Skeleton Crew is the latest Star Wars TV show to air on Disney+, a kid-focused show that takes the template of the classic book Treasure Island and transposes it into the galaxy far, far away, with lots of '80s movie nostalgia in there as well. Reviews for the show have been good, with fans coming to like the cast of young actors and hoping their characters can find their way back to their home planet of At Attin. But ratings have been poor, with Gamerant reporting that the two-episode premiere was watched for less than 382 million minutes the week it dropped, drawing on data provided by Nielsen.
That's 20% below the premiere ratings for The Acolyte, which was the Star Wars show before this one. The Acolyte was previously the lowest-rated Star Wars show around, but that ignominious title has now been claimed by Skeleton Crew. Of note, Disney canceled The Acolyte before the producers had a chance to follow through with plans for a second season. Obviously that doesn't bode well for Skeleton Crew.
There are some upsides. For one, the positive reviews do matter. For another, we only have viewership data for the first couple episodes; Skeleton Crew co-creator Jon Watts told Entertainment Weekly that the show has "been building viewers over each episode," so maybe the count got high enough for Disney to think the show worth renewing.
Finally, Skeleton Crew cost $136 million to make, per Forbes, while The Acolyte cost over $200 million. A cheaper show requires fewer viewers to justify a renewal. On the other hand, $136 million is still a lot of money; even if Skeleton Crew was on the cheaper side for a Star Wars show, each episode still cost more to make than HBO spent on the final season of Game of Thrones, to put things in perspective. At best, I'd guess that Skeleton Crew is on the bubble.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew creators outline plans for potential second season
Still, Watts and co-creator Christopher Ford do have ideas for what comes next, although they haven't moved aggressively on them yet. "I live in New York, Ford's in Oakland, but everyone that we work with the show on is essentially in Los Angeles and dealing with real life right now. So in terms of what we're doing next, we're excited to talk to everyone, but obviously everyone has their hands full right now dealing with the tragedies of the fires," Watts told EW. "But we're excited. We're happy that people are finding the show as well. We've slowly been building viewers over each episode, so that's a really exciting thing to watch that grow, and the word of mouth has been really positive. So we're excited to get back together with everyone and talk about the future soon."
"We have ideas in our heads for sure. We're waiting to find out what everyone else thinks, but we've always had an idea of where this could go even before we made the first season. So there's lots of potential out there and hope everyone sees that."
Watts and Ford pepper their interview with stray thoughts about things that could do with a second season, including further exploring the backstory of space pirate Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law) or looking at how At Attin fits into the wider galaxy now that its location has been revealed. They even have an idea for what to do about the issue of their young actors growing a foot in between seasons. "We wouldn't pretend like the kids are only six months older if we made more," Watts said. "It is fun to think of them growing up and where they would fit into the galaxy and how their world would be changed by the events of what happened in the first season."
But obviously all of this is moot if the show doesn't get a second season. And even if it does, because work hasn't already begun, we likely wouldn't see it for years. Sometimes it feels like these shows set themselves up for failure: the studio spends tons of money on an elaborate series; if it's a failure, the show gets canceled and all those resources spin down the drain. If it's a hit, then fans have to wait an eternity to get more.
Personally, I chock up the middling ratings for Skeleton Crew to exhaustion with the Star Wars franchise. Since 2019, Disney+ has aired The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, Andor, The Acolyte and now Skeleton Crew. I think they would have done better picking one or two of those shows they thought had the best chance of catching on and focusing their energies on those, rather than blasting us with this firehose of content.
One silver lining is that if this does end up being the one and only season of Skeleton Crew, the show was relatively self-contained. It has an ending, unlike The Acolyte, which ended with the promise of more story which never came. We'll keep our ear to the ground for more.
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