The Mandalorian Gives Boba Fett Fans The Apology They Deserve

The Mandalorian Gives Boba Fett Fans The Apology They Deserve

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Boba Fett is back in Star Wars after almost a decade in the background. Here’s how his Mandalorian return fixes Lucasfilm’s handling of the character.

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The Mandalorian Gives Boba Fett Fans The Apology They Deserve

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Mandalorian season 2, episode 6, “Chapter 14: The Tragedy.”

The Mandalorian has brought Boba Fett back from the dead, piloting Slave 1 in his beat-up Mandalorian armor – and in doing so provided a reinstallation of the feared bounty hunter as one of Star Wars’ coolest characters. With Bo-Katan and Ahsoka Tano also teaming up with Din Djarin in recent weeks, The Mandalorian season 2 has been a celebration of fan-favorite heroes in a new light. But the difference between The Clone Wars returners and Boba is that it’s not just extended the celebrated work from Dave Filoni’s animated shows. It’s actually a correction of a wrong.

If someone was to start consuming Star Wars media in the Disney era, they’d be forgiven for thinking Boba Fett was a bit of a nobody. He has a semi-prominent role in the films thanks to his father, Jango, being the model for the Republic’s clone army, but his active presence in stories beyond the George Lucas movies is minimal. Boba had several Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes exploring him as an orphan in a galactic war waged by mirrors of his father made before Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, but his most defining event – killing Cad Bane and getting his signature helmet dink – was part of a canceled season 7 and wasn’t restored with the Disney+ Final Episodes. He played brief roles in several Marvel Comics, chiefly the main Star Wars run and Bounty Hunters series, but has otherwise been little more than a bonus character in video games. Indeed, the most impactful part of Boba Fett’s story was Cobb Vanth possessing his armor, a throwaway story aspect of the Aftermath novels that, yes, teased his survival from the Sarlacc pit, but nevertheless downplayed the man himself.

The kind reason for this may be that the resurrection of Boba Fett in a post-OT era needed to be done at the right moment; having him escape 1,000 years of pain and suffering is a major retcon to the base movies. But to only look forward neglects the character’s potential and why he means so much to so many. To that end, The Mandalorian doesn’t just feature Boba Fett, it fixes a decade of mistreatment.

Was Boba Fett Ever Cool? How He Became An Ignored Star Wars Character

The Mandalorian Gives Boba Fett Fans The Apology They Deserve

No character with less than 7 minutes of screentime has ever courted so much adoration or discussion as Boba Fett. His role in the original trilogy isn’t exactly sprawling: in The Empire Strikes Back, he tracks the Millennium Falcon to Cloud City for Darth Vader and takes a frozen Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt, then in Return of the Jedi sculks around the palace, has a quick scuffle with Luke and then is sent tumbling into the Sarlacc pit by a nearly-blind man. The death is hilariously ignominious, and his overall role can be summed up succinctly as having once disintegrated someone. Of course, the Expanded Universe worked magic, detailing Boba’s many scrapes (including multiple adversarial run-ins with Darth Vader) and gifting him a long-life after his big-screen death to become Mandalore and a key player in galactic events decades after the movies. And then Lucas’ prequel trilogy retconned much of the backstory to make Boba a clone of Jango Fett.

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All of this has led to Boba Fett becoming one of the more divisive characters in Star Wars. Is he an inherently strong villain or was he just a neat design noteworthy more as merchandise that was latched on by fans despite a silly death and retroactively given purpose via aggrandizing expanded material? For many, the answer has become the latter. Despite the inherent threat of “no disintegrations” birthing a whole mythology, Boba’s offhanded death has become his defining character trait. He’s a joke, a punchline in many a parody.

There is a degree of essential context needed for Boba Fett. He may be inherently cool in design, but did have greater focus in earlier plans. He was Star Wars 2’s (as The Empire Strikes Back was initially coined) new villain, hyped real-life promo appearances and got a pre-movie introduction during 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special animated segment. Per original trilogy producer Gary Kurtz, George Lucas’ original plan was to make Boba the villain of Return of the Jedi. This roadmap changed when the decision was made for the series to end with Episode VI (rather than the intended Episode XII) and the Emperor needed to come to the fore. Boba’s Sarlacc death, then, is story efficiency to adjust focus. After that, there’s a wealth of Legends stories that deepen him (just as canon has done for Anakin, Doctor Aphra or Ahsoka Tano) and a whole new generation introduced to the family through the more prominent (and, in some ways, threatening) Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones.

