Well, it happened.  Disney made a Star Wars show for millennials to watch with their kids.  Or, in my case, sitting on my sofa with my notebook, a can of soda, and an individually wrapped string cheese (they’re a good source of calcium and protein, leave me alone).

Star Wars has been through a lot lately.  The sequel trilogy has its detractors from all sides, it seems.  If, like me, you loved The Last Jedi, you probably didn’t like the backtrack that was The Rise of Skywalker, the stone in the pond from which all subsequent properties have suffered its ripple (with shows dedicating entire episodes and story arcs to shoehorning a justification for the lazy “Somehow Palpatine returned” moment into their runs).  If you didn’t like The Last Jedi, there’s still a good chance you didn’t like TROS. But there are plenty of people who liked all three and I am genuinely happy for them.  The Acolyte also had its unfair share of vitriolic detractors, but that’s a topic for another time (though it is one I will get to).

Free of all these trappings, it seems, is the new Disney+ series Skeleton Crew (releasing Tuesday evenings on the streaming service) which centers on a group of children from an ordinary planet thrust into very fantastical circumstances.  And when I say ordinary, I mean really quite ordinary.  You get to see what looks like a very modern suburban development, where kids wake up in beds in houses—not bunks on ships or cots in huts—they brush their teeth and eat cereal, then catch the bus and go to school.  There is a striking mundanity to the lives these people live; if it weren’t for the prevalence of droids and lack of chain restaurants, it could be almost any suburban development in America.  There are some really interesting design elements here; much like the vehicles we’re used to seeing in Star Wars, they hover above the ground, but many of them are connected and run on tram lines, like monorails for the road.  It’s a complete visual contrast to The Mandalorian, which is set in the same time period (after the fall of the Empire and before the New Republic falls to the First Order, or in movie terms, between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens).  I really like these time periods between trilogies, such as animated shows The Bad Batch and Rebels, because I think it gives writers a lot of leeway to create original characters and tell stories that aren’t tied to the Skywalker saga, where it seems that the entire fate of the galaxy is tied to two families and the rest of the people in the fight don’t matter at all.  There’s no way we’d get modern houses and buses in something set in the Empire or First Order era. It is very, very refreshing to see a Star Wars story that is not on a desert planet (at least so far), isn’t focused on getting everyone to Tatooine for some reason or another, and is aesthetically different from what we’ve seen so much of already.  But this sort of tranquility isn’t to everyone’s taste, with the very normal yearning for adventure creeping up in young Wim.

Much like the 80s movies from which it draws inspiration, movies like The Goonies, Flight of the Navigator, and Time Bandits, Skeleton Crew is about a group of kids with a fairly stereotypical set of characteristics for this kind of show.  There’s the dreamer with his head in the clouds, always thinking of adventures and becoming a hero, Wim.  There’s Neel, Wim’s scaredy-cat best friend who shares interests with Wim, but not the same desires (also, he’s a little blue alien elephant boy, who, in the grand scheme of things, is no Grogu, but he’s still pretty adorable).  Then there’s the precocious, rebellious Fern, complete with an authority figure for a parent (played by Kerry Condon, which was a bittersweet moment for me, knowing how great of an actress she is and how small of role this may potentially be for her in the Star Wars universe), and the mysterious, but kind-hearted KB who grounds Fern.  Whether these characterizations will deepen as the story unfolds is yet to be seen, but I’m hopeful that things will progress as the series does.

It’s familiar, especially if you grew up with those 1980s Amblin Entertainment movies or even if you’ve watched Stranger Things recently.  But that’s not a bad thing, not inherently.  There’s a lot of fun to be had and lessons to be learned along the way in these kinds of stories if they’re done well.  To paraphrase the comic book series Saga, so many of these children’s stories are the same—you break the rules, things go horribly wrong, the kids come home and realize the rules are there for a reason, but the actual message is that you should break the rules as often as possible because you have your whole life to follow a routine and the chances for adventure are few and far between.  If executed well, familiar isn’t a problem.

