an as-yet-unnamed figure who – going on what we’ve heard so far – appears to be one part Jedi, one part Han Solo.

Set at a similar point in the Star Wars timeline to The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, this new Disney Plus TV series is the brainchild of Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts and regular collaborator Christopher Ford. They deliberately set out to emulate the Steven Spielberg-produced Amblin movies of the 1980s, and even pitched the show as The Goonies in space.

If you want more intel on Lucasfilm's latest jaunt to George Lucas's galaxy far, far away, you've set your coordinates to the right place. This article rounds up everything you need to know about Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, including speculation about the release date, the show’s plot, and details on its cast and crew. We’ll also explain why Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy sees it as an entry point to the vast Star Wars universe.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew release date

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew's release date hasn't been announced yet, but we do know it's one of two live-action TV shows from a galaxy far, far away coming to Disney Plus in 2024. A Walt Disney Company press release confirmed as much in December 2023, when it announced that both Skeleton Crew and The Acolyte will be on the streamer's slate. 

It's currently unclear which series will be first out of the blocks this year, though Skeleton Crew was originally expected to arrive before the end of 2023. According to Deadline, the show finished shooting in January 2023, so – seeing as Ahsoka wrapped in October 2022 ahead of an August 2023 premiere – a November/December debut for Skeleton Crew seemed entirely plausible. 

But in the wake of the actor and writer strikes that brought Hollywood to a standstill for much of last year, it's no surprise that we're having to wait a little longer to embark on an interstellar adventure with Jude Law – especially as the delay means the show's key talent will now be available to give the series a much more substantial media push.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew cast

Right now there’s a whole lot of 'TBC' on the Star Wars: Skeleton Crew cast list. Here's who is confirmed to appear so far, though:

• Jude Law as TBC
• Ryan Kiera Armstrong as TBC
• Ravi Cabot-Conyers as TBC
• Kyriana Kratter as TBC
• Robert Timothy Smith as TBC
• Tunde Adebimpe as TBC
• Kerry Condon as TBC
• Jaleel White as TBC

Jude Law (a lifelong Star Wars fan) is expected to be the kids' protector-in-chief as the show's main male lead. He's refused to confirm or deny whether he is – as is strongly rumored – playing a Jedi, but the Fantastic Beasts star has teased (via Entertainment Weekly (EW)) a few tidbits about his character.

“He is someone the children meet on their attempt to get home,” said Law. “He is like a lot of the world that they experience: contradictory, and at times a place of nurture and other times a place of threat.”

Law also told Empire magazine that he’s trying to bring aspects of a certain Corellian smuggler to the role, saying: “What I wanted to imbue was the humor and the sardonic nature of [Han] Solo. The slight tone of, ‘Aw, this is all rubbish. What am I doing here?’ I think that’s a very Star Wars thing, the lovely irony that someone in it is a little throwaway about the whole thing.”

Of Law’s quartet of young co-stars, Ryan Kiera Armstrong has the most impressive resumé, having appeared – among many other roles – in hit Prime Video movie The Tomorrow War and as a young Antonia (Taskmaster) in Black Widow. She’s joined on the outer space adventure by relative newcomers Ravi Cabot-Conyers (the voice of Antonio in Encanto), Kyriana Kratter (Disney’s Bunk’d) and Robert Timothy Smith (Mythic Quest).

Older stars confirmed for the Skeleton Crew cast include actor and TV on the Radio's lead singer Tunde Adebimpe, plus The Banshees of Inisherin Bafta winner Kerry Condon. Family Matters star Jaleel White revealed to ComicBook.com that he’s playing a space pirate.

Law aside, the biggest names are arguably behind the camera. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew co-creator/co-showrunner Jon Watts directed all three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) Spider-Man movies. The third – Spider-Man: No Way Home – is Marvel’s highest-grossing non-Avengers movie, so it wasn’t a surprise when Watts was selected to introduce the Fantastic Four to the MCU. 

However, in April 2022, Deadline revealed that Watts had decided to wave farewell to Marvel’s first family behind. A few weeks later we learned that he’d swapped Marvel for Star Wars, another of Disney’s multibillion-dollar properties.

According to the Writers Guild of America, Watts has written six of Skeleton Crew’s eight episodes with co-creator and co-showrunner Christopher Ford, whose previous credits include Clown, Cop Car and, Spider-Man: Homecoming. The other two episodes are scripted by Myung Joh Wesner, who’s also credited on new Hulu show Career Opportunities in Murder and Mayhem.

Unsurprisingly, Watts has directed at least one episode of Skeleton Crew. Variety reports that shots have also been called by David Lowery (Peter Pan & Wendy), Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank, Beef), and two Mandalorian veterans in Bryce Dallas Howard and Lee Isaac Chung. Perhaps the most exciting news on the directing front, though, is that Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – aka the Oscar-winning directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once – are also taking control of an episode. Should we expect to see Stormtroopers with sausage fingers?

Lastly, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, overseers of this particular corner of that galaxy far, far away, are on hand as executive producers.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew plot

Here's the show's story synopsis, courtesy of an April 2023 Walt Disney Company press release: “Skeleton Crew follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy. Finding their way home – and meeting unlikely allies and enemies – will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.”

