The Star Wars galaxy is a big place, but that doesn’t mean we the audience still don’t see things we have seen before. The franchise is rife with examples of elements from one film or television series popping up in an another. It is something that helps make the franchise feel cohesive across otherwise unconnected stories. But the new Star Wars Disney+ series Skeleton Crew – in which a group of four pre-teens discover a starship and accidentally launch themselves across the galaxy with no idea of how to get home – contains an Easter egg so obscure that it might even sneak past all but the most die hard Star Wars fan.
The Easter egg in question comes halfway through the series’s first episode as Wim’s friend Neel is relaxing at home after school. To amuse himself, he and his younger siblings are watching a holographic video of some dancers. Now holograms are an integral part of the Star Wars galaxy since the beginning, as we’ve seen before in Leia’s message to Obi-Wan Kenobi and the holographic chess game on the Millennium Falcon. But the instance of a hologram in Star Wars that Skeleton Crew is referencing is one that probably most Star Wars fans haven’t even seen – The hologram that appears in the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.
For the unfamiliar, The Star Wars Holiday Special was a two-hour television variety special built around Han Solo and Chewbacca trying to get back to Chewy’s homeworld and family in order to celebrate the Wookie holiday of Life Day. It was made outside of Star Wars creator George Lucas’s purview, who ultimately disavowed the project. Fans didn’t much like it either – outside of a short animated segment that introduced the character of Boba Fett to the world – and it was never repeated or released on any official form of home video after its original airing in November 1978. (Though it should be noted that the animated segment is available to watch on Disney+.)
As to how Skeleton Crew relates to the Holiday Special, at one point in the show, Chewy’s son Lumpy decides to pass some time by watching some holographic entertainment, in particular some dancers/tumblers performing to some rather cheesy synthesized circus-like music. And the performance that Lumpy is watching is the same one that Neel is watching in Skeleton Crew.
This is not the first time that The Star Wars Holiday Special has been referenced in canon Star Wars. In the premier episode of The Mandalorian, the titular bounty hunter Djin Djarin is seen with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Eagle-eyed fans were quick to note that the weapon looked like the one another Mandalorian bounty hunter, Boba Fett, had in the animated portion of the Holiday Special.
But the animated segment of the Holiday Special is nearly universally considered the only good part of the two-hour special, so a nod to it isn’t too much of a surprise. The live action portions of the special were not as well received, with the variety elements being the most despised. For a Star Wars project to reference something from that so blatantly is a bit of a surprise.
