Thoughts about The Book of Boba Fett

Note: this probably goes without saying, but this post will have spoilers

Context: I’ve watched pretty much all the previous Star Wars tv and movie properties (still have to finish Star Wars Resistance), and have read some of the comics and books (canon and non), and played several of the games. I’m not a rabid fan, and I’m not going to tell you how you should enjoy Star Wars, but I do like it a lot.

In order to get my thoughts in order to write this I had to write out a summary for myself of everything that happened in The Book of Boba Fett, because it’s kindof a mess and hard to keep track of even though it’s only seven episodes, and because it’s intermixed with the story from The Mandalorian.

The timeline of events is, I believe, as follows…

• Return of the Jedi movie, where Boba Fett is left in the sarlacc pit
• Flashback storyline from first four episodes of The Book of Boba Fett
• The Mandalorian season 2
• The Book of Boba Fett current time storyline

The last three episodes of The Book of Boba Fett (especially episode 5) are arguably just direct continuations of The Mandalorian season 2, or at the very least a mix of the two shows. If you don’t have a clear memory of the events of The Mandalorian it would probably be good to rewatch before starting this series, because important story points are put in place there that are built on in this show.

The strange and mixed timelines aside, here are some of the thoughts I’m left with, in no particular order.

• It’s not clear to me why Boba Fett seems to have decided not to kill anymore, is it because he feels responsible for the Tuskens being killed? But that was because he beat up the speeder bike gang, I didn’t think he’d killed them, so is this a general policy of non-violence to prevent violent consequences? If so crime boss is probably the worst line of work.
• Assuming Boba Fett has some valid reason to not want to kill people, why it was it shown as a big deal when he kills Cad Bane, who is demonstrably A Bad Person in the Star Wars universe and who he hates, but not a big deal when he kills dozens of Pykes right before that?
• Speeders are better when they’re fast, not least because it hides how bad the CGI looks when they’re moving slow – the slow speeder chase midway through the series with the young punks chasing the mayor’s assistant was laughably terrible
• The scale of battles is very small, so the stakes seem low – the Pykes are supposedly a huge galactic crime syndicate controlling drug distribution across large areas of the galaxy, but a few dozen Pykes (and two big droids) killed fighting Boba Fett and Friends on one day is enough for them to give up on an entire planet?
• Why are the Pykes themselves fighting against Boba Fett and Friends, and not mobs of hired goons/merceneries from off-planet?
• I enjoyed the throw-away lines one human character had about past experiences dating/having sex with Jawas, a hopeful sign that Star Wars may someday talk about sexual relationships as something enjoyed by even non-evil folks
• Someday a Star Wars live action property will move past having only a handful of protagonists with stories on a few worlds, and realize they’re telling stories in a whole galaxy populated by very large numbers of sentient beings – this is not that day
• Someday Tusken Raiders will be more than stand-ins for indigenous peoples who all wind up dead in service of moving the story forward for a questionable protagonist – this is also not that day
• That being said, I did enjoy the Tusken storyline before they were all killed, I hope we see more stories about the Star Wars Fremen
• I greatly enjoyed seeing Black Krrsantan and Cad Bane on screen, though I wish both had more story and more bad assery in this show
• Uncanny valley Luke Skywalker is still bad; I really hoped Grogu would steal the lightsaber too; and where is the Ahsoka Tano show?