Other plot details are scarce right now, but there are some things we know about Star Wars: Skeleton Crew based on what its talent have teased at various press events.

Skeleton Crew was officially announced at Star Wars Celebration 2022 in Anaheim, California. Back then, we found out it'll be set at a similar point in the Star Wars timeline to The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Star Wars: Ahsoka, and that the series follows a quartet of kids making their way home. Jude Law's character will help them on their journey.

If the Star Wars: Skeleton Crew plot feels reminiscent of the movies released by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin production company in the 1980s, that’s entirely intentional. “Jon Watts came to me, very much wanting to do a sort of Goonies in Star Wars,” Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm president and Amblin co-founder, told ComicBook.com in May 2022. “Needless to say, I'm going to say yes. It’s just evolved out of that kind of enthusiasm in wanting to tell stories in this space.”

Although the main characters in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are pre-teens, the brains behind the series are aiming for multi-generational appeal.

“Hopefully it can be for all ages,” co-creator Christopher Ford said in an EW interview last year. “When we told Kathy Kennedy that we wanted to go for that Amblin tone, which she perfected over the years, what she would say is that they never thought of those as movies for kids. They just happen to be about kids, a story of a kid going on an adventure. So it could be for anyone.

“Skeleton Crew’s tone is an adventure. We wanted it to be a lot of fun. But of course, along with adventure comes the downside of it, which is danger. And when the kids are in danger, it’s extra fraught. So we played with that, but overall we wanted it to be just a fun adventure.”

Luckily, the kids won’t be all alone in outer space, as they’ll be protected by Law's mysterious figure. Telling Empire that his relationship with the children is “complicated”, Law added: “They need guidance, but they’re vulnerable. And so throughout, the people they meet, you question all of them. Is my character nice? Is he not? You just want them to be alright and get back home. But if you know Jon [Watts] and Chris [Ford]’s work, you’ll know that the kids aren’t always safe.”

That element of risk is arguably a given, seeing as Skeleton Crew plot is set in the post-Return of the Jedi era of The Mandalorian (one of the best Disney Plus shows), The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, during which the nascent New Republic is doing its best to keep bounty hunters, pirates, and Imperial remnants in check.

“For us, it was a great era,” Ford told EW. “Because as much as the New Republic is trying to bring things back, it’s a kind of lawless, wild time. So there’s a kind of a lot of danger. If we had set it earlier, the kids would have, you know, maybe just met the Empire and just got… just [got] shut down. So, this is more of a galaxy to get lost in.”

It’s already been confirmed that the three other shows in this time period are building up to a “climactic” crossover film that will be released in theaters and directed by Ahsoka showrunner (and Lucasfilm's newly appointed chief creative officer) Dave Filoni. (This is in addition to the The Mandalorian and Grogu movie that will continue the duo's adventures on the big screen.) But even if Star Wars: Skeleton Crew's storylines do – as we expect – overlap with those of its stablemates, that shouldn’t prove a barrier to younglings and Star Wars newbies.

“We’re seeing the opportunity for fans to find where their entry point is in Star Wars,” Kennedy explained during an April 2023 interview with IGN. “There’s a lot of things going back almost 50 years, so you don’t want people to feel like they have to see everything in order to step into Star Wars. Something like Skeleton Crew, we’re really excited about because it’s aimed at younger kids but will still bring in the fans, still bring in adults. I think that’s the beauty of the storytelling that’s going on now, that everyone can find where their entry point is.”

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew trailer

There’s no official Star Wars: Skeleton Crew trailer yet, but this StarWarsLeaks Reddit thread suggests that a first teaser is complete and potentially imminent.

Some lucky people have already been treated to a sneak peek, however. According to Variety, footage screened at Star Wars Celebration 2023 included “shots of the children on speeders, in school, on spaceships, and a tease of a familiar villain from The Mandalorian”. This villain is reportedly Vane, the Nikto pirate who caused Din Djarin, Baby Yoda, and Greef Karga some problems in The Mandalorian season 3. This would tally with the rumor that pirates will be the main antagonists in Skeleton Crew.

The Celebration clip also featured a first look at Jude Law’s character. However, if you can’t wait for an actual Skeleton Crew trailer, there is an extremely brief shot of him (about nine seconds in) in last year's Star Wars Day video (above).

How will Star Wars: Skeleton Crew tie into other movies and TV shows?

Right now, we're not sure how important Star Wars: Skeleton Crew will be to the post-Return of the Jedi timeline.

Sure, it's set in the same time period as Ahsoka, The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian, but there's no telling how events in Skeleton Crew will tie into The Mandalorian and Grogu movie, Ahsoka season 2 or other new Star Wars TV shows and movies. Skeleton Crew may end up being a standalone adventure that exists alongside, but doesn't get caught up in, the exploits of Mando, Ahsoka and company.

Still, given Star Wars is building towards a huge climactic event centered around those aforementioned stories, Skeleton Crew could be an important cog in the overarching plot. If Law's character is confirmed to be another Jedi in exile, for example, he might team up with Mando, Boba Fett and Ahsoka to try and snuff out the threat of the newly returned Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the Empire's embryonic plan to form Star Wars sequel trilogy villains the First Order.

For more Star Wars-based coverage, find out how to watch the Star Wars movies in order.