There are Star Wars fans, judging by some YouTube comments, who have a Sith-like tendency to deal in absolutes. According to them, either a Star Wars film/series is a flawless masterpiece (the original trilogy) or complete rubbish (the sequels, as often as not). The Book of Boba Fett, the miniseries which aired in January-February on Disney +, wasn't as good as it could have been – I quite agree on this. But it's a far cry from finding something a little disappointing to claiming that because of Boba, you have no faith that Disney will ever be able to do anything right when it comes to Star Wars properties (in spite of The Mandalorian, which most fans approve of). There are irate fans who, apparently, disliked Boba so much they have lost interest in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series, because they're sure it will stink too. Here, to paraphrase Padmè, they are going down a path I can't follow.
I enjoyed The Book of Boba Fett but, like most reviewers, I did find it flawed and not as good as The Mandalorian. In fact, my views are in many ways so similar to what several YouTubers and others have already said, it's a little difficult to find something original to say about it. Maybe it will help if I approach the subject from a slightly odd personal angle – that of a villain-lover who, strangely enough, wasn't instantly smitten with Boba in the original trilogy.
When I first saw the original films as a kid, the character of Boba Fett barely made an impression on me. Sure, there was this guy standing around in cool armour, but I just saw him as an Imperial hanger-on, and didn't register that he was, in fact, an independent contractor (bounty hunter, to be exact). I didn't even commit his name to memory. It wouldn't have helped if I had – Boba Fett is not a name to strike terror into a half-Swede's heart (fett in Swedish means "fat", the noun, and Boba sounds a little like baby talk).
It was actually the appearance of Boba as a boy in the prequel Attack of the Clones that made me more curious about the character. Most fans more knowledgeable than me did not appreciate the brattish kid Boba, but I thought his mourning for his clone-father Jango Fett affecting, and I'm always interested in characters who are hostile to the Jedi for other reasons than an affiliation with the Sith or the Empire. Boba had a plausible reason to hate the Jedi, especially Mace Windu who cut off his dad's head. In the animated series The Clone Wars, this is explored further. But – and this is worth noting for those (and this includes me) who thought Boba in The Book of Boba Fett was too much of a sissy – Clone Wars Boba does have moral scruples, and a wish to find somewhere to belong. At the end of Clone Wars, we see him leading a group of bounty hunters and doing it ably enough, but still struggling when a maverick like witchy ex-Sith Asajj Ventress (who is starting to develop a conscience of her own) is thrown into the mix.
The Boba we see in The Book of Boba Fett, and as a side character in The Mandalorian, isn't that far removed from Clone Wars Boba. He's still hung up about his father – which is the main reason he wants his armour back from Din Djarin. He wants to find a tribe, a new family where he belongs (and ideally is the boss). However, even with these callbacks to the concerns of young Boba, there is still a transition from the hard-boiled persona of the original trilogy – the one who hissed "he's no good to me dead", and whose taste for disintegrations led to an admonishment from Darth Vader, king of badasses – to the softie in The Book of Boba Fett, who struggles to make even one decision which a mainstream Star Wars audience would find morally questionable. To make matters worse, The Book of Boba Fett was set up as a show about a villain, or at least an anti-hero. It started with a post-credit scene in The Mandalorian. Boba and his ally/buddy Fennec Shand march into Jabba's old palace, Boba kills the late Jabba's right-hand man Bib Fortuna and assumes Jabba's throne as the region's ruling crime lord. So in The Book of Boba Fett, we could expect him to do some crime-lording, right?
Wrong. Boba proves to have little taste for crime-lording. He seems to see his role more as that of a sheriff – the tributes he collects from the townsfolk he sees as his due for protecting them from external threats, not his own goons. Clearly, he hasn't quite fathomed how a protection racket works. And he won't deal in Spice (Star Wars equivalent of drugs) because "it kills our people". Since when are the citizens of dusty Tattooine towns his people? While I was into Boba's more humane approach at first (not torturing those guards proved to be a good move), his constant avoiding of the tough decisions a crime lord needs to make soon started to grate. If Boba Fett can't stomach this kind of life, why assume Jabba's throne in the first place? What did he have to kill Bib Fortuna for? Jabba's slimy second-in-command was a side villain I did notice and appreciate even as a child (though I had no idea his name was Bib Fortuna). And now he's dead, and for what? Justice for Bib!
You could argue, of course, that being stuck in the belly of a monster, facing the prospect of being slowly digested over millennia, would make even the toughest bounty hunter rethink his life choices. Then, once out of the Sarlacc Pit, Boba is eventually accepted by a tribe of Tusken raiders, for all the moral education that is likely to be. The Tusken raider part of the story was generally well received, but I wasn't too keen on it. Granted, you shouldn't judge a whole people by what we've seen of them so far in Star Wars, but I still thought them a strange fit for the "wise tribe close to nature who teaches our hero what really matters" role à la Dances with Wolves (and I have problems with the Dances with Wolves storyline anyway). In my view, the Sarlacc Pit and Tusken interlude aren't enough to explain the changes to Boba Fett's character.
My point, which I'm taking some time to reach, is that I can accept a villain redemption arc for Boba. But I would have wanted to see it play out. How about, instead of doing the "right" thing from the get-go, he learned that badassery was no longer satisfying enough for him by his experiences as a crime lord? He could start out tough and then slowly have a change of heart when faced with the consequences of his actions. Want him to turn against the Spice trade? Then let him see its ill effects at first hand – and us viewers, too. I still don't know why trading in Spice is so very bad. It's not enough to hint that it's "like drugs"; that's just lazy shorthand. I'll believe that Spice is the new heroin when I see it.
For all that, I appreciated The Book of Boba Fett's space western vibe. I squealed when I saw the cameo from my favourite bounty hunter Cad Bane (no softness or tribe-belonging for him), albeit looking very creepy in his live-action form, like the Trickster from the The Sarah Jane Adventures bathed in ink. The creators of The Book of Boba Fett are the same as for The Mandalorian, and they know their craft. It's a pity we didn't get a more satisfying arc for Boba Fett – but I'm still glad he's out of that Sarlacc Pit.
