Skeleton Crew has embraced nostalgia for 1980s coming-of-age adventure movies, for the original Star Wars trilogy, and for being a kid who’s getting in trouble on their adventures. But while nostalgia can often ignore the less-than-ideal parts of the past, Skeleton Crew isn’t afraid to bring back elements of Star Wars that most fans would rather forget, as a key shot in the new series’ first episode canonizes one of the franchise’s most absurd moments in the perfect way.
In that first episode, Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) visits the home of his friend Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) but doesn’t see him in the living room. Instead, he sees Neel’s younger siblings watching a hologram of a circus performance. The shot only lasts a few seconds, but it’s a notable one, as that hologram was previously watched by Lumpy, the young Wookiee at the center of the 1978 TV catastrophe, The Star Wars Holiday Special.
