Star Wars has been around long enough to exhaust pretty much every sci-fi trope. In fact, it’s been around long enough to establish sci-fi tropes, then repeat them decades later. From cloning to time travel, every possible nook and cranny of sci-fi has been explored in its far, far away galaxy.
That, at least, is how it feels. But the recent finale of the family-friendly adventure series Skeleton Crew found a strange blindspot, a classic sci-fi go-to that’s never been explored in Star Wars canon. And now that it’s finally been included, it could change one of the biggest things we know about the franchise.
Episode 8 of Skeleton Crew, “The Real Good Guys,” starts with Jod’s invasion of the hidden planet of At Attin. He brings Fern and her mother straight to the Supervisor, the mysterious leader behind all of At Attin’s activities, under the guise of being a visiting Jedi emissary. He then realizes the Supervisor isn’t a person at all, but a sentient AI voiced by Stephen Fry.
He’s just like any other droid or computer, but he’s been tasked with keeping At Attin productive without any connection to the greater Republic. Like his name says, he carefully monitors all the planet’s inhabitants, and rules with a frightening and mysterious reputation. “Strict obedience to authority has kept At Attin running smoothly for generations,” he explains.
The Supervisor isn’t long for this world, as a lightsaber permanently deactivates him, but even such a short appearance has huge implications for Star Wars. We’ve seen plenty of authoritarian leaders in Star Wars, but never an inorganic droid. He’s not Palpatine, but more like a HAL-patine.
Droids in Star Wars have always been in positions of service, not authority. They’re banned from cantinas, bought and sold by Jawas, and blown away in space battles. This is all by design, even if George Lucas loves them. “Well, the droids were there to serve. Obviously droids are servants of man,” Lucas told Rolling Stone in 1977. “They do as they are commanded and all that kind of stuff but at the same time I love droids, they're my favorite people.”
There’s not a single canonical example of a supercomputer or otherwise superior droid in Star Wars, which seems like a big blindspot for such a varied universe. Even if you open the search to the now-defunct Legends canon, there are really only two examples: Zildrog, a supercomputer featured in the video game Star Wars: The Old Republic, and BRT supercomputers, a type of hyper-intelligent A.I. that appeared in a handful of comics and novels dating all the way back to 1979.
The power dynamic between droids and humans may be strict, but Skeleton Crew changes it. To keep a planet running independently, you need a completely obedient — and completely ruthless — leader. The Supervisor served this role perfectly, meaning a droid could be a major villain of a future Star Wars story. It’s about time they got the chance to break bad.
