Star Wars: Visions Volume 3

Episode 5

In a nutshell, Yuko's Treasure is the story of two young orphans, Yuko and Sola. Sola is hired by the space pirate “Fox-Ear” to find Yuko's parents. However, after finding out that the pirates are more violent than expected, he switches sides to protect the young Yuko—and later recover Yuko's droid, BILY.

Thematically, the episode is about family—family lost and family found. Yuko's only remaining family is a single droid. Meanwhile, Sola has no family—he is completely alone in the world. Yet, the difference between them is stark, and it's clear that Sola envies what the other young boy has. Of course, by helping Yuko, Sola can get his own wish for a family granted by the end of the episode. So on that level, the episode works just fine. It's when you look at the details that things start to fall apart.

One such detail is the setting. In A New Hope, the whole point of Tatooine was that it was the galactic equivalent of the ass-end of nowhere. It's a desert world where the average settler makes a living collecting water from the air to sell—something unimaginable on most worlds worth living on. There was basically no reason for anyone to go there. That's why Luke is so eager to attend the Imperial Academy—it'd get him off the useless rock.

Of course, in the meta sense, Tatooine is one of the most visited locations in Star Wars—you'd think it was the most important world in the galaxy given how many movies, TV series, and games it's shown up in. It's to the point that I cringe a little inside each time Star Wars returns to the baked lump of soil. There's an entire galaxy of wonders out there, and we seem to keep returning to the most boring of worlds out of simple nostalgia. Worse still, in the case of Yuko's Treasure, the Tatooine setting is completely irrelevant to the story being told. It could take place on literally any world within the Republic or the Empire, and nothing beyond the trappings would need to be changed.

The story of Yuko's Treasure also stumbles once you go beyond Yuko and Sola's perspective. Yuko's mother and father are a series of contradictions. BILY promotes them as the pinnacle of virtue—a pair who delivered food and medical supplies wherever needed across the Outer Rim. Yet, they are also people who, despite having a young child, stole a large amount of credits from a literal space pirate (presumably to buy said supplies and build their vast underground complex/docking bay). They were either idiots—who thought crossing such a criminal wouldn't come with repercussions—or cared more about the well-being of strangers than of their own son. This could be an interesting look into the fallibility of parents and how even those trying to do the right thing can end up doing horrible things to those they love, but the show expects you to take BILY's interpretation as fact and ignore any pesky implications that come from his story.

All in all, while Yuko's Treasure has a solid emotional core, it's everything outside of that that doesn't quite work. From a setting chosen for nostalgic reasons to a greater plot that doesn't quite fit together as intended, this is the weakest entry in Star Wars: Visions Volume 3 so far.

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Star Wars: Visions Volume 3 is currently streaming on Disney+.