That is key to understanding Boba Fett as it highlights the different perspectives of opinion, and in doing so explains the disdain many hold him in. Boba Fett was intrinsically and demonstrably cool from the beginning then had it backtracked and reset, rather than growing in fan estimations over time to become more organically beloved like meme-fodder Admiral Ackbar or a litany of actual background characters fleshed out by other material. Beyond that, Boba – being a die-hard focal point – also became an example of original fan gatekeeping, the “you had to be there” type of adoration that often gives fandom a bad name.

None of that should reflect on a character. Yet his absence in new canon most certainly comes from this strange vantage point (there’s been a general disdain for him amongst Lucasfilm top brass) and a desire to mock, but it seems that – now with the sequel trilogy in the rearview mirror and Star Wars’ future leaning more heavily on Legends than ever before – the rights are being wronged.

The Mandalorian Delivers The Boba Fett His Fans Always Wanted

The Mandalorian Gives Boba Fett Fans The Apology They Deserve

So, yes, The Mandalorian has brought Boba Fett back. How, exactly, hasn’t been divulged yet, but that alone is a big step forward. However, it’s not just having him present that makes “Chapter 14: The Tragedy” so impressive.

Introduced through a hype-worthy Slave 1 entrance, Boba is at first methodical, ensnaring Mando in a standoff with Fennec Shand. Once Stormtroopers arrive, though, he goes full pelt, using a Tusken Raider gaffi stick to pummel the imps, shattering their armor with ease and killing them with unrestrained brutality. Then, with his armor and jetpack finally restored, he saves his new friends and takes down two Imperial landers with ease. Aside from Din’s own efforts against the Krayt Dragon in the season 2 premiere, it’s the most impressive feat of action in the show thus far.

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This is the Boba Fett that was always intrinsic to the character’s popularity, presented fully on-screen without consolation or exception. It’s the official statement that, no, Boba Fett really is as badass as he’s always been asserted as; that the original vision remains. If you’re going to downplay a character for the better part of a decade, this is as resounding a reward for those who’ve sat patiently for eight years waiting for the character to get explored in Disney canon.

More than just delivering viscerally, there’s a care for the character’s oft-ignored history. There’s the firing jetpack Easter egg, Slave 1 (with expanded cockpit in concept art) from the original trilogy, but also an intense understanding of Boba in wider Legends and canon: Jaster Mereel (Boba’s original name and later retconned to be Jango’s mentor) gets referenced via his hologram note, and Jango’s detailed legacy forms the backdrop of his personality. The once-derided prequel connections have been transformed to being the backbone of Boba’s personality and give weight to the armor that feels as if it’s always been there. Jeremy Bulloch and Jason Wingreen (the original body and voice actors in The Empire Strikes Back) purists are still left wanting, but this is nevertheless a careful and loving delivery on everything that makes Fett great.

Boba Fett Is A Mandalorian

What this discussion in both directions has ignored is something more fundamental to The Mandalorian show. Without Boba Fett, there wouldn’t be any Mandalorians. Everything to do with the Mando race, creed, planet, characters et al derives from Boba Fett’s cool factor and the gradual expansion of his backstory in Legends. It eventually grew way beyond him and Jango – thanks to KOTOR, literally millennia into the past – but there’s no escaping how important the Fetts are contextually to the show.

The decision, then, to make Boba not a Mandalorian in The Clone Wars (something supposedly decided by Lucas) was an even bigger (and earlier) sidelining of the character than his lower presence in canon stories. It was stated in direct terms by the Prime Minister Almec of Mandalore that Jango (and, by extension, his son) was “a common bounty hunter.” Not only did he Boba not have new adventures, he wasn’t even as important as those he had helped birth. This initially felt to be continued by The Mandalorian, with the strict rule on removing helmets and the intense focus on creed, although, as Bo-Katan’s reestablishing of different sects in “Chapter 11: The Heiress” showed, none of this need be a deal-breaker.

At the end of “The Tragedy”, Boba Fett reveals that his father was a foundling and given the armor by Mandalorians, just like Din himself. Although not explicitly said, this is a reinstation of the Fetts as Mandalorians in the current understanding of the term, as worthy of the title as Clone Wars survivor Din Djarin. How this fits with Lucas’ decree is unclear, but the resolute messaging, again, is unavoidable. Boba Fett is back. He is a Mandalorian. And he’s as cool as you always wanted.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-wars-mandalorian-boba-fett-disney-fix/

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