These days, raging fandom wars online can feel like an exercise in extremes. Either something is good and therefore infallible, or bad and therefore trashable, with little space in the middle for things that might be objectively poor but subjectively likeable. That’s what makes discussion of the currently-airing The Book of Boba Fett so interesting – a Star Wars spinoff that is as flawed in execution as it is hugely fulfilling in spirit, and more importantly, reminds us why we fell in love with the saga in the first place.
The Books of Boba Fett was, for some, fundamentally flawed from the get-go. The show’s broad premise is that its title character is not as dead as his most chronologically recent film appearance, Return of the Jedi, made him out to be. In that film, the bounty hunter, who debuted in the infamous made-for-TV Holiday Special (a fever dream so bad, there’s a long-standing rumour that George Lucas wanted to take a sledgehammer to every physical copy of it), was knocked into the Sarlacc Pit by a blinded Han Solo, suffering one of the most underwhelming deaths for a villain of his calibre in movie history.
But fans who were enthralled by the near-silent man behind the mask never forgot him. Recognising this, the prequel trilogy of the early 00s made the divisive decision to flesh out Boba’s backstory, revealing him to be the son of Jango Fett, the man whom the fledgling Empire used as a genetic template for its clone army. Fett’s escape from the Sarlacc Pit as an adult was less controversially detailed in comics, and his survival was finally confirmed in the Disney era of the franchise during the second season of the first live-action TV spinoff, The Mandalorian, and now expanded upon in The Book of Boba Fett.
The reason all this riles some fans up is the reason why unmasking the killer in a slasher movie ends the story: Boba Fett’s popularity was built upon the idea of not knowing anything about him. It’s so effective, in fact, Star Wars recycled this template with Captain Phasma in the sequel trilogy, with the only glimpse behind the “chrome dome” coinciding with her death at the hands of former trooper Finn in The Last Jedi.
Though The Book of Boba Fett’s initial episodes, which flashed backed to his escape from the Pit and time spent recovering from the ordeal with the Tusken Raiders, felt like they were on the cusp of proving this idea wrong – that fleshing out Boba’s character could be a good thing -, once the show caught up to its own present, that characterisation flatlined. Chapter Four has been the worst offender so far, with Boba and fellow bounty hunter Fennec Shand’s scenes together failing to plumb anything resembling emotional depth because, well, that’s what happens when two closed-off, humourless mercenaries have no one else around to soften them up – such as a tiny green baby. Mask on or off, Boba is hard to read.
Until this point, other complaints from disgruntled viewers came in the form of a sluggish premiere, brightly-coloured space bikes that looked out of place for the brownish dystopia of a galaxy far, far away, and the slaughter of the aforementioned Raiders, which, given that they were clearly inspired by real-life indigenous cultures, felt insensitive; their deaths used to simply galvanise the man they’d welcomed into their tribe like so many other problematic ‘saviour’ narratives.
Then came the oddest left turn yet: the last two episodes of Boba Fett have barely featured the title character at all. Chapter Four ends with a musical motif teasing the enlisting of The Mandalorian’s Din Djarin to Boba and Fennec’s turf war. What most viewers would have been expecting – and rightly so, given the name of the show – was a Boba/Mando reunion for a big final battle. Instead, Chapter Five switches focus entirely to the latter, armour-clad character, picking up where Book Two of The Mandalorian left off to make the episode feel like a sudden Mando Book Three premiere insert. This includes enough time, apparently, for an extended sequence in which Din and fan-favourite wacky mechanic Peli Motto (played by a gloriously wiggy Amy Sedaris) repair a vintage spaceship, swap techno-babble and reveal that Peli once dated a Jawa. Best not dwell on that one too much. All of this is fun, but has nothing to do with Boba Fett.
This focus continues in Chapter Six, with Mando checking in on his former ward Grogu’s training under Luke Skywalker following their split. This episode, even more inexplicably, uses much of its runtime to shift further still off-course, with Luke’s tutelage of his first student taking up the bulk of the story while Mando watches on mournfully from afar like a parent dropping his kid off at boarding school. Again, cute, but nothing to do with Boba Fett.
At this point, what began as a TV spinoff starring Boba Fett has become, well, just a show about Star Wars as a whole. And you can understand why some viewers may feel perplexed, maybe even cheated by that, as what was promised on the tin has not really been accurately represented in the contents. It’s as if The Book of Boba Fett suddenly decided that those original gripes about Boba’s mystery were right, and he was best left well enough alone.
Here’s the thing, though: as jarring as it’s been to first, accept that a long-dead character is actually still alive; second, that his very mysterious nature is going to be completely demystified, and third, that his own series is going to trade him for several other main characters far away from him with no preamble for two whole episodes, The Book of Boba Fett is still… very good?
Look, if you’re not a Star Wars fan, the show is unlikely to convert you to the cause, for all the reasons I’ve just laid out. But if you are, Boba Fett is really hard not to love. Sure, the pacing is all over the place, but you can kind of forgive that when it’s broken up by the thrilling, high-speed train robbery of Chapter Two, and Dinn taking a Naboo ship for a spin around the old pod-racing track in Chapter Five. Boba Fett doesn’t give enough time to Boba himself, but you can also forgive that when the show is pulling in big guns and deep cuts alike, like Ashoka Tano, Black Krrsantan and Cad Bane. Who wouldn’t simp for a cast list like that, and what Mando fan wouldn’t appreciate two unexpected helpings of pure, unfiltered Mando?
Nostalgia and improbable resurrections alone don’t always cut the mustard. Star Wars itself proved that with the poorly conceived return of Emperor Palpatine in Episode IX. However, for all the many, many things Boba Fett is doing wrong, there’s a quality of care and a sense of just how cool this toybox of space wizards and space cowboys is to play with that’s a joy to watch each week, no matter how messily they’re pulled out.
words HANNAH COLLINS