Before opening The Book Of Boba Fett, let’s look at the man beneath the helmet
Here’s an introduction to the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter, even though he doesn't need one
Image: Graphic: Rebecca Fassola TV Features Boba Fett
With Disney+ series The Book Of Boba Fett, Lucasfilm is finally giving the fan-favorite Star Wars character his own solo live-action adventure—more than 40 years after he was first introduced. Boba Fett has been a prominent part of Star Wars for a long time, popping up in every toy line, multiple video games, and even a painfully distracting cameo in George Lucas’ special edition version of A New Hope (it’s easy to miss if you keep your eyes closed for several minutes after Han Solo is introduced). But now that he’s getting a more direct spotlight, it seems like a good time to take a step back and investigate who Boba Fett really is beneath his Mandalorian-style helmet.
Who is Boba Fett?
Most people first met Boba Fett in 1980's Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back, when he was one of the bounty hunters hired by Darth Vader to track down the Millennium Falcon. But he had already appeared in an animated segment of the not-entirely-canonical Star Wars Holiday Special (which you can now see on Disney+ under the title The Faithful Wookiee) in 1978.
In that holiday special, Boba Fett poses as a helpful stranger trying to assist Luke Skywalker in tracking down Han and Chewbacca after an accident. The good guys eventually discover he’s a bad guy, and after basically telling him to leave, the short ends. It’s telling that this is held up as “the good part” of the Star Wars Holiday Special.
As for stories that actually count, though, Boba Fett’s first chronological appearance in the Star Wars timeline was in Star Wars: Episode II—Attack Of The Clones. There, it’s revealed that he’s the “son” of legendary bounty hunter Jango Fett, played by Temuera Morrison, who serves as the template for the Republic’s army of clone soldiers. But Boba’s not really his son; he’s just another clone who ages at a normal rate and hasn’t been brainwashed by the supposed good guys into being a mindless drone in their war against robots.
When Jango is decapitated by Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu, Boba sees it happen and is there to sorrowfully hold up his ersatz father’s severed head (still stuck in its chromed-out helmet). Star Wars isn’t generally a subtle film series, so this presumably serves as the motivation for Boba growing up to be a not-very-nice person.
After that, we catch up to his original big-screen debut, decades later in the Star Wars timeline, when Boba Fett was on Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer with his goofy-looking bounty hunter buddies—including lizard man Bossk, weird robot 4-LOM, weirder robot IG-88, and a grouchy man in bandages known as Dengar, though it’s worth explicitly noting that none of them are named onscreen here, including Boba Fett.
Tasked with capturing Luke Skywalker and his friends, Boba Fett tails the Millennium Falcon to Cloud City and tips off Darth Vader, who gives him Han Solo as payment. Han owes money to Boba’s real boss, crime lord Jabba The Hutt, and Boba Fett takes him to Jabba’s party palace on Tatooine frozen in a block of carbonite.
Boba next shows up during Luke and Leia’s rescue mission to save Han in Return Of The Jedi, hanging out with the rest of the degenerates at Jabba’s house and enjoying the occasional performance from Sy Snootles and the Max Rebo Band. When the heroes made their failed play to save Han, Boba Fett joined Jabba on his trip out into the desert to dump them all into the Great Pit Of Carkoon, nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlacc, where they would “find a new definition of pain and suffering as they were slowly digested over a thousand years.” When the heroes revealed their actual plan to save Han, it didn’t work out well for Boba Fett; he was immediately knocked right into the Sarlacc’s mouth and killed. That’s it.
If that’s it, how is Boba Fett in The Mandalorian and how does he have his own show?
Alright, that’s clearly not “it”—but as far as the original movies are concerned, it is. Boba’s arrival on The Mandalorian is what you call a “retcon” (or “retroactive continuity” change), meaning it’s something about a fictional work that was changed in a subsequent work. When Disney took over Star Wars, it erased everything in the original canon aside from the movies and (where it’s convenient) the Clone Wars animated series. Old Star Wars books had revealed that Boba survived his fall into the Sarlacc a long time ago, but those stories are no longer part of the official Star Wars canon.