Wim is an interesting bag of opposing forces.  No, not light and dark here, even though he wishes he were a Jedi, he doesn’t appear to be Force-sensitive, and rather, is just a normal kid.  But while he yearns for adventure and breaking out of his boring life, he also shows a little envy towards Neel’s family.  Wim is an only child of a workaholic single father with his mother not in the picture (whether she left or died has yet to be revealed) and he has shown some wistful longing when seeing Neel greeted by his parents and siblings as they walk home from school.  Whether this desire for more is Wim’s escapist fantasy for a more fulfilling life because he has to spend so much time on his own or a true calling to buckle some swash across the galaxy, I can’t say quite yet.  So far the series has focused more on him than the other characters, but I imagine we’ll get deeper looks into the lives of the other kids soon.  As it stands now, KB is a total mystery from her possibly cybernetic eyewear to her home life, all you know about the kid is that she has more sensible head on her shoulders than the rest of them.  While it’s a challenge to talk about characters when I know so little, it’s telling that I want to know more, that I’m interested in them as characters and not just as mouthpieces that get us to the action sequences.

Speaking of, the action has been sparing in the two-part premiere (and the two episodes are definitely meant to be watched together, the first part is pure setup and world-building, with almost nothing going on before the impetus of the show reveals itself), but when it does come, it is very fun to watch.  And beyond that, everything about this world looks great.  Like I said, I was thrilled to finally be out of the desert, but I hadn’t realized how much I missed seeing aliens (non-humanoid, anyway, technically they’re all aliens to us earthlings, I guess) in the Star Wars world again.  The Mandalorian had a few outside of Lil’ Baby Grogs, but Andor was conspicuously light on non-human characters; though it could be said that the focus on the Empire was at least part of the cause of that, even The Acolyte only gave us a few non-human characters.  The world here is rich and vibrant and really feels like Star Wars.  And the decision to utilize, at least from what I can tell with the naked eye, a great deal of practical effects and puppetry instead of relying solely on CGI for this means that the show is visually deep and feels real when you look at it.  Of course there is CGI, but when you’re watching the show, it doesn’t feel like you’re watching someone writhing around in a black catsuit with a bunch of balls stuck to them.  Whether or not that’s actually the case, I don’t know for sure, but if it is, my eyes have been thoroughly deceived.

As the penny drops and the kids find themselves in very unfamiliar territory without a fully formed prefrontal cortex among the lot of them, they find themselves very quickly getting into trouble.  They end up at a pirate spaceport that is somewhat reminiscent of both Knowhere from Guardians of the Galaxy and Mos Eisley from A New Hope, without ever feeling like a carbon copy of either.  As children, they stand out quite a lot amongst the motley bunch of robbers and killers and are pretty lucky to not end up on the wrong end of a blaster.  In the midst of a few funny moments and some good action, we learn something about their home, At Attin.  See, it’s not just an overly structured society in which schoolchildren have to undergo career assessment testing that may determine the course of their lives, it’s also an extremely cut off planet.  So much so that its mere existence has become a thing of myth.  Whoops.  It’s like walking into a bar full of treasure hunters and casually dropping that you’re from the golden city of El Dorado and you’d very much like some help getting back there.  Those craving adventure may learn that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.

While not everything works, the cast is starting to gel and I have high hopes that the fun of this show will continue.  I love when Star Wars gets deep and serious, but I think there’s room for all sorts of storytelling in Star Wars and I really believe it’s important not just to cater to fans from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but also to new fans, to kids, the ones who will be introduced to the series by their parents who grew up watching the movies, perhaps after their parents introduced it to them.  Star Wars has to grow and change along with its fan base, but it doesn’t need to spoon-feed itself to the vocal few who believe that Star Wars should only be one narrow thing.  I love that there’s space for something like this and I’ve found myself waiting impatiently for the next episode. I really can’t wait to see where Skeleton Crew is headed—and much like its wayward characters, I think we’re in for some adventure along the way.  And who the hell doesn’t want to have an adventure?