Skeleton Crew Just Solved Its Biggest Mystery — But Created a New Twist
Does anyone in Star Wars ever remember anything?
The biggest mystery box in Skeleton Crew has been the history and purpose of hiding the planet At Attin from the rest of the galaxy. But in fully explaining and revealing At Attin’s function, Skeleton Crew has created another mystery. Just what do the citizens of this planet know about the rest of the galaxy? And, assuming they’re operating on incorrect information, just how many decades (or centuries) is their information out of date?
Spoilers ahead for Skeleton Crew Episode 7, “We’re Gonna Be in So Much Trouble.”
From the perspective of a pirate like Jod (Jude Law), At Attin is like a planetary Fort Knox, and he’s just been given the access codes. But for the people who live there, it's their home, one where they perform a very specific task: to mint physical currency for the Galactic Republic. The only trouble is that Skeleton Crew takes place in the same time frame as The Mandalorian, meaning the primary ruling authority is the New Republic, which was born out of the Rebel Alliance after the Empire was overthrown in Return of the Jedi. Characters like Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) have a vague knowledge of the Jedi Order and think of the Jedi as an active force in the galaxy. From the first episode, this has suggested that the children of At Attin have been sheltered from the tumultuous history of everything that happened after The Phantom Menace.
But Episode 7 suggests that the adults of At Attin are also utterly in the dark about various political changes in the galaxy. In sending out a message to their children, Fern’s mom Fara (Kerry Condon), and Wim’s dad Wendle (Tunde Adebimpe) mention that they need to “find a Republic Emissary” who is a person that “knows the secret location of At Attin and how to get through the Barrier.” This suggests that Fara and Wendle are utterly in the dark because they don’t mention anything about the New Republic. On top of this, we know that the credits being minted on At Attin are from the “Old Republic” because everyone in the galaxy outside of At Attin is shocked by their rarity. We also now know that the ship the Onyx Cinder was originally from At Attin, which implies it was a ship from the days of the Old Republic. The pirates in this episode confirm that the ship is super old by noting that “it’s an antique” and “they don’t make them like that anymore.”
The question is: just how old is the Onyx Cinder at the legend of pirate Captain Tak Rennod? Some of his treasure, which the gang discovered in Episode 5, included an old lightsaber. But is this a lightsaber from The Phantom Menace era or much older? By explaining the basic mystery of why At Attin was a (Old Republic economic security) secret, the series now has set up the question of just how long this planet has been utterly out of touch with current-ish events.
Narratively speaking, Star Wars is notorious for basing many of its stories on missing pieces of information or false ideas about history. Discerning between legend and history is a constant source of tension in both the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy. Imperials think of the Jedi as an “ancient religion” in A New Hope, even though it’s only been about 19 years since the Jedi were around.
In The Force Awakens, Rey has vague notions about the nature of the Rebellion, even though that only happened 30 years prior. And we all know how map-obsessed Star Wars has been lately; from the hidden location of Luke Skywalker to the distant galaxy in Ahsoka, and even Palpatine’s shadowy world of Exegol, missing planets are as nearly common in Star Wars as murky memories of massive social upheavals.
So, in a sense, Skeleton Crew is a mishmash of all of these different narrative tendencies, but all neatly packaged in one planet. At Attin is both out of time, but also not easily found on the map. The secrets of this elusive planet have now been made clear, but how long things have been this way and why remains a mystery.