In 2021, after two well-regarded seasons of The Mandalorian, Disney Plus Star Wars television seemingly could do no wrong. Two slam dunks were apparently on the way with an Obi-Wan Kenobi show and a series based on popular side character Boba Fett, who had been featured in an awesome season two The Mandalorian episode. However, by the time The Book of Boba Fett finally arrived, Star Wars fans had reverted back to their natural feral state and had Big Problems with the show. This second Star Wars television series marked the start of yet another cycle of fan hand-wringing and discontent.
Admittedly, some of this had to do with genuine issues with the project. First, making a show about Boba Fett was a risky proposition to begin with. Arguably the original Glup Shitto, the character has always been a cipher onto which fans had projected their own desires, stories, and expectations. While his brief time in Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars did a little to define him, his actual adult characterization was still largely unknown, other than that he wore cool armor and was intimidating.
While his featured episode on The Mandalorian gave fans a lot of what they wanted (namely action), to base a whole show around him meant you had to make choices about who he is and what he wants as a character, which was always going to disappoint people who had their own idea of who the character was. For me, having the show be about Boba Fett’s rise to becoming the crime lord of Tatooine was not the most interesting possible option. With that decision, you lose one of the few definitive things that we knew about him, that he was a world-hopping bounty hunter who spent his time on Slave 1 tracking valuable bounties. This decision was akin to the one that finally gave us a post-ROTJ Luke Skywalker who was an embittered old hermit, certainly a credible choice but not one that most people wanted to see after all these years. Equally with Boba Fett we are getting a valid characterization but one that is missing some of the things we would have expected from a show centered around the character.
While the series honors George Lucas' casting of Temuera Morrison who had played his dad/clone donor Jango Fett, I wonder if the show might have been better off recasting another Kiwi actor for the role as Morrison is at least ten years too old to be playing this character. Morrison spends the bulk of the series unhelmeted (occasionally barely-clothed) and with his distractingly white teeth and extreme facial expressions he is less intimidating than he was when he played Jango, twenty years earlier.
Not unlike The Acolyte, the story told in The Book of Boba Fett is presented in a way that features heavy use of flashbacks instead of presenting the narrative in a more straightforward, chronological manner. Essentially we are jumping between a "past" time period and the "present." The past period spans from months after Return of the Jedi to the events of seasons one and two of The Mandalorian. The present period takes place months after the second season of The Mandalorian. There are some fan edits of the show that recut it into one or more movies, and these are actually pretty good and I would say an improvement to the way the series is presented on Disney Plus. I will say though, on this recent rewatch I enjoyed the original cut much more than I remembered.
Another issue that fans had with the show is that there is essentially a whole episode and a half of The Mandalorian right in the middle of it. This doesn’t really bother me, since, first, it’s a great and significant episode and, second, they could change the title of this show and Din Djarin’s show The Mandalorians and I would be fine since there is seemingly an open question as to who "the" Mandalorian is. I mean, Din and Grogu are getting their own movie. They're okay. Also, at this point it had been a year since the season two finale and I certainly did not want to leave these characters in limbo for another year or more.
In fact I would love to see a The Mandalorians re-edit that actually recuts and reshuffles the episodes of The Book of Boba Fett with episodes of The Mandalorian as a cohesive whole. Unfortunately, the flashback element prevents you from just watching them in chronological order so some creative editing would be involved.
I’ll take it chronologically here as the story starts with Boba escaping the Sarlaac pit, a moment that has loomed large in the consciousness of fans since Jedi. We see him in the juicy maw of the beast as he makes his way to a fallen Stormtrooper for oxygen and then blasts his way to safety, finally passing out in the desert. He is first found by Jawas who scavenge his armor (later selling it to Cobb Vanth, who ultimately gives it to Din Djarin in Season 2 of The Mandalorian). Boba is next captured by Tusken Raiders and his time with the Sandpeople is a major subplot in the show.
Boba's 1984 Marvel Comics escape from the Sarlaac.
To the extent that Star Wars is a Western (particularly the Tatooine sequences) the Sandpeople have always been analogues for Native Americans. In Lucas’ movies they were always depicted as a sinister Other lurking in the desert wastes of Tatooine. As progressive as George Lucas is in his politics, his cinematic sensibilities are often seemingly rooted the retrograde media he consumed in his youth, and the Sandpeople very much fulfill the role of the malevolent Indians in movies like The Searchers. Indeed, they are literally defined by their tendency to raid the human settlements on Tatooine. Their kidnapping of Shmi Skywalker prior to the events of Attack of the Clones and Anakin’s subsequent slaughter of their tribe is a major turning point in the history of the Star Wars galaxy. No wonder their masks bear a passing resemblance to that of Vader. The two are clearly Star Wars' design language, if only because they were created by Ralph McQuarrie at the same time, but the saga has always been good about making these kinds of subtle visual connections.
McQuarrie Sandpeople concept art which inspired a scene from TBOBF
Of course, according to Lucas’ own lore, the Sandpeople and Jawas are the original inhabitants of the planet and everyone else are off-world colonizers who had abandoned early attempts to mine the planet. Given that that star/producer of the show Temeura Morrison is a Māori from New Zealand and the showrunner Robert Rodriguez is Mexican-American it’s no surprise that The Book of Boba Fett gives us a more nuanced and sympathetic view of the indigenous people of Tatooine, a process that began in The Mandalorian.
