In its first two episodes, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew has already confirmed a rumor that’s over a year old. The series is shaping up to feature space pirates as its main antagonists, and we’ve seen some of them before. Read on for the full details, but fair warning – there are spoilers ahead.
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Skeleton Crew opens on a scene where a group of pirates take over a large space freighter. One of them is Vane – played by Marti Matulis – an alien of the Nikto species with no nostrils and horns framing his face. We saw Vane once before in The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 1, “The Apostate.” He was leading a group of pirates taking advantage of Nevarro City. He squabbled with Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) and Djin Djarin (Pedro Pascal), eventually fleeing the planet only to try and ambush Djarin in space when he leaves the planet.
Vane appears again a few episodes later in “The Pirate.” Here, we learn that Vane answers to the “Pirate King,” Gorian Shard – who was voiced by Nonso Anozie and performed by Carey Jones. In the fight that followed, Shard was apparently killed when his ship crashed. That could mean that Vane is now in charge of his organization, or perhaps someone else. It could also be the Vane survived somehow – we’ll have to keep watching to find out.
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Back in March of 2023, Bespin Bulletin reported that Shard’s pirate gang would be the main antagonist of Skeleton Crew, which was in production at the time. Sources close to the project reportedly said that the pirates were introduced in The Mandalorian so that they’d be familiar when the turned up later. At the time, series creator Jon Favreau told Entertainment Weekly that The Mandalorian Season 3 might help set up other shows.
“There’s a lot of room for us to tell stories, and there are a lot of characters that are in play because we know who’s around at that time,” he said. “In The Mandalorian, we begin to introduce those characters. We begin to remind people who knew them already. Or if you aren’t familiar with the other works and you’re just coming into this show, we’re introducing them for the first time. This affords us the opportunity to have stories that interconnect and characters that go from one story to the other, and that creates a very rich fabric for us to explore.”
Skeleton Crew had a two-episode premiere on Monday, December 2nd. It will now air new episodes every Tuesday on Disney+, concluding on January 14, 2025. The Mandalorian Season 3 is streaming now on Disney+ as well.