Tag: The Mandalorian

By: “The Watchman”

Finally, an episode of “The Book of Boba Fett” worth watching! All it took was for them to write an entire episode of Boba Fett’s show without him in it! Imagine my (very great) relief when I tuned in to “The Book of Boba Fett” today only to essentially see Episode 1 of “The Mandalorian” Season 3! I’m not kidding. Boba Fett was not even in this episode, and it was amazing.

[MOSTLY SPOILER FREE REVIEW]

This is a “Mostly Spoiler Free Review”, so I will talk about different elements of the show without discussing almost any specific plot points. This is a review for Episode 5, however, so there WILL be spoilers for previous episodes as we set the stage for what happened this week. If you are not caught up through Episode 4 before reading this review, you might want to do that first.

So, Episode 4 of “The Book of Boba Fett” left off with some kind of ridiculous tea party that Boba Fett threw for the three major criminal houses in the Mos Espa area which ended in all three of the other underworld bosses refusing to help Boba Fett.  It’s ok, though, because he convinced them all to at least not help his enemies… probably.  Oh, and Krrsantan is part of his gang now, too!  Hooray, I guess.  

I liked some aspects of Episode 4, as it took the time to explain some of the goals and motivations of Boba Fett that had, up until this point, been left for us to guess. Did all of his explanations for his actions really make sense? No, but at least someone in the writer’s room was trying. Keep in mind, though, that nearly all of Episode 4 was extremely boring. Of course, the writers of this show trying to make anything make sense results in them having no idea how to hold anyone’s attention. As mentioned in last week’s review, we also saw Boba Fett continue to be essentially useless, with Fennec Shand having to help or save him from failure more times than I could count.

Fortunately, whoever was behind “The Book of Boba Fett” this week realized what it was the audience really needed after four slow, stupid, almost unbearable episodes of their terrible show – a brand-new, full-length episode from a different show! Queue this week’s episode, which doesn’t feature Boba Fett at all (not even for a single solitary second outside of the recap), and is, instead, a well-written teaser leading into Season 3 of “The Mandalorian”, a much better show than this one.

I don’t really know who all writes “The Mandalorian” versus “The Book of Boba Fett”, but I groaned the minute Mando walked onto the screen at the start of Episode 5 because I was sure the writers of this show would ruin him, except… they didn’t. He immediately starts being a badass, whipping out the Darksaber and slicing people in two, while acting in the same ice cold, all business manner that makes him such a cool and interesting protagonist on his own show. He doesn’t kill unnecessarily, but, if he’s in a fight to the death, he takes it seriously. If that means a few people die because they don’t want to be taken in “warm” instead of “cold”, then that’s part of the job. He doesn’t relish in it, but he also doesn’t whine about it like Boba Fett.

This may actually be part of Boba Fett’s problem. Din Djarin (“Mando”) is essentially based off the movie portrayals of Boba Fett. He’s the strong, silent type, unrelenting and deadly, never taking off his helmet, and focused coldly on doing his job even if that means doing some shady things for shady people from time to time. Other than his interactions with Grogu (“The Child”), Din essentially IS Boba Fett, which means that for the writers of the Favreauverse to flesh out the original Boba Fett, they had to take him in a different direction. This caused them to make Boba gentler, more introspective, and to take off his helmet every chance he gets. They moved him away from bounty hunting and into a more administrative role over shady bounty hunters like Din, except they screwed up and made him too weak and useless. This new interpretation of Boba Fett is meant to be less hired gun and more The Godfather, but he acts more like a Regional Manager for Walmart than he does any sort of actual intergalactic criminal mastermind. (No offense to anyone who works at Walmart. Retail’s a tough job. I respect you.)

It was so refreshing to get away from Boba Fett and actually watch an episode of the show this is supposed to be a spin-off of. It really highlighted how different the two shows are, one feeling like a loving and exciting expansion to the current Star Wars universe and the other feeling like a lazy bastardization of name brand characters for a quick Disney cashgrab. I got nervous halfway through the episode, fearing that Boba Fett might return at any minute, as I was genuinely enjoying myself and didn’t want it to end. Even without Grogu, the Mandalorian alone is an interesting and well-rounded character, and this episode went the extra mile by not simply bringing him in for a cameo, but actually showing where he is and what he’s doing now, his goals for the future, and some of the new tricks and toys he’s gotten his hands on. (Including, as mentioned above, the Darksaber!)

I really could just keep going on and on with this review, as it was genuinely excited to have a chance to write something positive about Star Wars for the first time in a while! (I’m listening to the Thrawn Trilogy on audiobook right now in my free time. Maybe I’ll write a review of that when I finish. They’re incredible, by the way. Go get them on Audible immediately if you’re a Star Wars fan!) To keep this review from getting too long, I’m going to stop here for now, and keep further any discussion of Episode 5 for next week’s review. To summarize this week, it was very enjoyable, and I would recommend any fan of “The Mandalorian” watch this episode, even if they have to understandably skip every other piece of relative bantha fodder that is the terrible show known as “The Book of Boba Fett” up to this point.

Final Score: 8/10

“‘The Book of Boba Fett’ finds a way, at last, to show us an exciting, well-rounded episode, by ignoring its own plot and writing an episode of ‘The Mandalorian’ instead. Boba Fett fails to appear in his own show, and I couldn’t be happier.”