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• Star Wars' new series Skeleton Crew drops a new trailer that feels less Star Wars than usual
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If The Acolyte was Star Wars leaning into its mythology and lore in a way that it hadn’t in years — it was a show all about the Jedi and their beliefs, and the origin of the Sith as fans know them — then it’s perhaps unsurprising that Skeleton Crew, the next all-new Star Wars series to debut on Disney+, is heading in the opposite direction. What’s perhaps a little more unexpected is quite how much the new trailer for the series makes it seem like the least-Star-Wars Star Wars ever.

It’s not just the still-surreal shot of the Star Wars suburbs at the 1:27 mark — although every single time it appears, the thought “Wait, so there’s part of the Star Wars galaxy that just… looks like the regular everyday suburbs, complete with streetlights and grass yards and cars and sidewalks? Since when?” comes to mind, I’ll be honest; it’s all been downhill since that biker gang in The Book of Boba Fett — but also the use of Peter Schilling’s 1980s almost-hit “Major Tom (Coming Home)” throughout the trailer that makes it feel more like a regular, almost generic, sci-fi kids show than anything from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away.

For that matter, what to make of the fact that the show is advertised as coming “from Lucasfilm and the directors of Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Mandalorian,” with the purposeful callout to Marvel fans. Sure, it’s not as if The Acolyte would have necessarily gained any additional viewers by trailing itself with “Did you like Netflix’s Russian Doll? Well, here’s that creator’s next thing,” but it’s genuinely rare to see a Star Wars project make such efforts to reach outside of its central demographic in its advertising.

Is this all the result of The Acolyte’s perceived failure, or something more general in terms of the positioning of Skeleton Crew? For now, it’s unclear, but perhaps we’ll learn more on December 3, when the show debuts on Disney+ with a two-episode premiere.

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