Star Wars: Skeleton Crew has just launched, and there are many influences and homages to discuss. I saw references to The Goonies and half-expected to see Indiana Jones keeping pace with the kids. Even the view of the city reminded me of the familiar overlook of Los Angeles in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. As the story progressed, I began to recognize something about Wim, and I had to go back to a 1605 novel to explain it to myself.
Skeleton Crew's Wim has many traits of Don Quixote
We often call people a little off the beaten path "quixotic," thanks to the 1605 story The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. The title character is from a fictional place so insignificant that it's called "The Stain." He reads too many books and gets strange ideas, leading him to go on knightly quests and stand for virtue. Most of the time, it goes badly. You may be familiar with his brave stand against a local windmill, a fight he loses.
I submit to you that Wim is a knight of the Republic, just not the one he lives in. Like Alfonso Quixada (and using the 1612 translation by Thomas Shelton into English), "he did apply himself wholly to the reading of books of knighthood, and that with such gusts and delights, as he almost wholly neglected the exercise of hunting; yea, and the very administration of his household affairs." Sound like someone we just met with a love for Jedi stories and an unfortunate inability to take shortcuts? Miiguel says that Alfonso "did praise....the conclusion...with the promise of Endless Adventure."
We see in Skeleton Crew's first episode, "This Could Be A Real Adventure," that at the tram stop, Neel and Wim play-act things straight out of their books, similar to the writings of Cervantes:
"His fantasy was filled with those things that he read, of enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, tempests, and other impossible follies."Miguel de Cervantes
Wim, who doodles during classes and reads about Lina the Jedi Knight even when he's in trouble, seems cut from this same cloth. There's nothing wrong with being an imaginative child. And he is definitely dedicated to the ideals of the Jedi Knights. Wim says he wants to "really help people, you know? LIke if there's danger or something." He's told that "we all have a place in the Great Work" by Undersecretary Fara, but he doesn't get why that has to exclude his ambition to change the world for the better.
It may not be that Wim will acquit himself as a knight errant, but we can see him trying to face down tyrants and giants and getting in over his head. He takes the helm of the Onyx Cinder without any real idea of how to use it, but that doesn't keep him from trying to step up to the challenge.
I hope to see him grow as he fights those personal battles as that seems to be a theme in Skeleton Crew. After all, as Miguel de Cervantes says, "It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well."