Skeleton Crew Hid a Sneaky Star Wars Deep Cut in Plain Sight

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 brought to life by former ILM modeler and VFX supervisor Bill George, as part of a series imagining a hypothetical show celebrating life-sized scale models of classic sci-fi ships and props.

“I’ve always loved the story of how the Pirate Ship design was changed as it was felt it looked too much like the Eagle from Space: 1999,” George recently told ColinCantwell.com, a site recently set up by friends and family of the deceased artist to celebrate his work. “My original concept was to do a mash-up of the two ships. That wasn’t hard at all as they do have similar proportions.”

George confirmed that it is his hybrid design that made it into Skeleton Crew, after former colleagues at ILM reached out to him and asked if they could scan the model for use in the galaxy far, far away. “No one ever told me who was behind the request,” George added, “but when I was asked, I jumped at the opportunity! I have no idea, but once a model is made, they tend to show up in other media. I’m just happy it made it into the background as kind of a ‘cameo’ appearance.”

The ship has yet to be directly identified within Star Wars‘ universe, so time will tell if the Millennium Eagle will find a designation as cheeky as its portmanteau title, or if, like the Arrestor cruiser, it’ll be identified by an homage to Cantwell and George in some other way. But at least a fun little twist on Star Wars‘ design history has made its way back into the galaxy far, far away the long way round—an idea nearly 50 years in the making.

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