In other words, as far as Disney was concerned, nobody had any reason to suspect that Boba Fett had not died in the Sarlacc pit until he showed his face on The Mandalorian. The Book Of Boba Fett will probably address the question of how he survived and what he was doing in the years between Return Of The Jedi and The Mandalorian, but this is all we’ve got until that happens—save for Boba Fett getting his armor back and then claiming Jabba The Hutt’s criminal empire for himself and new friend Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen).
What if you want more Boba Fett?
If you’re really desperate for more Boba Fett, he did make some appearances in the Clone Wars cartoon as a little kid. It won’t tell you anything about what to expect from The Book Of Boba Fett, and anything in those episodes that is contradicted by later movies doesn’t count, but there are some more Boba Fett stories out there at least.
He first appeared in the episode “Death Trap,” posing as a regular clone kid while trying to enact a plan to get revenge against the Jedi for killing his dad. He returned in the episode “Bounty,” leading his own team of bounty hunters (including a young Dengar), but after that, he mostly drops out of the larger Star Wars saga until The Empire Strikes Back.
So what’s going to happen in The Book Of Boba Fett?
If there’s one lesson to take away from this, it’s that there really has never been a lot to Boba Fett. He has cool armor, but it wasn’t until The Mandalorian that he actually did much of anything while wearing it. The trailers for The Book Of Boba Fett also tease that he’s going to be imposing some kind of honor code on the galaxy’s criminal underbelly, in contrast to the excesses of Jabba’s reign, which isn’t exactly something he’s ever talked about before—if only because he’s never really talked about anything before.
At best, Boba Fett has always just been an interesting player in someone else’s story, so it’s hard to predict what the new show is going to do with him. It will hopefully serve as a long-awaited payoff for Boba Fett’s generations of fans, but you never know when he’s going to get bopped on the back, fall into a pit, and then die.
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hasn’t been brainwashed by the supposed good guys into being a mindless drone in their war against robots.Tell me you haven’t watched The Clone Wars, or even Rebels or The Bad Batch, without saying you haven’t watched TCW, SW:R, or TBB.
I’ve seen The Bad Batch. It wasn’t as good as A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
he probably has a girlfriend
I haven’t watched The Clone Wars, or even Rebels or The Bad Batch
There, I said it.
That’s fine; they’re not essential — but they do show that the clones are more than “mindless drone(s).” They have individual personalities, at least until Order 66 kicks in and they start fragging Jedi.
In the Mouse’s world, you either die a villain or live long enough to see yourself become the far less interesting PG-rated hero.
In my country, bounty hunt you!
Star Wars reminds me of the original Planet of the Apes movie series. By the end, it was a series for children.
The main reason people love him is because he has cool armor and he never did anything. He’s a cipher that fans can project whatever they want onto. Any expansion of the character was pretty much guaranteed to make him less cool than whatever their 10 year old minds had created.
Yeah, there’s some interesting stuff going on here about fan vs actor vs franchise ownership of characters. Morrison has said he had a good deal of input into Boba’s character as he returned in The Mandalorian, and the whole direction seems to be shaping him into the type of honour-bound warrior who are already all over the franchise. You could contrast this to all the tiresome controversy over Mark Hamill supposedly disapproving of the direction Luke was taken in for The Last Jedi.
Of course, this is all just based on the rather flat teaser trailers they’ve released. Maybe by the end of episode one we’ll find out that new Boba is a maniacal spice-snorting Space Scarface who dismembers enemies with a light-chainsaw. But I doubt that would shift as many plushies.
“and the whole direction seems to be shaping him into the type of honour-bound warrior who are already all over the franchise”
Which is kind of funny, since that’s essentially what he became in the old EU.
Somehow “Say hello to my little friend!” isn’t going to sound as bad-ass with the New Zealand accent
Star Wars these days needs more Hans and fewer Lukes.
