"“I’ve known you a long time, Boba,” bounty hunter Cad Bane says as he squares off with former bounty hunter Boba Fett in The Book of Boba Fett’s finale. “One thing I can’t figure: What’s your angle?”
Bane was seemingly speaking for everyone who’d invested their time and attention in the first six episodes of the Disney+ spinoff, two of which weren’t about Boba at all... watching the series was a lot like the experience of riding a rancor: exhilarating at times, but bumpy and prone to catastrophic losses of control. When it wasn’t functioning as a false-flag soft launch of The Mandalorian Season 3, The Book of Boba Fett often fell flat, because it couldn’t produce a satisfying answer to Bane’s question or justify its existence as a separate series...
The last act of the season restored Fett to the spotlight, but if anything, the finale made it even less clear what he was doing there in the first place...
No number of explosions and blaster bolts could substitute for emotional stakes, the only semblance of which was supplied by Mando and Grogu, who continued to post a prodigious plus-minus by carrying a franchise that tends to fall flat when they’re off the floor.
Lengthy as it was, the finale fell short in three respects. First, it broke down on a basic level of logic and sequencing, stacking confounding character decisions to set up a special-effects-fest endgame reminiscent of one of the more mind-numbing DC or Marvel movies, in which nuanced storytelling gives way to the wanton destruction of a disposable city that’s caught in the crossfire. Second, it under-delivered on an adrenaline level, both through its repetitive portrayal of Pykes taking potshots at characters protected by both beskar and plot armor, and in its refusal to provide a compelling puppet master who was pulling the Pykes’ strings. And third, it floundered on a storytelling level in its listless stabs at fleshing out its protagonist’s sentiments and motivations; in attempting to tell what the first six episodes of the series had neglected to show, it only further exposed the cracks in the spinoff’s Fett foundation. The best bits of the finale, like the season as a whole, had little to do with its titular lead. The only consolation is that for now, at least, Lucasfilm can stop trying to make Fett happen.
Last summer, Rodriguez said The Book of Boba was “going to blow your mind.” The finale lived up to that billing, though less in the exciting sense than in the way its plotting and half-hearted character work robbed me of brain cells... Fett tells Fennec Shand, “We are at war. It was inevitable.” For the first time in three weeks, he speaks!
Of course, war was inevitable only because Boba abruptly shape-shifted from a simple man making his way through the galaxy to a jumped-up Daimyo with delusions of grandeur. “Even if we win, there might not be anything left of this city,” Fett says, a price he’s apparently willing to pay... Mando promised Cobb that the Daimyo would shut down the spice trade in exchange for his help, which seems like something Din probably should have cleared with Fett first. This business about ending the most profitable part of Jabba’s and Bib’s operation is news to Fennec, and also to the audience. Perhaps it was implied that “ruling with respect” would entail removing the spice from the streets, but this could have been stated, oh, sometime before the finale, given that up until this point it wasn’t at all apparent what Fett actually wanted to do differently from his predecessors.
In fact, Fett doesn’t seem to have thought about banning spice before this scene, but he decides on the spot that in the long run, eliminating his regime’s main source of income will work out well for everyone. “Mos Espa can become a prosperous city under our protection,” he informs Fennec and Din. Fett doesn’t let us in on his blueprint for the economic renewal of Tatooine—exporting sand? Bringing back podracing? Rebranding as a luxury resort where tourists can get some suns?—but I’m sure he has it all figured out, because he’s clearly not making up every aspect of his plan as he goes along. After all, he says, “Spice is killing our people.” We’ll have to take his word for it, given that The Book of Boba Fett has hardly delved into the ramifications of the planet’s criminal implications. What was so bad about Bib’s reign? Thus far, the only hardship we’ve witnessed in Mos Espa is that the mods must resort to stealing overpriced water after they’ve spent their savings on polishing their extremely slow bikes and undergoing voluntary cyborg surgery.
“In the Name of Honor” makes a convincing case that the real culprit killing Mos Espa’s people is Boba Fett, who decides to fight the next phase of the war within the city itself. He comes to this conclusion after spending whole seconds weighing the wise counsel of his teenaged spies, who peer pressure him into surrendering the most fortified place on the planet. “If you want to abandon Mos Espa and hide in your fortress, go ahead,” the main mod says. “We’re staying. The people who live here need our protection.” Evidently, the best way to protect those people is to turn them into collateral damage and reduce their dwellings to rubble instead of settling the conflict on less populated and more tactically advantageous turf. Drawing on his decades of combat experience, Fett immediately accedes to the wishes of (sigh) Skad and Drash and vacates the high ground, the latest indication that he’s unqualified for a leadership role. Fwip’s setup wasn’t called the Sanctuary because it was built to withstand an assault.
The problem isn’t that Boba is bad at being the boss of an incipient syndicate; he’s been following orders—from his father, his other bounty-hunting mentors, and his clients—for most of his life, so it stands to reason that he’d have trouble transitioning to a management role. The problem is Boba’s actual answer to Bane’s question about his angle, which is supposed to explain his last stand: “This is my city. These are my people. I will not abandon them.” To which I would say: Since when?
