For decades, Star Wars fans had been hoping for a Boba Fett spinoff. In the 2010s, Disney was even developing a movie dedicated to the character, though the failure of Solo caused the studio to switch direction and refocus those efforts on The Mandalorian. In early 2022, we finally got a TV show dedicated to the galaxy’s most fearsome mercenary and bounty hunter: The Book of Boba Fett.
Sadly, it was not what fans had hoped for. This take on the character had left aside his bounty hunting days to become Mos Espa’s new crime lord, occupying the power void left by Jabba the Hutt. The only problem was… he wasn’t very good at it.
Perhaps this was because Disney had cold feet about a gangster lead character, but Fett seemed bizarrely averse to committing crimes, spending most of the show looking somewhat confused by what was going on around him.
Now Jon Favreau – who was loosely involved in The Book of Boba Fett – has given his diplomatic take, describing it as an “opportunity” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter:
“We have characters that exist in both sets of stories, so we can use the opportunity of The Book of Boba Fett to check in on where these characters are. I knew that I didn’t want to dedicate a lot of screen time within The Mandalorian to a period of time where there wasn’t a lot of character progression.
Both [Din and Grogu] were kind of stuck, as far as character progression goes, until they were reunited. So, my feeling was that it would allow me to do both of those things and freed me up now two years later to have a whole new context for these two characters to have a relationship and move forward.”
If the nicest thing you can say about a show is that it makes the storytelling in a linked small screen universe a little more straightforward, it feels like damning with faint praise.
Despite all that, we suspect the problems with The Book of Boba Fett were a rushed production schedule and a relatively low budget, rather than anything to do with the creative team. We still like Temuera Morrison as Fett, so let’s hope he makes a comeback sometime on season three of The Mandalorian.
And as for a second season of The Book of Boba Fett? Sure, but let’s see him do some crime already!