So what you really want is a Red Corsairs show
And the coolest ship!
It was cool to see him toying with those tie fighters in the Mandalorian finale and then when it was time to get going he just blew them away like it was nothing
A cool ship which Disney refuses to call by it’s name.
Disney should have just insisted it be pronounced “slav-oh-nee”.
The Oh-Nee-Ders!
The movies also refused to call it by its name. You’ll live.
Well, back then, there was a 3 year wait from when we first saw Boba Fett in Empire, and ROTJ. You introduce a character that badass looking, our imaginations ran wild with what he would be doing in the next movie. Maybe nothing would have matched our imagination, but I still think they could of come up with something better than immediately being eaten by a giant sand vagina.
I mean, the the EU did add something to his character and the EU has always been more interesting than whatever the hell Disney is doing. Granted, The Mandalorian has been probably the best Disney Star Wars content, so hopefully some quality spills over into The Book of Boba Fett.I remember really liking “A Barve Like That” from Tales from Jabba’s Palace (which is the EU story of how he escapes the Sarlacc).
“Any expansion of the character was pretty much guaranteed to make him less cool than whatever their 10 year old minds had created.”
Nah. If he was a bounty hunter it could still have been cool, but he seems to have turned into a monk-slash-gangster, which is stupid and decidely uncool.
This, pretty much; I always preferred the appearance of the even-less-developed IG-88 and Zuckuss (mistakenly called 4-LOM by Kenner, and that weird droid-like name for a seemingly (mostly?) organic lifeform was part of the reason I found him interesting), so never got on the Boba bandwagon, and consequently found his RotJ fate hilarious.
Also, E.T. made his action figure seem even cooler by prominently featuring it in the film, and that movie was a massive success that transcended generations. People don’t give that film enough credit for the popularity of Boba Fett.
Idk making him played by the actor from Once We Were Warriors is a glow-up for me.
Can’t wait for The Punisher!
With a PC spaceship name…
The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are both PG-rated.
Somehow the MPAA missed this.
The MPAA doesn’t kink shame.
good for them
oh god shut the fuck up, star wars fans
Both Empire and RotJ were already PG-rated.
I am old enough to remember when Darth Vader and Boba Fett were bad guys.
Fett was a bad guy in that he was tasked with grabbing one of our heroes, but I always just took him as an amoral, apolitical dude who works for whomever pays the bills. You know, like a bounty hunter. His actions in tracking the Falcon to Cloud City also tells you he’s more clever than his competition. I love that he’s a bit impressed by disguised Leia’s thermal detonator ploy, evidenced by nothing more than a very slight bow. I’ve never seen any of the animated series or read the books, so I don’t have any impression of the guy beyond the films. This pretty much makes him available as a blank slate for his own show, which could definitely be fun.
“an amoral, apolitical dude who works for whomever pays the bills”i.e., a bad guy.
Point taken. I guess I’m differentiating between bad guy and full-on villain who likes to watch his dancers be eaten by his pets.
When you put it like that, I see what you mean.
No matter how sure I am, I never bet “The Fett-Man”!
I always bett on Fett.
Some motherfuckers are always trying to Jetpack uphill.
They gonna explain his change in demeanor? Pre Sarlacc the only thing he cared about was his reputation as the best bounty hunter in the galaxy. Didn’t matter what the job was he took it and completed it no questions asked. But now he’s almost a good guy.
He also cared about whether or not he should be able to use disintegrations. Also, spending years being digested is a clear avenue to show he had time to reflect on his past.
The trailers for this just look dull. I guess you don’t really need to advertise for Star Wars but still….
The only change or addition to the OT for the Special Editions that I liked was the shot of Boba flirting with one of Jabba’s dancing girls at the palace in RotJ. From all the trailers for the show and his role in S2 of Mandalorian, it seems like he’ll be pretty stoic, but I’m hoping to see some glimpses of a sense of humor, or at least something besides stone-cold bounty hunter.
