After the divisive season finale of the decades-long awaited The Book of Boba Fett series, key episodes have been a recurring topic across multiple social media platforms this past week. Many fans have spent time reveling in the glory of some surprise cameos, while other fans spent time debating the series’ flaws.
I think it’s fair to say the season has caused a rift in fans in terms of opinions. Some have given glowing reviews and some agree the series really didn’t advance Boba Fett’s character arc enough. Today, I’ll be meeting those fans in the middle, while revealing my thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of the series.
[Spoiler Warning for The Book of Boba Fett below!]
Positives about The Book Of Boba Fett series
To start, I think it’s a no-brainer that I and other fans were somewhat pleased with the back half of the season. While at times the cameos lost focus on the season, it was hard not to love seeing all the characters we know and love appear again.
After delivering one of the most jaw-dropping surprise appearances in recent memory, a character that I was especially pleased with was Cad Bane. Seeing the “stranger” off in the distance while instantly recognizing that hat made my eyes light, even at 3 AM when I first watched episode six. The total shock moment of realizing it’s Cad Bane was something I and many other fans hadn’t felt in quite some time. The fact that Corey Burton, who voices Bane in The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch, is also his live-action voice is pretty great as well.
Another cameo appearance that I quite enjoyed was the tandem of Luke Skywalker and Grogu. With episode six mirroring the Dagobah sequences in The Empire Strikes Back, it was bound to give any die-hard Star Wars fan nostalgia.
While much of modern-day Star Wars continues to lean on nostalgia, I did enjoy how much this season surprisingly advanced the story of The Mandalorian. Seeing the return of Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin quicker than expected was certainly a welcomed sight to see. I appreciated how over the course of 3 episodes we got what I would say is almost a season’s worth of story progression from not only Din Djarin, but Grogu as well. You can never really get enough Mando and Grogu content.
Finally to discuss the title character himself, Temuera Morrison’s Boba Fett, I felt that the first four episodes did a somewhat solid job establishing and exploring what happened to Boba post-Sarlacc Pit. The connection that was forged with the Tusken’s was done well.
Episode two especially stood out to me in terms of a Boba-focused episode, to me it might be the strongest episode in the series besides episodes five and six. The battle against the Pyke spice train was the perfect cherry on top of an already excellent episode. While the series as a whole may be a bit discombobulated, certain episodes delivered some of the best Star Wars material to date.
Negatives About The Book Of Boba Fett series
My biggest gripe with the series is the story as a whole. It feels at points like it’s trying to either tell way too many stories at once or not enough story at all.
The whiplash that I felt going from episodes 1-4 to 5-7 sent the series in quite a confusing direction for me. It felt like they got halfway through the season and didn’t really know what to do so they resorted to Mando and a number of impressive cameos.
While episodes 5-7 felt cohesive in a sense, my biggest problems were that they severely lacked any Boba or Fennec content. The series mainly sidelined Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), who should have been a co-lead throughout the entirety of the series. But when you sideline your main character for two episodes in a seven-episode season, any other characters attached to Boba were likely to be sidelined with him.
Not only Boba Fett, but it was frustrating to see how Din Djarin got more story development in three episodes of a show that isn’t his, compared to two whole seasons of his own show. It shows how much character and story development could have been in seasons one and two of The Mandalorian.
My biggest problem through episodes 1-4 is by far the present-day storyline. The only ground that was set through flashbacks that came into play in the present was the Pykes. To continue, I felt as though the Pykes were an incredibly lackluster group of villains that at times in the finale posed more of a threat than they should have. The only backstory we get about the syndicate is that they run spice, which is a popular drug in the Star Wars universe.
We first heard of the group back in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which I personally expected the series to tie into. I was expecting the Pyke syndicate to be actually working for Qi’ra, the new head of Crimson Dawn and Han Solo’s rogue ex-girlfriend. While this popular theory never panned out, I felt it was a perfect opportunity that was missed.
A large part of why the overall story didn’t work for me was due to the fact that I didn’t feel as though it was headed anywhere in terms of the grand scheme of things. Maybe the show was never meant to be more than what it was, but I do feel as though there were many opportunities missed that could be seen in a potential season two.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
As almost a week has passed since the finale, I have had an ample amount of time to sit and let the show digest in my brain. To be honest, after the first episode I thought this show was going to lose me.
After the second episode, I regained some hope, but then episodes three and four let me down again. In between episodes four and five, I really was starting to lose hope in what was going on in the series. Then episode five came and it was a really nice change of pace but only left me confused in the end. I wasn’t sure what the show was becoming or where it was headed.
I thought episode six would pick up back with Boba, but instead, it fell deeper down the rabbit hole with Ahsoka, Luke Skywalker, Grogu, Cobb Vanth, and Cad Bane. Covering all that ground in one episode felt like way too much, but somehow it worked and episode six became one of my new favorite Star Wars moments. But just because I loved the episode doesn’t mean that the show didn’t steer way off course and over-compensate for it with cameos.
Finally, episode seven arrived and culminated with a non-stop war in Mos Espa, which for a majority of the episode was really exciting, especially when the focus was on Mando and Grogu reuniting again. But in the end, the finale ended up being overstuffed fun with a quite simple resolution that left me feeling satisfied, but not fully satisfied.
This show will always be a what-could-have-been-type situation for me. If the show stuck to its guns and kept the Tusken’s around all season and incorporated them into the present-day storyline then maybe I would feel a bit better. The other characters like the biker gang and Black Krrsantan weren’t around enough for me to form a connection to.
In the end, The Book of Boba Fett chose to use previously established characters more than newly established characters. The overall problem this culminates in is the writing, if the writing was stronger the show would have certainly established strong and exciting characters without giving up and resorting to what we already know.
But in the end, as I have said before, present-day Star Wars continues to lean heavily on nostalgia, perhaps to a detriment in some cases.
What were your thoughts on The Book of Boba Fett, let us know on Twitter @mycosmiccircus or in the comment section below!
