Inside the Making of Secret Level: Exclusive Details From Tim Miller and Dave Wilson

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. Following the success of the acclaimed Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots, Tim Miller and Blur Studio, the animation company that he co-founded, are next tackling a very different kind of animated anthology series on Prime […]

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This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew episode 1.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is a loving nod to the adventure movies of the 1980s, feeling right at home in the era that Star Wars really started to hit its stride. But it turns out that the nostalgia for this time goes beyond the look and feel of the series or the callbacks you might expect. Series creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford not only paid homage to A New Hope through the show’s opening sequence, but they also hid an Easter egg from the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special in episode 1.

The Star Wars Holiday Special was broadcast once on CBS on November 17, 1978 only to never see the light of day again after that, unless you were fortunate enough to record the special on VHS or have managed to stumble across a bootleg copy on YouTube. Despite featuring the original cast from A New Hope, the Holiday Special is viewed as corny and embarrassing by many (including George Lucas) and generally isn’t considered to be canon. Skeleton Crew, however, may have just changed that.

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The primary premise of the Star Wars Holiday Special, if one can be pinned down, is that Chewbacca and Han Solo are going back to Kashyyyk to celebrate the holiday Life Day with Chewbacca’s family. Once Chewie and Han get there, there’s a scene where Chewie’s son Lumpy is watching a hologram of some kind of space circus performance. If you look closely in episode 1 of Skeleton Crew, you’ll see that Neel’s family is watching the same hologram…or at least one incredibly similar.

"No insane cameos" okay then @starwars explain this#SkeletonCrew pic.twitter.com/uBWGlD96UB

— 3-PiCO Illustration || Inquisitorius SB (@Quizzy_sin_bin) December 3, 2024

According to Watts in an interview with EW, production wasn’t able to use the original footage from the Holiday Special as the resolution and quality was too low because it was a TV special. Ford also added that the footage as-is “was limiting because we would have to have used the same angle [for filming]. We needed to shoot it from multiple angles.”

In order to recreate this scene-within-a-scene, the pair went deep into the archives of Lucasfilm, digging out all of the original wardrobe designs and sketches from the show. “Our stunt coordinator also happened to be a former Cirque du Soleil performer,” Watts said, “so he plays the main dancing guy, and he choreographed a whole new routine based on what is in the Holiday Special.”

The series’ composer also had to recreate and re-record the music from scratch, as there was no record of it anywhere other than in videos posted to YouTube, and no one knew what instruments were used for the original. Watts admits that a lot of time and effort was put into creating “one little visual gag,” but to him it was worth it. “It makes me really happy,” he told EW, “and it makes me wonder what that circus troop is up to.”

Even though this might not be the exact circus hologram that Lumpy was watching in the Holiday Special, it’s proof that this space circus troupe does or did exist somewhere in the galaxy. And as far as we’re concerned, that’s one step closer to making the Star Wars Holiday Special canon.

New episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew will premiere Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+, culminating with the finale on January 14.

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