Boba’s time with the Sandpeople changes and redeems him although, again, we are redeeming a character that we hardly knew to begin with so it’s not as effective as it might have been. When his tribe is slaughtered by a swoop gang aligned with the Pyke Crime Syndicate Boba seems to make up his mind to reclaim his ship from Jabba’s palace and clean up Tatooine as the new Daimyo, although not before dealing some revenge to the swoop gang and-in a sequence that makes my inner child squeal-the Sarlaac pit.
Much of the current-day plot of The Book of Boba Fett has to do with Boba and Fennic navigating the landscape of crime families centered around Mos Espa (featured in The Phantom Menace and not to be confused with the more famous Mos Eisley). His attempts to consolidate power puts him in conflict also puts him into conflict with the Ithorian mayor, represented by his Twi-Lek Majordomo (played by yet another Chicago 1990's improv figure, Dave Pasquesi here joining his Strangers with Candy costar Amy Sederis returning from The Mandalorian) and a pair of twin Hutts who bestow a rancor on Boba before retreating from the planet. These Hutts by the way are set to return in The Mandalorian and Grogu.
The main antagonists of the show are the Pykes who employ the bounty hunter, Cad Bane, a popular character from the animated side of Star Wars and in possession of Star Wars most on-the-nose name (sorry Elan Sleazebaggano). Bane makes his live-action debut here.
Cad Bane is a Duros bounty hunter (think the pair of bulbous-headed, blue-skinned, red-eyed creatures from the Cantina) who goes full-tilt on the Spaghetti-Western element of Star Wars, largely based on Lee Van Cleef's character in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. In his animated appearances he has proven himself to be extremely tough and ruthless, going toe-to-toe with characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Over the years, he has gotten far more character development than Boba Fett ever did, and if this show was The Book of Cad Bane the chosen story might have actually worked better. While characters making the transition from animation to live-action have a mixed record in Star Wars (we'll be talking about Obi-Wan Kenobi next), Cad Bane looks and sounds fantastic. He's actually a terrifying villain and one of my complaints with TBOBF is that he is not in the show more, he works really well.
Fett also picks up some allies on Tatooine, most controversially, the Mods, a group of Tatooine youths who are augmented with droid parts and drive around in brightly-colored repulsor scooters. My problem with them is not that they are not "Star Wars" as some fans complained but they don't seem to match Tatooine very well. I can totally see this particular group driving around Coruscant but they seem out of place in the dusty streets of Mos Espa with its grungy aesthetic. Another ally Boba picks up during the course of the show is Krrsantan, a black-furred Wookie bounty hunter that has his origins in the Disney/Marvel Star Wars comics. Krrsantan is awesome and I hope we see more of him in live-action.
As stated above, we catch up with Din Djarin for a solid episode. At this point he has been on his own for several months without Grogu and still in search of his Mandalorian covert. As his ship was destroyed in season two he is also getting around on public transportation. He is also inexpertly attempting to wield the Darksaber he acquired by defeating Giddeon and is injuring himself with it. Bro is not in a good place.
When he tracks down the Armorer on a distant ring world, he confesses to having removed his helmet and is excommunicated from his community unless he can "bathe in the living waters of Mandalore." As a viewer, I am losing patience somewhat with the incredibly impractical and seemingly whimsical rules of this cult. We need to capture Din and deprogram him.
Mando makes his way to Tatooine to buy a new Razorcrest from Pelli Moto (yes, his intention was always to get another one) only to find that she has pulled a bait-and-switch and is instead attempting to sell him a souped-up N-1 starfighter (as piloted by Anakin in The Phantom Menace.) One of the things I love about this Mandoverse is how inclusive it is of all eras of Star Wars and I was so happy to see the return of this iconic design from the Prequels. Also, the idea of Mando and Pelli essentially rebuilding this hotrod in her garage feels very George Lucas. While on Tatooine Din is recruited by Fennic Shand to work for Boba Fett but first he makes a trip to see Grogu.
Grogu has become Luke's first student at his under-construction Jedi academy on Ossus (we later see this location destroyed in flashback in The Force Awakens). First, the de-aging or whatever voodoo is being done to create Luke Skywalker here is actually very good and Luke does a lot more here than in his single mostly stationary speaking scene in season two of The Mandalorian. Characterwise, they seem to be doubling down on Luke being a little unlikable and Jedi orthodox, which I think works well with his eventual arc.
Din arrives and is met by none other than Ahsoka Tano, who intercepts him and explains that his visit might not be the best thing for Grogu, who is still very attached to the Mandalorian. Din gives her a gift for Grogu, some Beskar chainmail that he had made for him. I'm honestly a little puzzled by Ahsoka "I'm no Jedi" Tano here who should know better than to be playing along with this high-handed Jedi bullshit. Also, frustratingly we never got to see the very important scene where Luke and Ahsoka met for the first time. She's just hanging out at the Temple site.
After Mando leaves, Luke sits down with Grogu and essentially gives him an ultimatum, you can have the chainmail and go back with Din or you can have Yoda's old lightsaber if you stay and train. But you cannot have both. The dickishness is strong with this one. Apparently Grogu chooses the chainmail and Luke essentially puts him in a cab and sends him to Tatooine. Like, how salty was Luke Skywalker about this decision?
Meanwhile on The Book of Boba Fett, Boba and his allies are making a last stand against the Pykes, Cad Bane and a couple of giant battle droids. Grogu arrives in the middle of this and reunites with Din, in a battle that now also involves Boba riding his Rancor and defeating the Pykes and (apparently) killing Cad Bane.
We end up with Boba now firmly in control of Tatooine...and we have not seen him since despite Temuera Morrison regularly letting it be known he would like to come back. It is rumored however that the Mandoverse will conclude with a movie or series of movies tying together elements from the New Republic-era shows: The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew.
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