Skeleton Crew didn’t connect itself to the wider Star Wars universe through splashy cameos, but it carried with it plenty of connections and hints to the rest of the galaxy far, far away in a litany of offhand notes and Easter eggs. But one sneaky Easter egg is apparently even more of a deep cut than fans expected. Early on in Skeleton Crew the audience and its young heroes alike are swept to the pirate cove of Port Borgo, surrounded by a whole flotilla of fascinating-looking Star Wars ships.
But one stood out in particular: a thin, white ship briefly glimpsed as the Onyx Cinder made its way into port. Some fans pegged the design as being from a classic piece of Star Wars concept art: Colin Cantwell’s early design for the pirate ship that would eventually become the Millennium Falcon . Cantwell’s thin, narrow design would eventually be iterated on and repurposed into the Tantive IV blockade runner, but could have seemingly made its way back into Star Wars continuity through Skeleton Crew , just like how Andor canonized his early Star Destroyer design as the Cantwell-class Arrestor cruiser .
It turns out, however, that the ship wasn’t quite Cantwell’s. Instead, it’s a mashup of that design with the similar-looking Eagle Lander from the Gerry Anderson sci-fi classic Space: 1999 . Cantwell’s original design for the ship was actually moved away from due to a perceived similarity to the Eagle, so the mashup is quite appropriate—and the “Millennium Eagle” was br.