I’ve never understood the backlash to Boba Fett’s supposed awesomeness. It’s telling how Vader feels it necessary to give him special instructions about “NO disintegrations”, and that Fett actually gives him lip at one point (“He’s no good to me dead”) in The Empire Strikes Back. It’s a very good way to reveal character with a minimal amount of exposition, and gives room for your imagination to fill in how much of a badass he has to be in order to do those things.
When Jango is decapitated by Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu, Boba sees it happen and is there to sorrowfully hold up his ersatz father’s severed head (still stuck in its chromed-out helmet).It’s subtle, but you do see the shadow of Jango’s head flying out of the helmet when it hits the ground.
Not to nitpick but Jango’s head isn’t still in his helmet after he’s decapitated. You can see in the shot there’s two separate shadows flying off to the ground.
I’m one of those people who never gave a crap about Boba Fett, and just rolled my eyes when I heard he was getting his own show. The way I saw it, the only thing he ever had going for him was a cool armor design, and now that we have a ton of other characters with that armor, what’s the point of him?All of that is just to give full context when I say that I’m dying to see this show. It’s truly amazing how The Mandalorian singlehandedly made this character legitimately cool for the first time ever, and the idea of him taking over Jabba’s place is one of the best things Disney has done with the franchise.
To be fair Boba’s armor always had the coolest color scheme
Did we just become best friends??!!
same
Are you old enough to remember the hype around the theatrical release of ROTJ? I was six. We already thought Boba Fett was super cool because of the toys – Slave I was this attainable-unattainable dream toy for us in the Australian lower-middle-class. The Millennium Falcon was hilariously out of reach, but Slave I, we could imagine saving our pocket money for…I saw Star Wars on TV, and I’d only ever had a storybook version of ESB (the one with a 12-inch vinyl and R2D2 goes beep-beep and that means it’s time to turn the page), but we knew Boba Fett was cool. Partly because he let Star Wars geeks flex their knowledge: most kids thought he was a weird Stormtrooper, and then the kid who actually knew about Star Wars and had all the books and stuff, could explain that he was a Mandalorian… and there were never any follow up questions, because that’s how we rolled in the 80s.In fact, in the 1980s, in the dark times before VCR, the most time we spent with all of these characters was playing with the (very good) figurines and the various (expensive shitty plastic) spaceships. Spoilers weren’t even a thing: I got my Princess Leia (Endor) figure weeks before ROTJ reached our small-town cinema. Boba Fett was always cool, and ROTJ just made him cooler.
counterpoint:
This will always be hilarious.
Somewhere, many years ago, I read about the origin of his name.
Reportedly, there was an irritating high school classmate of George Lucas named Robert Angus Fett…Bob A. Fett.
Somewhere, many years ago, I read about the origin of his name.
Reportedly, there was an irritating high school classmate of George Lucas named Robert Angus Fett…Bob A. Fett.
Somewhere, many years ago, I read about the origin of his name.
Reportedly, there was an irritating high school classmate of George Lucas named Robert Angus Fett…Bob A. Fett.
I so want to believe you.
“Boba sees it happen and is there to sorrowfully hold up his ersatz father’s severed head (still stuck in its chromed-out helmet).”If you look closely at this scene, you can see the shadow of Jango’s head falling out of the helmet.
Is anyone else bothered as me by the substitution of Temuera Morrison for Jason Wingreen’s original voice work in the Empire special edition? In general the additions to Empire are fine, good even, that weird scene with the ROTJ outtake notwithstanding. And I like Temuera Morrison as an actor. But his voice on its own just doesn’t have that understated menace that was crucial to the character’s original mystique. Not that the backstory in from Clones didn’t eat into that anyway. To be clear, I will tolerate no dismissive snark in any replies. This issue is far too important.
“What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me!”
“No disintegrations.”(clearly disappointed) “As you wish.”
Or more precisely: “Es you wush.”
