“The Mandalorian” set up a handful of spin offs and other high-budget shows in the “Star Wars” universe, as well as a precedent for what these shows could be. A precedent “The Book of Boba Fett” didn’t live up to.
Before I get too bogged down in how “The Book of Boba Fett” disappointed me, I should point out one thing I think the show did very well. The central premise of the season is that Fett is tired of risking his life for other people’s battles. He’s tired of fighting and killing around the galaxy for money and aims to take on a more relaxed, dignified job as the crime boss of Tatooine. I enjoyed this idea a lot, as most other “Star Wars” villains, especially bounty hunters, are never shown pursuing anything outside the cash for corpse business.
However, the central issue I had with “The Book of Boba Fett” is that Boba Fett is that, contrary to the title, Fett is far from the main character. The first few episodes do a good job of answering how the bounty hunter is still somehow alive after all this time, but most of all show how weak he now is in his old age while he struggles to inherit the crime empire of Jabba the Hutt and keep the peace against a rival crime syndicate. By the time Fett is back to his full strength, he disappears from the show for almost two full episodes of the seven episodes show as focus shifts to The Mandalorian.
While I am not complaining at more Mandalorian content, I think they did a disservice to Fett and his story by dominating it with the character of another, more successful and interesting show. These two episodes featuring The Mandalorian and Grogu were by far my favorite, and Fett was nowhere to be seen until the end of the second episode, in a scene where he didn’t even speak.
Many of the episodes felt disconnected, packed with basic tropes, or lacking in entertaining Fett content. Maybe, at this point, a solid finale could save the show.
Spoiler warning for the finale of “The Book of Boba Fett.”
The finale did not save the show. So many interesting characters and details had been introduced leading to the final episode, setting it up to be the best yet. Fett had spent the show gathering allies like The Mandalorian, Fennec Shand, a group of cybernetic teens, a Wookie gladiator, and even a Rancor. Meanwhile, the enemy crime syndicate had done the same, hiring the infamous bounty hunter previously only shown in the “Clone Wars” series, Cad Bane.
While seeing Bane in live action was almost enough on its own for me to fully forgive everything else in the show, his performance was limited to a couple ominous speeches and gunslinger stand-offs.
The episode was filled with impressive moments and visuals like Bane, the Rancor, and even giant droids we haven’t seen since the prequel movies. But in the end, I was left wondering why I watched. The only interesting character development of Fett took place in the first two episodes. From then on, we got some great continuation for the story of The Mandalorian and Grogu, but in the finale we get no idea of what is next for them, only that they are reunited, which, in my opinion, could have waited for season three of “The Mandalorian.”
“The Book of Boba Fett” was set up with promise, but was sadly disappointing for the character, and overall can’t compare to most of the other Disney+ originals of the past couple years. With this year still bringing the “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series in May and season three of “The Mandalorian” sometime later, I hope Disney can restore my faith in their originals.
Tracy Mullinax can be reached at [email protected]