Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is officially breaking all the franchise’s rules, and that’s one major reason the show is so good. Lucasfilm’s Star Wars TV show is unlike anything we’ve seen before. It’s the perfect Christmas fare, the story of a group of kids from an Earth-like planet who wind up stranded in the Star Wars galaxy.

Skeleton Crew‘s cast is tremendous, a major reason for the show’s stunning 95% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes (at time of writing, it stands at 80% in audience score too). It’s easy to forget that, back when the first trailer for Skeleton Crew dropped, some decisions were actually controversial. One was the design of the mysterious planet At Attin, homeworld of the Skeleton Crew themselves, which looked a little bit too like real-world suburbia. Since then, Skeleton Crew has subtly doubled down on this – and it’s a major reason for its success.

Skeleton Crew Is Breaking A Lot More Rules Than That

Lucasfilm go to great lengths to ensure everything in the Star Wars galaxy looks just a little bit unlike life on Earth. Speaking to Le Monde back in 2002, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy described the limitations he had to work around:

“I remember we were shooting a scene and someone was cleaning a knife. You can’t have a knife, there are no knives in Star Wars , no wheels, no paper . They were a lot more conservative. I like to think of Star Wars as the Vatican, and in San Francisco there’s the Curia, they literally have a court. There’s a guy, Pablo Hidalgo who says what’s allowable. He has a very difficult job because he has to remember everything (that ever happened in the universe).”

Attentive viewers will have immediately noticed Skeleton Crew is breaking all these rules. There have been knives galore (notably on the Onyx Cinder). In Skeleton Crew episode 3, Kh’ymm pulled out what really did look to be paper scrolls. It seems the rules have changed.

Why Skeleton Crew’s Rule-Breaking Is The Key To Its Success

The Star Wars fandom is a divisive one, but it’s surprising to note there have been few complaints about this aspect of Skeleton Crew. There’s a good reason; these design choices were made carefully and thoughtfully, and they fit in with the themes and pirate aesthetic. Knives are a staple of pirate stories, so they simply had to be part of the show. Kh’ymm’s scroll is basically an ancient treasure map.

How has Star Wars gotten away with this? Partly, it’s simply because Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is good enough for this to be overlooked. But it’s also because the knives and scrolls are historic, pointing to the age of At Attin and the Onyx Cinder. Their unusual nature in the Star Wars galaxy underscores how old they are, making them part of the mystery in an incredibly smart way.