Star Wars: Skeleton Crew‘s premiere has lit a match to the Star Wars fandom. The first two episodes come with their share of mysteries, introducing fans to At Attin, the home of the young stars of the show, its mysterious Great Work, and the pirate base known as Port Borgo. Eagle-eyed fans have noticed many different Easter eggs in the two episodes, including one that hearkens back to the most infamous piece of Star Wars media of all time.
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The Star Wars Holiday Special premiered in November 1978 and was panned almost immediately. Taking a page from the variety show format that was popular at the time, the Holiday Special was considered a failure, with George Lucas and Lucasfilm doing everything they could to keep the program from ever being shown again. For years, the only way to watch it was to buy a bootleg copy and it’s since been uploaded to YouTube but not Disney+. However, over the years an interesting thing has happened: much of it has been made canon. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew takes place years after the spinoff’s 1ABY (after Battle of Yavin) date, but the new show has brought yet another piece of it into canon.
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The Star Wars Holiday Special Introduced Multiple Characters and Concepts Into Canon Over the Years
The Star Wars Holiday Special revolved around the holiday known as Life Day, a pseudo-Christmas celebration in the Star Wars universe. The show’s framing device takes place on Kashyyyk, the homeworld of the Wookiees, and focuses on Chewbacca’s family — his wife Malla, his father Itchy, and his son Lumpy — waiting for Chewie, Han, Luke, Leia, C-3PO, and R2-D2 to visit for the holiday. Wookiees don’t speak English (or Basic as it’s known in various pieces of Star Wars media) and the show kept this up, except there was no droid to translate their growls and no subtitles. Of course, there are human characters in the show that actually do speak English, but the show has a lot of Wookiees speaking Shryiiwook without viewers knowing what they were saying.
The show also included appearances from Diahann Carol for a particularly creepy sequence with Itchy and Lumpy watching a circus-like performance (that is referenced in the first episode of Skeleton Crew), a cooking show from a four-armed chef played by Harvey Korman named Chef Gormaanda, Bea Arthur playing a character known as Ackmena who runs the Mos Eisley Cantina in a sequence that ends with a song, a cartoon that contains the first appearance of Boba Fett, a music video from Jefferson Starship, and the culmination of the main plot, when the heroes of the original trilogy arrive to celebrate Life Day.
More of the show than most people realize has been made canon, in both Legends and Disney canon.
Life Day is the most obvious of these things; this holiday has been referenced in multiple pieces of Legends and canon media. Chewbacca’s family was also made canon in Legends, but their names were changed to be more Wookiee — Malla became Mallatobuck, Itchy became Attichitcuk, and Lumpy became Lumpawaroo — something that has survived the canon changeover. Boba Fett joined canon, although it’s never been sure if the events of the cartoon he appeared in were actually canon. Akmena was referenced in the Legends novel Fate of the Jedi: Allies and was made canon in 2016, mentioned in Star Wars: Complete Locations and then in the short story “The Kloo Horn Cantina Caper” from the anthology From a Certain Point of View.
Gormaanda’s cookbook — Travels with Gormaanda: Cooking in the Core — was mentioned in Star Wars Galaxy 7, a magazine made for the Star Wars TTRPG, and as a part of The New Essential Guide to Droids, making her first canon appearance in a short story called “A Recipe For Death” in Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Aliens: Volume One. She was first visually shown in the 2022 reference book Star Wars: The Life Day Pop-Up Book and Advent Calendar. However, this was a simplistic icon in the book; she’d get a more detailed appearance on a variant cover for the 40th issue of Star Wars: Bounty Hunters. This latest Easter egg brings yet another part of the Holiday Special into canon.
The Star Wars Holiday Special Has Been Made Almost Entirely Canon
There was a time when the Star Wars Holiday Special was the most derided piece of Star Wars media. Most people wanted to forget it ever happened, but apparently the creative minds behind various Star Wars media have decided otherwise. Legends was known for taking bit characters and giving them complex backstories, and the Holiday Special is no different. Characters like Ackmena and Gormaanda became a part of the mythos, and Disney’s canon has followed this example. At this point in time, it’s easier to identify parts of it that are canon than parts that aren’t.
The question of whether the events of the Holiday Special are actually canon has always been a murky one. Much of it has been made canon over the years, and this latest Easter egg from Skeleton Crew — showing the circus that Lumpy watched as a program for children in the Star Wars universe — brings another aspect of it into canon. Looking at all of this, the Star Wars Holiday Special seems to be wholly canon, down to the actual events of the program. It’s honestly surprising that Jefferson Starship’s appearance hasn’t been canonized as some kind of band in the Star Wars universe, taking one of the final parts of the program that has never been canonized and bringing it into the official universe. Disney should finally just release it on Disney+, placing it in the timeline of Star Wars. They’ve basically done everything but actually come out and said it is canon.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew airs every Tuesday on Disney+.