Star Wars: Skeleton Crew was inspired by Lucasfilm’s ’90s Monkey Island games, says showrunner

The latest Star Wars show, Skeleton Crew, was inspired by a LucasArts series of adventure games.

The Monkey Island series followed Guybrush Threepwood, a pirate who went up against an evil (and undead) pirate named LeChuck. And pirates, as it turns out, are a huge influence on Skeleton Crew.

The show is set in the same post-Return of The Jedi time period as The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, and that’s no accident. With the New Republic doing its best to govern while burying its head in the sand about the rise of those pesky Imperial remnants, it’s the sort of quasi-anarchic environment where Star Wars tends to thrive.

“A reason we decided to set it then was because you don’t have a big, powerful government like the Old Republic or the Empire to scoop them up if they’re lost,” co-showrunner Christopher Ford tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which features Doctor Who’s Christmas special ‘Joy to the World’ on the cover and hits newsstands on December 3. “It’s a bit more of a lawless time, bringing in aspects of the Old West – which is, I think, why [Mandalorian/Ahsoka overseers] Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni were attracted to it as a period for The Mandalorian. Also, pirates flourish when there’s open seas.”

So, how do pirates – and Monkey Island – come into play? “There’s a fun thematic parallel between our kids and the pirate crew,” co-showrunner Jon Watts points out. “In a lot of ways, pirates are grown-up kids who don’t want to follow rules and just want to go on their own way, arguing about who gets to be the captain.

“It was great to go back and watch old pirate serials as an influence, swashbuckling epics like The Sea Hawk [1940] and Captain Blood [1935],” he continues. “Also, my other huge Lucasfilm fandom is the Monkey Island games. I loved all of the pirate things in those, and felt like we could bring a little hint of that to Skeleton Crew.”

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Skeleton Crew releases on December 3 in the US and December 4 in the UK. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Doctor Who’s Christmas special ‘Joy to the World’ on the cover and hits newsstands on Tuesday, December 3. Check out the fittingly festive cover below…

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