The modern age of Star Wars on Disney+ has opened up a whole new world of characters that have taken on a life of their own. From the success of The Mandalorian, a whole new world of the franchise has now opened up for storytellers to explore. Which brings us to Robert Rodriguez and the man of the hour Boba Fett. It’s time to take a deep dive into The Book of Boba Fett Season 1 to see if it lived up to the hype.
The series picks up immediately following the post credit scenes from The Mandalorian, with Boba attempting to establish himself as the Diamyo (protector) of Mos Espa on the planet of Tatooine. The show brings back the talents of Temura Morrison (Boba Fett), and Ming-Na Wen (Fennec Shand) as the two walk the sandy streets attempting to establish themselves amongst the power players of the city.
I was beyond excited for this series given the elusive character background Boba promised, but was mysteriously always lacking. An entire show about Boba Fett doing some cool ass stuff. Based on what Rodriguez had delivered in Season 2 of The Mandalorian in Episode 6 with Boba’s return, a whole series of possibilities was almost too much to handle.
Sadly though, the series was met with varying degrees of reception from pretty much the beginning of the show. The first major act of the series took the time to revisit Boba’s past and give fans that elusive explanation for how the bounty hunter escaped from the belly of the Sarlaac, only to have his armor pilfered by Jawas, and to be taken prisoner by a tribe of Tusken Raiders.
For the first few episodes the story was split between concurrent storylines of past, and present, with the former taking up the lion’s share of the time. The individual plot points, especially those of Boba’s past were amazing to see, and I drank them up. Where the balance felt off though was in not allocating more time, or weight to the current story which caused it to feel very thin, and more of an afterthought.
As the season built you could start to see how these past experiences had informed Fett into becoming the leader he’s aspiring to be. Again, in aggregation I was willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt as the direction was taking shape, but then it all got very wonk and this is where it gets complicated too.
A lot of fans at this point were expecting the main narrative to really kick into high gear by witnessing Boba stick it to the crime lords, but instead we got a sharp left turn and The Book of Boba Fett, turned into The Mandalorian. Two episodes were dedicated to setting up the return of Din Djarin, and where this gets really complicated is that these were the two of the best episodes to date.
Personally, I had a major gripe with Episode 5 “Return of the Mandalorian” in which far too much time is dedicated to the montage of a starship build, and while it looked cool it wore thin incredibly quickly and served to add very little substance to the overall story.
The finale closed out the series in spectacular style, but I was still left feeling bemused by the whole process.
The Book of Boba Fett had a lot of GREAT things going for it such as the character exploration into Boba himself based on his current, and former, experiences. We got brand new characters such as Black Krrsantan, the Hutt twins, and some incredibly insane Star Wars things from the finale that I still can’t believe I had the pleasure of witnessing.
There are so many things I loved about Boba Fett, but on the flip side, there’s so many issues I found with it too. The pace of the episodes, and the balance of the narrative was really out of sync. The title of the show was centered around Boba Fett, and yet we spent two episodes, almost 30% of the series, focused on a completely different Mandalorian. Yes, while there were a lot of cool things in this show, the series lacked a fully conceived throughline that would tie this all together. I’ve seen suggestions online that simply renaming the show to something like “The Siege of Tatooine” would have fit better with the plot we actually did get.
The Book of Boba Fett did some incredibly cool things when it came to Star Wars and Robert Rodriguez clearly has an eye for this style and a phenomenal talent for bringing out what fans want to see on screen. The issue I have overall is with the writing of the series and the conception with the overall plot. The series comes across incredibly messy, and felt more like an attempt to wow the audience by cramming in as much Star Wars as they could get. The conflict in me still persists as the Star Wars fan in me finds so much to love, but the critic in me is begging for better clarity in the storytelling.
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