Welcome to Multiversity’s coverage of The Book of Boba Fett. The series, spinning out of The Mandalorian is an odd one off the bat, and the first episode does little to dissuade anyone of that opinion. Let’s dive in, and beware some spoilers abound.
1. Flashbacta
The episode opens on Jabba’s Boba’s Palace, and we see that Boba is not on his throne, but in a bacta tank. It appears that Boba is in worse shape than when we saw him in The Mandalorian, and needs to spend a significant amount of time healing up.
This is not unlike how we see Darth Vader in Rogue One and various books and comics, implying that when he’s not about the Empire’s business, he often must soak in bacta. The difference is that Vader is kept alive by machines, whereas Boba seems to be, more or less, a healthy-ish man. But clearly something in Boba’s past has damaged him to the degree that he needs this sort of recovery. His greatly diminished hand to hand combat, as shown during the show’s one contemporary action sequence, can also be traced to his less than ideal physical condition.
The bacta also serves a useful purpose in the show’s structure, as Boba mentions that his ‘dreams have returned,’ and so whenever Boba finds himself in the bacta tank, the show can fill in the gaps between Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian.
2. Sarlcas, Tuskens, Harryhausens, Oh My!
The first misstep of the episode is the degree to which the flashbacks travel. We don’t need to see Camino, or young Boba picking up Jango’s helmet. While those moments/locales have bearing on Boba the character, they have nothing to do with the show we are watching, at least not yet. I get wanting to do the flashbacks chronologically, but when doing it that way, you are either spoiling future shit or you’re giving the audience unnecessary information.
We thankfully only get a few minutes in the Sarlac pit that Boba ‘died’ in way back in Return of the Jedi, and then we see how Boba’s life on Tatooine played out. This series is set five-ish years after RotJ, and so there’s a fair amount of story to tell, and while we know the broad strokes (lives with the Tusken Raiders, saves Fennec Shand, eventually meets Mando and Grogu), there are some stories to be found in there.
One of the best parts of the flashbacks is both spending more time with Tusken Raiders and also seeing some new creatures emerge. A lot of the designs are straight up The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad creatures, clearly homaging the work of the great Ray Harryhausen, and that’s always fun. But cool monsters can only carry the flashbacks so far, and with the ‘new’ story having some more mysterious/interesting elements, it seems like a bit of a dead end right now.
3. Tone job
The show is attempting to continue the tone of The Mandalorian and Boba simply doesn’t work in that role as much as Din Djardin does. The mystery of the order, the elite combat skills, the Child, all of these elements worked to make The Mandalorian a fascinating watch. Boba doesn’t have any of that, and so the series needs to adjust its tone a little bit.
What the series may be leaning towards is the aging gunslinger narrative, which has been hinted at in The Mandalorian, but Din is not quite there yet. Boba, by best estimate, is around 40 years old at the time of this series, making him not exactly an old man, but the last five or so years appear to have been hard-lived ones. If the show decides to lean into this space, I think it could work relatively well, especially with Boba trying to project power and respect.
4. RESPECT! RESPECT! RESPECT! RESPECT!
Speaking of respect, that is how Boba decides he wants to lead. Lead what exactly? Well, a criminal underworld, which seems like a poor place to build a culture of reason and mutual admiration, but that is what Boba decides to do. He does this by being showing his humility through walking, instead of being carried, through Mos Espa, as well as by attempting reasonable discourse with civil servants.
Continued belowFennec seems to recognize this as a weird position to take, but her role seems to be that of consigliere; she’s offering him advice, but ultimately respects his authority. The position already has made him a target for attackers, and also seems to color how others in and around Mos Espa think of him.
5. Tatooine Dream
It is funny how half of A New Hope is spent shitting on Tatooine as a podunk backwater, and yet almost every bit of Star Wars media has us returning there for one reason or another. This story makes sense to take place there, but it also seems a little silly. At least we get to see Max Rebo, playing in his new duo with a guitar (?) player, as well as a selection of alien species that are reminiscent of the Original Trilogy.
There was a really nice reference of the Trandoshian bringing Boba what appears to be a Wookiee pelt, as those species are established in non-film canon as mortal enemies. Little elements like that make the episode a fun one for longtime Star Wars fans.
But the show attempts to have it both ways at every turn. Boba is a threat, but he’s weak. The show is telling a new story, but is reliant of flashbacks. We want to care about Boba, but are not given much new depth to his character. For the show to succeed, it feels like it needs to pick a lane and run with it. Sure, I enjoyed seeing Selena Meyer’s ex husband and Jennifer Beals as a Twi’leks, but those moments are just gimmicks if the show doesn’t work.
And right now, this seems like a watered down Mandalorian. I’m not dismissing it outright, but that’s the feeling the first episode is giving off. Sure, Jon Favreau wrote it, but Robert Rodriguez directed it. Sure, Ludwig Göransson wrote the themes, but he didn’t do the score. This feels very much like the spinoff that it is, but one that is hewing too close to the source material as opposed to going off in its own direction.
I know, I know, this is just one episode, and a lot can change later on down the road. I am hoping it is, lest this might be the first miss of the live-action Star Wars Disney+ experiment.
