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Disney is heading back to the galaxy far, far away for a very different kind of story, as Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Jon Watts and Christopher Ford deliver The Goonies in space with Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. The coming-of-age Star Wars story is inspired by the Amblin movies of yesteryear, and with a much younger cast than we’re used to in this franchise, Jude Law’s Jod Na Nawood is the Force-sensitive father figure left to wrangle this unruly lot.
A new trailer has just dropped for and set to an alien language version of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom,” giving fans a closer look at this whimsical world. With The Goonies references plastered all over the place, we’d always guessed there were going to be pirates on this show. Skeleton Crew’s first trailer showed off some of these pirates and the return of the forgotten Shistavanen species, but the latest peek goes even harder on its pirate themes. With the kids of Skeleton Crew going up against gun-toting space pirates, there are now hopes that the most infamous pirate in all of Star Wars will finally be making his live-action debut.
Although we’re yet to see any official signs of him in Skeleton Crew, there are swirling theories that Hondo Ohnaka could be the big bad of the ensemble or to even help our cast of young heroes out of a bind. Introduced in season 1 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Hondo was a Weequay pirate captain who crossed paths with Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi during the capture of Count Dooku. His fan-favorite status was soon earned, and after appearing in several more episodes and becoming a “Jedi sympathizer,” he later popped up in Rebels where he helped Ezra Bridger liberate Lothal.
Skeleton Crew is the latest series set in the New Republic era between George Lucas’ Original Trilogy and Disney’s Sequel Trilogy that started with The Force Awakens. While this leaves plenty of room for the likes of Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) or Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) to bring things together, fans are more excited by the potential of Hondo. Although his whereabouts after Rebels are largely unknown, Hondo features in the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run attraction at the Galaxy’s Edge theme parks. With Hondo leading riders in a mission to steal cargo from the First Order, we know he’s canonically still alive during the period of history in which Skeleton Crew takes place.
The animatronic theme park Hondo has also given us a potential look at how he could transfer into live-action, and after the equally beloved Zeb leapt from Rebels into The Mandalorian season 3, Ohnaka could be next. If that wasn’t enough, Massive Entertainment’s Star Wars Outlaws, which is set a few years before the Mandoverse shows, has confirmed a Hondo-centric “A Pirate’s Fortune” DLC. In other words, it feels like Disney is putting more of a focus on Hondo for those who might not know him yet, making his potential live-action debut in Skeleton Crew even bigger. As for Jim Cummings reprising his role from The Clone Wars and Rebels in live-action, he discussed the idea at Collectormania in 2022 (via Fantha Tracks) and said, “Yes and yes, but they haven’t talked to me about it. I don’t know why, I mean… yeah. I’m there. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
The last we heard from Ohnaka, he’d returned to his legendary pirate status after the dissolution of his Ohnaka Gang and had founded Ohnaka Transport Solutions as a “legitimate business.” This happened between Rebels and Smuggler’s Run, although there’s more connective tissue thanks to his time with the Lando Calrissian and Maz Kanata. Some of the gaps have been filled in by the likes of the Pirate’s Price junior novel and the Flight of the Falcon one-shot comic, but there’s more than enough room to squeeze in a run-in with the Skeleton Crew kids. As Star Wars’ answer to Captain Jack Sparrow, the ever-expanding slate of Star Wars shows is long overdue for the live-action debut of the smart-talking Hondo Ohnaka.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premieres on Disney+ on Dec. 3.
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