It’s so much weaker of a line than “he’s no good to me dead.” Growing up we used to joke that Vader allows one person in each movie to back-talk him. In the first and third movies, it’s Tarkin and the Emperor, so obviously there’s some political motivation. But in the Empire Strikes Back, it’s Boba Fett – clearly Vader likes him.
No, I agree. Morrison has said he doesn’t really know much about the character, and it sounds like he spent about :45s total recording all of the lines over the phone. They could have just kept the original voice since he has a space helmet on.
Right? Space helmets sometimes alter voices! Not consistently but sometimes. Boushh’s voice sounds NOTABLY DIFFERENT from Carrie Fisher’s, at least in the 80s.
Special editions of Star Wars movies? What are you talking about? There’s only the original theatrical releases. They never made any special editions where they made a bunch of unnecessary changes repeatedly over the course of decades.
You’re right. They left well enough alone. They never followed up on those long-discussed prequel and sequel trilogies and the original (that is, only) movies remain pure, untarnished gems in the cultural memory of Generation X. Sometimes they project them onto the sides of the twin towers of the World Trade Center because former President Gore wanted it that way and everyone smiles and is happy. Completely, totally happy.
This is the way….DAMMIT
whenever I still read Star Wars stuff and Boba Fett is in it, I still hear Jason Wintergreen voice. Although the usage of Morrison for the past almost 20 years as Boba in everything has sort of changed that, Book of Boba Fett will seal it.
with his goofy-looking bounty hunter buddies—including lizard man Bossk, weird robot 4-LOM, weirder robot IG-88, and a grouchy man in bandages known as DengarDon’t forget Zuckuss!
Need a bounty hunter? Why not Zuckuss?
and that incredible tookus
Who wouldn’t love that face!
I’m sure he had a mother.
I bet she was a queen!
Killer!
This is an advertisement
So?
It’s just tacky and depressing to me. They’re not even corporate shills; they’re just shilling for themselves, for their own future articles about this stuff. It’s like a snake eating itself.This is the just the most absolutely lifeless shit: It will hopefully serve as a long-awaited payoff for Boba Fett’s generations of fans, but you never know when he’s going to get bopped on the back, fall into a pit, and then die.The whole thing reads like it’s addressing a narcoleptic five-year-old. There’s zero passion or smarm. I feel sorry for these writers, really. They must hate Star Wars more than anyone, and this is never going to end for them.
C’mon Barsanti, just because Disney declared 30-odd years of EU stories to no longer be part of the main continuity doesn’t mean they just ceased to exist. They’re a big part of why Boba is so popular. Disney would never have made a Boba spinoff show if the character was limited to the few shows and movies you mentioned. The old EU might no longer officially “count,” but the Mouse is still banking on the nostalgia for those stories to carry over. When they reset the canon, what were the first things they did? Imply Boba escaped the Sarlacc in the Aftermath books, and bring back Thrawn. Disney knows the old EU still matters to people. Why would you leave so much Boba content out of a story about the history of Boba Fett?
Hard disagree here. Speaking as someone who saw ROTJ in the theatres in 1983 as a 7 year-old, I can tell you that Boba Fett was a very popular character already. I 100% guarantee you that’s because he made a badass toy who killed the shit out of han Solo whenever my sister allowed me to play with them.
They’re just saying the expanded universe kept that interest going, I think he would have still been popular no matter what but I’m a huge Boba fanboy
As long as there are 7-year-olds, there are people getting interested in Boba Fett. Discussions of the Expanded Universe tend to imply that the books carried the torch for the series from the 80s until the late 90s, when in reality it was just a procession of school-age kids discovering the Original Trilogy. Some of those kids read EU books, but most them just enjoyed the movies and moved on.
Extended Universe stories didn’t make Boba popular. They included him because he was already popular.
His popularity began because he looked cool, but the EU is what made him into an actual character and showed him doing badass things.
I know everyone’s hot for Boba but I’m here for Ming-Na Wen.
