After a mixed bag of a first episode, The Book of Boba Fett‘s second chapter has the benefit of expectation at its side. With the overall structure of the show in place, it is easier to talk about the series, so let’s get right to it.
1. Tatooine’s Greatest Hits
Last week, I mentioned how silly it is that Tatooine is so prominently featured in Star Wars media, based on what is said about it in the text. While my opinion on that hasn’t changed at all, I’m glad to see Boba leaning into the setting and not shying away from it. If you’re going to tell a story about this area, give us stuff that makes sense for this setting. For every episode set on this desolate rock, let’s get a Max Rebo sighting, or something similarly Tatooine-y.
More than that though, this episode really seemed to double down on the overall Star Wars content. We don’t just see species that pop up everywhere, but are seeing new characters emerge from species that have only one or two really important Star Wars predecessors. Seeing the Wookiee enforcer working for a pair of Hutts, for instance, hits differently because of our relationships with the others of their kind. You can’t look at that Wookiee and not think of Chewbacca, nor the Hutts and not think of Jabba. Sure, most folks see a Trandoshian and think of Bossk, but these just hit differently. There are expectations to either live up to or subvert with these characters, and that provides interesting fodder for future episodes.
Even the absence of a species is used as a plot device here. When one of Boba’s would-be assassins is brought back to his palace, the threat of being beheaded by a Gamorrean doesn’t bother him at all. Fucker leans into the sword, even. But when the thought of being eaten by a Rancor enters his head, he gives up his intel instantly. Of course, the Rancor is dead, courtesy of Luke Skywalker, so it’s just a ploy, and not a particularly well delivered one, either in the scripting phase or how Boba and Fennec present it.
2. Tosche or Not Tosche, that is the question
Something I did not personally pick up on until I was doing some reading on this episode (something I am typically loathed to do before writing) was that the scene where Boba beats up some dudes and takes their speeders took place at the famed Tosche Station, where Luke was headed to pick up some power converters in A New Hope. More than that, the two human characters were Laze and Camie Loneozner, featured in a deleted scene from A New Hope (in which Luke wear a bucket hat, lol), though obviously recast. This was only made super clear if you watched it with captions on (where Camie is identified by name), if you’re the type of fan who knows all the deleted scenes from these films, or you know the toylines and Legends-era materials super well.
This is the type of Easter Egg that I struggle with as both a writer and a fan. On one hand, if you’re eagle-eyed enough to tell a character by their hair or a setting by its steps, it’s nice to be thrown a bone now and then as a reward for your dedication. But on the other, this is the type of fan service that further alienates anyone who isn’t in that top tier of fandom, and will lead to a thousand “I bet you didn’t know” types of discussions. I’ll bet those pedants will call you “Wormie,” too.
Now, I had seen that deleted scene once or twice (and I actually think it serves an important role in the film by giving Luke a real taste of the Rebellion, but that’s neither here nor there), and I probably should’ve been thinking that we’d see Tosche Station, because this is Star Wars and everything once referenced must be referenced again. But unless there is an in-story reason for this to be Tosche Station, it is nothing more than incredibly specific fan service.
3. The balance of flashback and main story
I am, again, surprised as the prominence of the flashbacks versus new story thus far on the series. The main story, in its limited time, has set up a few interesting threads: Is the mayor telling the truth about not sending assassins for Boba? Why does Boba need so much bacta? How will the Hutts retaliate for their cousin’s throne being taken over by a fake Mandalorian?
Continued belowBut it has also chronically underused Fennec Shand, in part because she has had so little screen time thus far. Ming-Na Wen is fantastic, and we’re barely given anything with her due to the ‘modern’ era stuff taking a backseat to Boba’s time between the Sarlac pit and meeting Grogu. Now, that likely means that we will get a scene that plays out after we were first teased with Boba in season one of The Mandalorian, with Fennec left for dead. But why is the show so content to waste Wen’s skills and squander opportunity to tell new stories in the interest of filling in a gap of a gap? This point in Boba’s life is already – and here’s that term again – fan service, but making sure that there is no untold element of whatsoever in his character is sucking all the mystique out of a character that was once 90% mystique, 10% Wilhelm scream.
4. Solo Redux
If you read the tea leaves, the reason that this is a television series and not a film is because Solo underperformed Lucasfilm’s expectations, and therefore Star Wars turned its attention to television instead of films, at least in the short-term (a Boba Fett film was long rumored to be the third ‘A Star Wars Story’ film after Rogue One and Solo). Because of that, it is fascinating then to see how many references to Solo happen in this episode. In addition to the train sequence feeling a lot like…well, the train sequence in Solo, there were Pykes, talk of the spice mines of Kessel and, as previously mentioned, a non-Chewbacca Wookiee. This was as close to connecting Solo to the rest of the franchise as we’ve seen outside of the comics, where Q’ira has played a role as of late.
As someone who thinks that Solo both gets a bad rap and is a lower-tier Star Wars film, I love this sort of connection from a meta-narrative perspective. That said, why rip off the train sequence so thoroughly?
5. The Genre Mash
Star Wars, from jump street, has been a mixture of Westerns, Samurai stories, and 1930s/40s film serials. What’s interesting about Boba thus far is not that it continues to reference those influences, but how it has doubled down on them in some ways, and added a few new influences to the stock pot as well.
Instead of just being influenced by Westerns, Boba has gone to a very specific kind of Western trope: the new sheriff in town. We saw this a little bit in The Mandalorian, specifically on Sorgan in “Chapter 4: Sanctuary,” but it is really present in Boba’s story with the Tusken Raiders. He shows up, is beat up, but eventually learns their ways. Beyond that, he teaches them a better way to live and improves their lives, before moving on. We haven’t seen him leave yet, but we know it is coming.
We also get one of the most iconic Samurai sequences, which is the crafting of a sword or, in this case, a gaderffii stick. Boba finds the branch while having a psychotropic vision caused by a Lizard crawling up his nose, where he experiences something not unlike what Rey sees when she touches Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber in The Force Awakens (and not entirely unlike Homer Simpson’s search for his soulmate after eating a hot pepper). This also has shades of the younglings finding ‘their’ kyber crystals in Clone Wars. It’s interesting that Boba, a clone and not a Force sensitive character, has such a mystical experience. Star Wars usually has a pretty clear binary of Force user or someone who discounts that sort of thing, so it’s interesting to see the Tuskens walking that line.
As for the serial influence, this is a literal serialized show, though it is not as reliant on cliffhangers as those sci-fi stories that George Lucas loved so much. That may be the most surprising part of all, actually.
That said, the two new influences that this show has incorporated are Temura Morrison’s Māori roots and mafia films. The tribal dancing that the Tuskens do was clearly informed by Morrison’s background, and it works really well. The sequence felt true to everyone involved in it, and added some depth to the Tuskens, who have been done more favors by Jon Favreau than anyone other than Vince Vaughn.
The mafia elements are a little stranger. Sure, we’ve seen criminal syndicates before, but the mayor specifically talks about Boba ‘running a family.’ Fennec mentions needing permission for killing a Hutt. Next up, Boba will be collecting skim off a garbage route through the streets of Mos Espa and getting some young kid to drive his bantha for him.
There’s no reason that concepts like sit-downs can’t be incorporated into Star Wars, but this element feels a little out of place, if only because of the directness with which it is being referenced. Take away a few words or rearrange some dialogue, and I don’t think this gets talked about, at least not by me. But when Fennec is clearly a consigliere AND you say ‘family’ in relation to a crime syndicate, and it seems likely that we’ll be seeing some gabagool next week.
