On Skeleton Crew, What’s a Little Near-Death Trauma Among Friends?

Skeleton Crew‘s kids got their first taste of a Star Wars staple last week when they found out that not everyone around them is exactly out for their best interests. So naturally, this week is about a few of them looking a bit closer at the bonds they do having, and putting them through the ultimate test. Which just so happens to involve a giant trash crab?

“Zero Friends Again” sees Fern, KB, Neel, and Wim literally tossed out onto the scrap heap after they narrowly escaped Jod having to add “doing an Anakin Skywalker on some younglings” to his list of pirate crimes–and of course, being kids, the first thing they have to do is argue about what to do next. But there is something different here than the usual little spats this quartet has gotten to throughout Skeleton Crew so far: Jod’s betrayal of them, as well as the encroaching reality of the situation they’re in when they find themselves truly abandoned as Brutus and his crew drag ‘Silvo’ off-world for judgement, begins to show the frays between their connection. This is especially so for Fern and KB, when the latter struggles to articulate to the former just why she can’t agree with a risky plan to scale a humongous cliff face to get back to their ship.

Why she can’t becomes clear as KB decides to follow Wim–who has promptly decided that a nearby consortium of trash crabs will definitely lead them to someone who can help–in one direction, as Fern and Neel go towards the cliffs. KB’s augmentations have been corroded by her time in such a moist environment, slowly shutting down her motor function. Star Wars has long had an interesting history with its portrayal of cyborgs and the disability parallel therein, and more often than not that history has been fraught, from the very moment Darth Vader is referred to as “more machine than man,” to how inconsequential lopping off a Skywalker’s limbs often seems to be. But in an incredibly tender scene–aced by Kyriana Kratter and Ravi Cabot-Conyers–as a drained KB guides Wim through the process of replacing her corroded fuses, we probably get what is Star Wars‘ best insight into disability and chronic illness.

Not only do we actually get to see the reality of KB’s lived experience with her augmentations–not just the immediate threat that the alternative without them is death–but her frustrations around the people in her life, Fern especially, attempting to treat her as capable of doing anything even when she very clearly needs accommodation and understanding of her capabilities as a disabled person. It treads a fine line all disability narratives have to, and avoids many of the pitfalls those narratives are prone to. It doesn’t become the case that KB is bitter about her augs, or that other people tell her what she should and should not be capable of: it’s about her getting to communicate those terms herself, and having people listen to her. Fern’s desire to accommodate her best friend by telling her she can do anything any other kid can do (including climb a precarious cliff face!) doesn’t match the reality that KB needs help and the space to set her own boundaries, and own struggle to communicate that is a perfect match for Wim’s own empathetic nature, letting her come to that realization herself as he tinkers away repairing her augments.

It’s not a supposedly “very special episode” moment but a true bit of bonding between KB and Wim, one that is interestingly paralleled in the other team ups between the kids. It’s very telling that we cut from this frank conversation about KB setting her own limits to Fern and Neel, with the former having decided that the only response to Neel’s complaints that he can’t climb as fast as her is to find a rope and tie them together so she can practically drag him up at her own pace. And there’s even a parallel to Jod’s plotline in the episode too–carted off to face Brutus’ judgement and given pirate-code-mandated time to appeal a stay of execution, what Jod offers instead is a sales pitch about At Attin, rather than any earnest or meaningful connection to his former crew, plying them with promises of loot and the dreams they’ve always dreamed. The “zero friends” of the title might be a line from KB, fearing that if she was honest with Fern she’d lose her best friend, but really it’s Jod: a lonely con artist playing one last trick after another, while the kids he abandoned along the way find themselves more united than ever.

That is, after they’re almost eaten by a giant crab and a giant junk-slagging droid. It’s a bit weirdly paced to go from one big set piece to the next right at the end of the episode, but it’s the crucible of fire that lets these kids really shine together as a unit (especially after KB and Fern get a nice little reunion). Together, and understanding of each other’s strengths, they can achieve the impossible–and do so not just when Fern and Neel save KB and Wim from the trash crabs, but when they all clamber aboard the Onyx Cinder and manage to free it from the clutches of the junkyard droid. It perhaps wouldn’t be Star Wars if their reward for galvanizing these bonds was simply just a better understanding of each other, of course: to escape the droid they all have to trust that Fern knows what she’s doing when she slams a button on the Cinder’s controls SM-33 told them never to touch, detonating the haggard hull plating of the ship to reveal a sleek, shiny version of the vessel hiding underneath its grimy exterior.

They’ve now got their chance to get home (thanks to the co-ordinates stored in KB’s augs, of course), even with Jod and the pirates looming on the horizon. But they can face it with a better understanding of each other, one that will encourage them to feel like they can take on the whole galaxy… which they might have to by the end of all this.

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