“he was immediately knocked right into the Sarlacc’s mouth and killed”
No, he was knocked right into the Sarlacc’s mouth where he was to find a new definition of pain and suffering as he was slowly digested over thousands of years.
“When Jango is decapitated by Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu, Boba sees it happen and is there to sorrowfully hold up his ersatz father’s severed head (still stuck in its chromed-out helmet).”You can clearly see the shadow of Jango’s head fall out of the helmet as it flies off.
Just the shadow falls out? The Force does weird things sometimes.(Yes, I know what you meant, but I just couldn’t resist that setup.)
LMAO I literally just posted about this and didn’t see this comment. Reposting his death for no apparent reason.
Guess you were watching more closely than the rest of us.
But will we get an appearance by his brother, Banana-Fo Fett?
There were parts of the trailer that make me hope the show is about a big gang war over whom becomes crime boss of Tatooine.‘’The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or my American heritage as a negative is, I collect your f**king head’’
Isn’t Fett supposed to be around 40 years old during the Mandalorian? I guess being partially digested by a sarlacc does not do wonders for the skin.
NGL was kind of hoping this would be a story on Tamuera Morrison’s career.
He has always been a maverick who plays by his own rules:
Was never much into Boba Fett when I was a kid but I was really rooting for Captain Phasma in TFA when cast and character leaks began surfacing leading up to the movie.It’s like she was created just to troll Star Wars fans. I mean, Fett may have been done dirty in RotJ but at least he was a competent and very capable bounty hunter.
1) I’ll probably enjoy the hell out of this2) God I hate Star Wars fans
3) Profit.
When Jango is decapitated by Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu, Boba sees it happen and is there to sorrowfully hold up his ersatz father’s severed head (still stuck in its chromed-out helmet). Technically incorrect because if you freeze frame the shot when Boba’s helmet/head goes flying, you can see a shadow pop out at the top of the frame so Jango’s head went flying and Boba was just cradling an empty helmet. Can’t really do that frame by frame on D+ streaming anymore but thank god I have Star Wars on multiple disc versions.
Nothing beyond a cursory mention of the EU books? The Mandalorian Armor books fill in a lot of the post RotJ lore. And the recent Marvel run of War of the Bounty Hunters, while a bit sprawling, is definitely worth your time.
Star Wars isn’t generally a subtle film seriesI love that phrase. It sort of covers the multitude of continuity sins that, frankly, I don’t want to keep track of.[Some day I would like to see a Star Wars / Hunger Games crossover where they have a battle about which characters have the silliest names.]
> When Jango is decapitated by Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu, Boba sees it happen and is there to sorrowfully hold up his ersatz father’s severed head (still stuck in its chromed-out helmet).While a funny visual this is not correct. When Jango is decapitated, there is a shot of the helmet flying off that shows another shadow coming out of the helmet (see at 0:41 in the video below). Jango’s head was somewhere else on the battlefield.It’s a weird juxtaposition of shots (the helmet isn’t in frame when the head comes out of it), but I assume it was done in order to keep the PG rating.
I liked a headcanon that Fett was drunk off his ass at the Jabba Party/Execution Regatta, and when he saw the lightsaber go off he went out there half-pantsed in a wasted Jedi-hating rage, which is why he flights and flies like a chump and ultimately gets burped.
I think this one tweet sums it up beest.Boba Fett is wild as a concept and piece of Star Wars ephemera. He’s a two-movie set-up-to-punchline. It’d be like shaking someone awake to tell them that the sword guy in Raiders of the Lost Arc had a 100 issue licensed comic origin story.— Not A Son of Jack (@JacksonInACup) January 2, 2022
Boba Fett was a loser jerk who Han and Lando killed by accident, then the fandom spent 30 years insisting he was a big deal, based entirely on the fact that he has a cool hat. Now he has a show, because anything that can be monetized with an algorithmically approved risk-reward ratio WILL be monetized.
The first time I ever saw Boba Fett, he was a plastic action figure.
He was never that cool again.