The kids of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are the most dangerous force in the galaxy

The first two episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew make one thing very clear: The galaxy is no place for kids.

We receive this message in numerous ways. There's the Career Assessment Test all children on the planet of At Attin must take (essentially the Star Wars version of the SAT). There are the "No Speeder Bikes" signs on the road, even though Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and KB (Kyriana Kratter) make it obvious that Speeder Bikes are awesome. There's Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) asking his dad for a bedtime story and hearing, "Aren't you getting a little bit old for that?"

And in case we've missed the show's subtler messaging, Melna (Paloma Garcia-Lee), the doorkeeper of a space brothel on the pirate haven of Borgo, spells it out. When Melna notices a group of children waltzing into pirate society in Episode 2, she pulls Fern and KB aside and says, "It's not safe here for children."

Yet for all the danger the galaxy's pirate-laden outer rim poses to Wim, Fern, KB, and Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), they are the instigators of the show, the ones stirring the increasingly perilous plot. Most viewers will see Skeleton Crew as a "fish out of water" story. These kids might become heroes, but right now they are just caught up in a series of accidents. But that is sort of what children are: a series of accidents that force adults around them to make decisions.

Kids make mistakes as they learn about the world and their place within it. Sure, Wim may not have meant to propel himself and his companions beyond the barrier of At Attin, but his curiosity is no accident. It's an irresistible force that will test not only his own ambition but the very order of the galaxy around him.

Since the children's homeworld of At Attin appears to be a test-taking society like our own, let's examine some possible answers to the question, "How should citizens and pirates of the galaxy far, far away respond to our rag-tag group of kid heroes?"

Answer Choice A: Functionally Abandon Them

Wim is the first child protagonist we meet, and we quickly learn he has a caring but very busy father. Wendle (Tunde Adebimpe) leaves his son with a handful of credits to buy himself food then heads to work, leaving Wim to daydream about becoming a Jedi all on his own.

If Wim is our little Luke Skywalker, Fern is our future Han Solo; the black and white jacket alone tells us as much, not to mention her Solo-esque, devil-may-care attitude. On the surface, she has the opposite problem as Wim. Her mother Fara (Kerry Condon) has pushed her to the top of her class and seems to be deeply invested in her success. But the moment Fern tucks that jacket out of sight in the first episode, we realize Fara is as oblivious to Fern as Wendle is to Wim.

Answer Choice B: Steal from Them

The moment Wim starts handing out Old Republic credits on Borgo in Episode 2, things get hairy. First, the cook tries to overcharge Wim and Neel for their food. Then, a nearby pirate tries to steal the money outright. The encounter turns into a chase scene that culminates in Pirate Captain Brutus (Fred Tatasciore/Stephen Oyoung) demanding the children hand over their credits.

Of course, this is all petty theft compared to Jod Na Nawood's (Jude Law) manipulation. The former pirate and Force user takes advantage of the kid's plight to commandeer their ship. In Episode 3, he helps them escape the brig at Borgo, rescues SM-33, and even takes them to Kh'ymm (Alia Shawcat), an owl-like astronomer who helps point the way back to At Attin. Kh'ymm confirms what we viewers have suspected all along: Jod's motivations are neither altruistic nor benevolent. He's using the children to get his own pay-day.

Answer Choice C: Fight for Them

Enter SM-33 (Nick Frost), the rough-and-tumble pirate droid with a space rat in one eye and the yarr-iest accent in this corner of the galaxy. The droid is the first character to take up arms to protect the children. So far, however, "Fight for Them" is the least popular answer among characters in the show. Besides SM-33, there's Melna, the aforementioned brothel doorkeeper, and then there's the X-Wing pilot we encounter at the end of Episode 3. More on him in a moment...

Everyone makes their choice

There's a lot to love about this opening stretch of Skeleton Crew, but my favorite thing so far is watching the whole world of the show distort around the children's gravity. By their presence alone, children threaten the established order of things. They might look like pawns on the galactic chessboard, but they're more like queens. They are naive, reckless, and ignorant, which means they can move anywhere, threatening every other piece in the game.

The most dramatic example of this comes in the final moments of Episode 3, when we're set up for Skeleton Crew's first real starship battle: The sequence parallels the first ever Star Wars gunfight in Episode IV: A New Hope, when Han and Luke climb into the Millennium Falcon's laser cannons and have a swashbuckling good time blasting Tie Fighters into oblivion. In Skeleton Crew, Jod Na Nawood sends Fern and Wim climbing into the ship's Falcon-esque laser canons like Han and Luke. The fact Fern and Wim are children, however, warps the tone of the entire scene.

Wim is clearly too excited and doesn't grasp the implications of firing laser cannons at another human being (or being fired at in return). Fern quickly gets the hang of the controls, but the grin she flashes as she does so feels ominous, like maybe it's her first step toward the Dark Side. Instead of cheering for our kid heroes to take out their targets the way we cheer for Han and Luke, I found my stomach twisting. Kids shouldn't be firing laser cannons, and if they must, neither they nor we should be excited about it.

Our heroes escape in the end, but the scene is purposefully anticlimactic. We learn at the end that the X-Wing pilot withheld fire to protect the kids onboard.

We have yet to learn who or what the "Big Bad" of Skeleton Crew will be. It may be Jod Na Nawood. It may be the Pirate Captain Brutus. It may be their own parents. The most ominous force in the show, however, is the sense of order our four heroes have broken free from. It's an order filled with parents and pirates, droids and Jedi, X-Wings and exams. Against these four kids, none of them stand a chance.

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