Posted in: Disney+, Star Wars, streaming, TV | Tagged: boba fett, disney, opinion, star wars, Temuera Morrison, the book of boba fett, The Mandalorian

The Book of Boba Fett Continues Rewriting Bounty Hunter Narrative

Is Disney moving the goalposts for bounty hunters in the Star Wars universe? I mean Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) and earlier, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) in The Mandalorian seem to be clear protagonists airing more on the side of good than just doing what the jobs provided them as per the narratives given. Let's think back on Star Wars and its latest lead. When the character originally played by the late Jeremy Bulloch (who I hope gets a dedicated tribute in The Book of Boba Fett), he was very much considered an antagonist, because he was tasked by Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) to capture Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and the Millennium Falcon during the events of The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Here is your minor spoiler warning for the premiere episode of the Disney+ series.

Boba does his job tracking the Falcon to Cloud City in the planet Bespin to help the Empire spring the trap for the heroes. Following Vader sealing Solo in carbonite, he takes his bounty to the gangster Jabba the Hutt into Return of the Jedi (1983). While in Jabba's service, Boba gets presumably lost in the belly of a Sarlacc pit during the rebels' rescue of Han. The Disney+ series picks up where the Richard Marquand film left off showing Boba's resourceful escape skipping over the events of The Mandalorian to re-establishing himself back in Tatooine with Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) at his side.

In The Mandalorian season two, Din went from normally collecting bounties regardless of their morals to having to change them on the fly since one of his jobs took him to the Force-sensitive Grogu. For the convenience of the plot, we no longer see him take any jobs that are potentially amoral and taking a side in hopes to protect "baby Yoda" to get him to any Jedi that would take him. Following the premiere of The Book of Boba Fett, we quickly find out how dramatically different Boba will run things different from the long-time Hutt ruler. While I have no aspersions of turning this to Disney's The Sopranos, what exactly are we getting here?

Boba in the episode proposes a more merciful rule while he and Fennec subsequently defend themselves in the current power vacuum. I hope we get some better exposition as to why he takes that stance other than to soften him to simply market the show. When he appeared in The Mandalorian he helped Din get Grogu back not as some simple act of nobility, but he's also repaying a favor for giving him back his Beskar armor. There's still a lot we don't know about Boba from his glorified cameo in Attack of the Clones (2002) as a child and what little we saw of him as an adolescent in Dave Filoni's animated series. I need to see more as to why Boba didn't stay a bounty hunter taking bigger, more higher-end jobs, but instead now has a longing to rule.

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