Part of the reason that The Book of Boba Fett has failed to click for me is that there have been these two competing storylines: the flashbacks and the current day. “Chapter 4: The Gathering Storm” closes the book on the flashbacks, but still stalls in giving us anything in terms of new story to dig into.
1. The most useless flashback yet
When we first met Boba face to face on The Mandalorian, it confirmed a lot of fan theories that he was the mysterious figure who found Fennec Shand on the Dune Sea. We could rather easily piece together what happened: he found her, helped her heal up, and they formed a partnership. Apparently, that was too vague for the folks at Lucasfilm, and so they needed a 20 minute version of that story that involved stuff that was perfectly acceptable to be left to presumption. “How did they get Slave-1 back?” Well, they probably stole it. “How did Fennec get saved?” Most likely some sort of cybernetic fix. Now we know those two things without question, but what does it tell us about the characters?
Fennec is still the most wasted character in all of Star Wars TV, a blank slate who hints at multitudes behind her cold demeanor. This episode was a perfect opportunity to give her some depth, but instead, we have to see Boba do stupid shit like try to look into a Sarlac pit with his ship, instead of killing the Sarlac first. Especially with Fennec showing up in The Bad Batch, we know that there are years of stories to tell with her character. And maybe there will be a Fennec spinoff, which I would be all for, but this flashback did nothing for either character.
2. Boba’s got some balls
While I get that he was trying to save her life, it is a bizarre move to have Boba unilaterally decide to give Fennec some robot guts to save her life, and to pay for it, to boot. Even if he recognizes her as the infamous Fennec Shand, it still feels like a weirdly personal decision to make for a total stranger. Boba is truly fair in this moment, saving her life and giving her a clear task with which to pay him back. But he’s lucky she didn’t say thanks and then killed him.
3. Return of the Black (Krrsantan)
It was very clear that Krrsantan would rejoin Boba at some point this season, and the scene that brought that about had almost no point whatsoever (notice a theme for this episode?). Sure, it doubles down on some Wookiee lore (hates Trandoshians, loves to rip arms out of their sockets), but it teaches us nothing about Krrsantan as a character, nor Mos Espa as a setting, nor Jennifer Beals’s Twi’lek, nor Boba. Why not just have him stay with them when he was ‘released’ last week? Boba asks if he wants a job. He garbles and walks back inside. Done.
4. A truly changed Boba
Boba, in this episode, says that he died in the Sarlac pit and was reborn. That is about all the explanation we’ve gotten for why Boba is suddenly a just, fair man instead of a mercenary. Sure, the Tuskens helped him with this a bit, but as I said last week, when he is found by them, he already seems more serene and accepting of his fate.
The realist in me says that this is just how Temura Morrison plays the character, and they had to work within that characterization to make the series work, but it is just such a shocking transformation. Watch the Boba from The Empire Strikes Back, and realize that this is supposed to be the same guy, something like 7 years later. It seems almost impossible without explanation.
And look, I’m not saying that he needs to have a soliloquy each episode about how he has grown as a person. But giving us something would be helpful to see this as a continuation of the old character. When Fennec said “Boba is dead,” I thought “here we go, he can explain this a bit!”
Continued belowBut alas, nothing. Always nothing with this show.
5. A hopeful sign for the future
While this episode was almost entirely pointless, the end of the flashbacks signals a better path forward for the show. While the “Congratulations, you’re fully healed!” was a lame way to end the experience, it’s still something. While we are basically still at the same place we were last week, it now looks like the back half of the season will be spent addressing the Pike situation, which is better than this back and forth nonsense.
