In 1999, in The Phantom Menace, the Star Wars galaxy started to get a bit bigger. While various books and comics had indicated that the galaxy was sprawling enough to include entire areas of space where the Empire didn’t even exist, The Phantom Menace was a real-deal canon, which fully established where everything was in the galaxy, relative to each other. This was the first time the planet “Coruscant” was spoken aloud and was fully made a part of onscreen canon, and established as existing in the Core Worlds of the galaxy, close to the center. In the same film, Obi-Wan talked about the boundaries of the Republic’s influence, the planet Naboo was introduced, and the general sprawl of the famous faraway galaxy became richer.
And now in Skeleton Crew, 25 years after The Phantom Menace, Star Wars is once again redrawing the map of the galaxy. But this time, the details of the Old Republic are more mysterious than ever.
Spoilers ahead for Skeleton Crew, Episode 4, “Can't Say I Remember No At Attin.”
The biggest twist of Skeleton Crew Episode 4,happens right away. The gang thinks they’ve made it to At Attin, thanks to Kh’ymm’s coordinates from the previous episode. But in fact, they’ve arrived on the planet At Achrann, which we learn was likely founded at the same time as At Attin, along with other mystery planets At Aytuu, At Arissa, At Arivan, and At Acoda. The coordinates for these planets are known, but for some reason, At Attin’s location has been kept a mystery.
Yes, it’s another new Star Wars story with a secret map problem. From The Force Awakens and the elusive map to Luke Skywalker and the Jedi Temple on Ahch-To, to Ahsoka’s recent map to another galaxy altogether, Star Wars plots are, for one reason or another, often obsessed with missing pieces of information. With Skeleton Crew, the major difference here is that this missing lore is coming from a murky part of Star Wars ancient history, making the narrative a bit different this time.
In the classic films, people referred to the Jedi as an “ancient religion” even though the Jedi had been active just a few decades prior. This, you can imagine, is because of Imperial propaganda, and the ease at which widespread ignorance of recent history tends to propagate fast within the Star Wars galaxy. Even in Rey’s time, the events of the Rebellion, just 30 years in the past, were treated as though they might not have happened. This would be like people today viewing ‘90s rock bands as theoretical phenomena rather than real things.
The point is that a collective cultural amnesia within the Star Wars galaxy is a fairly common trope that even goes back to the classic films. But Skeleton Crew is building on that trope and making something slightly new: entire planets that are seemingly left out of larger galactic events. Wim, Neel, Fern, and KB have seemingly zero knowledge of Order 66 or the Rebellion, and the Troik folks on At Achrann are similar. In fact, the leader of the Troiks, General Strix, makes a point of saying that they don’t really deal with offworlders.
This actually makes sense when you think about how huge space is. Naturally, the Jedi or the Old Republic couldn’t regulate everything, and in fact, the novels of the High Republic and more recent prequel-era books have made it clear that as time went on, it was just wildly impractical for the Republic to assert any kind of blanket galactic authority.
In other words, Star Wars has been reminding us for a quite a long time that massive governments like the Republic, or the Empire, or the First Order have limited influence because space is huge. What Skeleton Crew is doing is finding the missing spots on that huge map, and essentially creating a new map in the process. The specific reason why At Attin and the other “jewels of the Old Republic” have been lost to memory may or may not be revealed during the course of this series. But in the process, Skeleton Crew is doing the one thing Star Wars has struggled to do for a very long time: make the rough-and-tumble galaxy seem scary again.