The first few episodes of The Book of Boba Fett established that Fett cares about the Tuskens, who admitted him to their tribe (after initially imprisoning him, but hey, misunderstandings can occur). But what does his allegiance to the Tuskens have to do with Mos Espa or its people, who range from indifferent to hostile toward the Tuskens? Do Mos Espans even know or care who he is, just because he declared himself Daimyo and walked around town once or twice (in a purposely unostentatious way) before retiring to his out-of-town palace?...Why isn’t helping the planet’s surviving Tuskens or improving relations between Tuskens and city folk part of his platform? And as an honorary Tusken, isn’t there some friendly tribe whose help he could call on? (Anyone who thought the Tusken kid and duelist might make their returns because their bodies weren’t shown at the smoldering camp finally had those hopes dashed; Fett’s two closest Tusken companions didn’t even get a Fwip-style sendoff.)
The Tusken tribe wasn’t wiped out by the spice trade; it was wiped out, indirectly, by Fett’s insistence on taking out the Syndicate’s train. Now he’s plunging another community that didn’t ask for a fight into the thick of one, and The Book of Boba Fett is asking us to be behind him because this time he’s determined to be present for the fight. Why should we root for Fett to repeat the pattern or regard this latest costly conflict as a sign of supposed personal growth?...
If Boba feels bad about murdering the bikers for a crime they didn’t commit, he doesn’t show it...
Krrsantan is stationed in Trandoshan territory, which seems extremely ill-advised considering the longstanding enmity between Trandoshans and Wookies and Krrsantan’s recent history of attacking Trandoshans on sight. That’s not the only flaw in Fennec’s scheme, which relies on the admittedly untrustworthy leaders of the local gangs to stay on the sidelines.
At no point in the planning phase, by the way, does anyone seem to recall the rancor at Fett’s command. No offense to the Freetown militia, but the rancor seems more likely to turn the tide of battle than a ragtag group of conscripts from the boonies. I get that this temporary amnesia re: rancors allows Fett to ride to the rescue later, maximizing the dramatic effect, but Favreau and Rodriguez aren’t fooling anyone; Boba was bound to mount that monster from the second it arrived. Hell, forget the rancor; where was the Firespray, which could have made much quicker work of the Pykes’ ground attack? (Granted, that might have required strafing the city that Fett so suddenly professes to love—another reason to fight on the outskirts instead.)...
“I can’t abandon Mos Espa,” he says. “These people are counting on me.” Again: Are they? Is there any evidence at all?...
The Pykes deploy a pair of Scorpenek annihilator droids, Clone Wars–era killing machines that first appeared in concept art for Attack of the Clones. You thought it was weird that Boba held his rancor in reserve? Well, the Pykes can play that game too, opting to die in droves before sending in their artillery...
Bane sums up the central conflict of Fett’s character arc: Can he leave his past and the legacy of his father behind? “You gave it a shot,” Bane says. “You tried to go straight. But you’ve got your father’s blood pumping through your veins. You’re a killer. This isn’t the first time I beat you out on a job. There’s no shame in it. Consider this my final lesson: Look out for yourself. Anything else is weakness.”
Or is it?! Just as Bane delivers those last two lines, contradicting Fett’s epiphany from Chapter 4 that “You can only get so far without a tribe,” Fett reuses a move from his fight with Krrsantan, whips out his hidden gaffi stick, and disarms Bane, as if to say “See? The Tuskens mattered after all!” (I’m sure they’d be gratified that Fett found a use for his souvenir of their sacrifice, though Cad wasn’t the one who killed them.) “I knew you were a killer,” Bane says, but these days Fett is killing for the greater good, or at least what he believes it to be...
Boba barely gets a second to savor his victory, because another crisis soon shunts him from the stage. The last obstacle between the anti-Pyke crew and a happy ending is the rancor, who’s gone rogue. This situation seems solvable, but the mods won’t wait for Fett to come control his pet. Instead, they open fire on the ally who just saved their asses, scaring him into climbing a tower King Kong–style. Mando, who had a hard time riding blurrgs, doesn’t do any better when he tries to tame the rancor...
In the season’s last (pre-credits) planetside scene, Fett and Fennec stroll down Mos Espa’s suddenly-less-mean streets, awkwardly accepting hosannas from their appreciative public. “Why must everyone bow at me?” Boba says. Not since the finale of WandaVision has a series so blithely given its protagonist a pass for fucking up a town...
We see Cobb Vanth (who hasn’t even shared a scene with Fett) submerged in Boba’s bacta tank, with the “Modifier” poised to save him via abilities that some may consider to be unnatural. Maybe Bane will be next.
With that, the questions we had when the season started are joined or replaced with a fresh set. What explains the sloppiness of the storytelling in comparison to Favreau and Filoni’s work on The Mandalorian? Why did Rodriguez’s action scenes seem so painfully prolonged, in contrast to Steph Green’s scintillating train heist in Chapter 2? (Or Taika Waititi’s better-paced and poignant first-season finale of The Mandalorian, a more riveting version of an urban free-for-all.) Why make the Tuskens the heart of the story for three episodes and, in the end, reduce them to a symbolic stick? Why introduce the Twins and never bring them back? Why quote the Crimson Dawn theme and not include Crimson Dawn, making Qi’ra the Mephisto of The Book of Boba Fett? I wouldn’t mind the misdirects if they camouflaged some other intriguing development, but nope: nothin’ but Pykes. Maybe Favreau is saving an interesting adversary for a still-unannounced second season...
Its fluctuations in quality confirmed what we should have already known:
For both better and worse, there’s no such thing as a stand-alone story
in Disney’s dominant universes"
