Wim's Dark Father
The opening scene of "This Could Be A Real Adventure" (Skeleton Crew 1.1) positions Captain Silvo as an analogue to Darth Vader. Both are masked villains with helmets that modulate their voices, and Silvo's introduction explicitly evokes Vader's introduction in A New Hope. After leading a boarding party onto his ship, Vader threatens the Rebel Captain Antilles by grabbing his throat, lifting him off the ground, and demanding, "If this is a consular ship, where is the ambassador?" Silvo also leads a boarding party onto a ship, grabs its captain by the neck, lifts him, and threatens him with a rhetorical question: "If this is a bulk freighter, why is your vault magnetically sealed?"
The parallels between Silvo and Vader deepen as the story of Skeleton Crew unfolds. Both helmeted villains turn out to be hiding a secret identity: Silvo is Jod Na Nawood, and Vader is Anakin Skywalker. Jod and Anakin were both born into poverty and trained by Jedi in their youth, and both act as fathers to the heroes of their respective stories: Anakin is the biological father of Luke Skywalker, and Jod becomes a father figure to Wim. (Luke and Wim's mothers are both dead.) Much like Vader is the dark side of Luke's father Anakin, Jod is a dark counterpart to Wim's biological father Wendle. Wendle's flaws are reflected and exaggerated in Jod.
Wendle is prone to emotional detachment; he is preoccupied with his work and checked out of his son's life. It is evident that Wendle lacks the capacity to help Wim grieve the death of his mother, presumably because he has not been able to deal with his own grief over her death. When Wim asks Wendle to read him a bedtime story like his mother used to, Wendle's reply – "Aren't you getting a little bit old for that?" – carries the implicit message that Wim needs to move on and "get over it." Early on, Jod seems like a better father than Wendle; when he hears of Wim's grief, he sits down to have a heart-to-heart talk with him. However, while Wendle merely lacks the emotional maturity to healthily attend to his son's grief, Jod takes his tendency to detachment much further: he explicitly forbids Wim from grieving, urging him to "forget" his mother and sever all his attachments.
Wendle's chief failing is that when Wim talks to him, he does not really listen to what he is saying. He recognizes this fault in himself when he sends a transmission to Wim in "We're Gonna Be in So Much Trouble" (Skeleton Crew 1.7): "Wim, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you." Wendle's failure to listen to Wim is darkly reflected in Jod's outburst: "Shut up! Your incessant, unending jabber, jabber, jabber... Honestly, it is unbearable." Whereas Wendle passively abdicates his paternal responsibilities and fails to listen to Wim, Jod is a much darker type of father figure, actively tyrannizing Wim and maliciously silencing him.
EXPLORE FURTHER…
Characters: Jod Na Nawood / Wendle / Wim
Shows: Skeleton Crew
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Concepts: duality / fathers / grief and loss / listening / masks
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