This article contains spoilers for “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” episode 6, “Zero Friends Again.”
“Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” is a fantastic addition to the franchise. It’s an all-ages show with a fantastic cast, as well as a thrilling space adventure with pirates that’s part “Treasure Island,” and part “The Goonies.” The show follows a group of kids lost in space and trying to get back home — except, their home is no ordinary world, but a legendary planet of eternal treasure. Along the way, the kids met a scheming pirate who can use the Force, a droid whose name sounds like Smee from “Peter Pan,” and plenty of wonderfully weird little guys.
In the series’ latest episode, “Zero Friends Again,” the kids — having only just been abandoned by their pirate “pal” Jod (Jude Law) — must work together in the hopes of escaping the pirate cove turned fancy vacation spot where they find themselves stranded. Meanwhile, Jod is captured by his old private crew and forced to stand trial. As he tries to defend himself by evoking the old pirate tradition of parley, Jod drops an expletive, convincingly promising his old band of pirates that he will give them more than they ever wanted if they let him live. Specifically, he will give them “The entire ‘kriffing’ galaxy” in the form of the kids’ fabled home planet, At Attin.
Now, one need not be familiar with every “Star Wars” comic book or video game ever made to figure out that “kriffing” is a clear stand-in for “f***ing.” That the kid-friendly “Skeleton Crew” should be the first “Star Wars” film or TV show to use that word only makes its inclusion here that much funnier. Still, as random or improvised as the word may sound, it actually has a long history in a galaxy far, far away.
Dank farrik! A history of swears in Star Wars
The word “kriffing” first appeared in the 1997 “Star Wars” Expanded Universe (or, at it’s now officially known, Legends) novel “Vision of the Future” by author Timothy Zahn, itself the second book in Zahn’s “Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn” duology (a followup to the author’s original Thrawn novel trilogy, aka the “Heir to the Empire” trilogy). Technically, this actually is the second time we’ve heard the word in “Skeleton Crew” as well, as we also heard it in the second episode when two of the show’s young heroes, Neel (Robert Timothy Smith) and Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), order some food at the pirate haven of Port Borgo and the short-tempered cook uses the expletive when the kids don’t immediately think to pay him.
Now, “Star Wars” has featured the use of swear words since the very first movie, particularly “damn” and “hell.” However, it’s the EU that introduced a lot of naughty words and phrases that sound more sci-fi-ish — save for alien languages using expletives such as “bantha poodoo” — like “sculag” or “farkled.” In live-action, it was really with “The Mandalorian” that “Star Wars” brought a new phrase into the zeitgeist with “dank farrik,” a term used often in the show and inspired by Samuel L. Jackson’s own potty mouth. With “Star Wars Rebels” having already introduced “karabast” and now “Skeleton Crew” bringing kriffing back into the mix, what expletive should “Star Wars” use next? My money is on either “kark” or “crink.”
New episodes of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” drop Tuesdays at 6 pm PST on Disney+.
