The Book of Boba Fett began airing weekly on December 29, 2021, and recently concluded its 7 week run on February 9th, 2022. It is a continuation of the popular Disney+ series The Mandalorian and features plenty of appearances from the aforementioned show. If you plan on watching this series sometime in the future, you may want to read another story, because we have some pretty major spoilers coming up.

The show begins just after Boba Fett takes Jabba the Hutt’s throne as daimyo of Mos Espa, a major city on Tatooine. (If you have never watched Star Wars, that sentence might be incomprehensible. In this case, daimyo means ‘crime lord’.) It follows his adventures featuring mostly in flashbacks as he journeys from being swallowed by the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi back to civilization, taking some hallucinogenics from Sand People along the way. It gets juicy once Boba Fett starts beef with the Pike Syndicate, a crime organization trying to smuggle illicit drugs, or Spice, through Tatooine. Boba Fett, however, only takes drugs from mysterious people in the desert and not organized thugs, so he hires Space British teenagers with cybernetic enhancements to act as enforcers for him while he prepares for war.

For the last 3 episodes, the Mandalorian shows up, kills people, gets some armor forged for a foundling (I wonder who), gets kicked out of being a Mandalorian, and takes a commercial spaceliner to Luke Skywalker’s academy. There, he delivers his chainmail onesie to everyone’s favorite Disney merchandise dealer, Grogu, (or Baby Yoda, for those less familiar with the show) and leaves to go help Boba Fett shoot some drug dealers. Timothy Olyphant makes an appearance, gets shot by Cad Bane, the cowboy blue alien bounty hunter with a dope hat from The Clone Wars, and dies. Then, we get Luke Skywalker training Grogu to be a Jedi, making Grogu remember when he watched all the Jedi die, but eventually Luke realizes that Grogu has too strong of an attachment to the Mandalorian to continue the path of the Jedi. He has Grogu choose whether to remain a Jedi or go back to his old life with Mando, and the next scene we get with Grogu is him in his chainmail, returning to Tatooine on a lone X-Wing piloted by R2-D2.

A confrontation between Boba Fett and Cad Bane plays out, a shootout starts, and our heroes are pinned down by large machines not unlike the Omnidroids from the Incredibles. Boba Fett runs away, comes back with Danny Trejo’s trained rancor (not kidding), picks one of the machines up, says “Do it!” like Palpatine (not kidding) and tears it apart. One short (very long) shootout scene later, Boba Fett fights Cad Bane, wins, kills the bounty hunter, and goes to celebrate with the Chewbacca ripoff. The Space British teenager drops a greatly humorous one-liner that really captures the tragedy of the losses in the fight for Mos Espa, and the Mandalorian flies away with Grogu, cue season 4 of The Mandalorian next year.

This show was the Mandalorian Season 3. They just renamed it to bring in people who are fans of the original movies and prequels. The last three episodes feature Boba Fett for approximately 20 minutes out of 3 hours. In almost all of the earlier episodes, he gets kicked around and loses almost every fight immediately. It’s like they just wanted a show to bully him even harder than he was in Return of the Jedi, in Attack of the Clones, and in The Clone Wars animated series. Seriously, what does everyone have against Boba Fett? He watches his dad get decapitated. His terrorist plans against the Jedi fail after that. He gets eaten by the Sarlacc, his armor gets stolen, he gets captured and forced to work for Tusken Raiders, loses fights and gets beat up in every episode. There was a book about Boba Fett, like a literal actual physical book about what he did after his dad died and how he came to work for the Empire. And you know what happens? He gets lied to and stolen from, his ship gets taken, and he loses the Mandalorian book his father made for him in case of untimely death. In EVERY SINGLE era of Star Wars, Boba Fett has been a running joke by the producers. And yet, he remains the favorite character of many around the world. Maybe the people over at Disney will keep doing it until everyone hates him

Even if we forget that, don’t get me started on the CGI. I don’t know if it was bad because of being produced during COVID or what, but the graphical effects were downright transparent. When watching scenes of people jumping around Mos Espa rooftops, all I could see were people in mocap suits pretending to jump in front of green screens. The creatures looked like something out of a college student’s 3D animation project. Cad Bane looked like his own forgotten brother and nothing like the boot-clad expert bounty hunter we see earlier in the series. They de-aged Mark Hamill, which is no easy feat, but his voice was modified and almost robotic. Grogu learns how to Force Jump, and his body just lays limp as he flies through the air, like he was being pulled by a string during his middle school recital of Peter Pan. It just felt like they phoned it in on the graphic design. They put a lot more care into the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, and it showed. It also felt like there were too many little quips throughout the series. I didn’t come to this show for Marvel in Space, I came for a gritty western-type about one of the best bounty hunters the galaxy has ever seen. And some of them came at inappropriate times, too, like what I mentioned after the large battle in Mos Espa. But whatever floats your profit margins, I guess.

Speaking of profit margins, they just absolutely had to have those ‘cute’ scenes with Grogu eating something or doing something a toddler would do. And I can almost guarantee that it works. Every time that little green Yoda slips something slimy into his mouth, another 300 people buy plushies or shirts or whatnot for themselves or their kids. So at least it’s not just for the sake of it, but I would have preferred them to have meaning, like the scenes he shares with the Mandalorian. But come on! There’s the scene where Grogu returns to Mos Espa, and the crazy mechanic lady pulls him out of the ship and just gives him a plate of tiny space worms. After a brief exchange with R2-D2, she and her droids just gather around and silently watch him eat. No music, no sounds (except for slurping), and no camera change. Just Grogu eating worms. For 30 seconds. Straight. But like I said, I can almost guarantee you it worked.

Now, all this negativity might make you think that this show was just terrible, an absolute waste of time. But it wasn’t. This is a series with nearly 7 hours of content, and I’m nitpicking over half minutes. Despite its obvious flaws, I genuinely enjoyed it. Some scenes were absolutely made with the style and thought that defined the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. The acting was absolutely top-notch. You could tell what the helmeted heroes were thinking, even with no facial expressions to go off of. The body acting was great. And the costume design, oh the costume design… by the waves of the television, there we sat down, yea, we wept, for we remembered that we would not see the wonderfully distinct Mandalorian armor and western outfits donned by actors in the Wild West shootout scenes for another year. Every detail was thought of when it came to armor and tactical outfits. Even Cad Bane’s outfit had some accessories from the Old Republic military (source: me, don’t quote it) and the cinematography was just quality. The shootout between Cad Bane and Timothy Olyphant’s character was just ripped straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie, and it worked. The writing was thorough, the dialogue delivered pretty darn well, especially between the Mandalorian and the Armorer, and the music was just like it always is. Which is to say, it was wonderfully done.

Even though the show wasn’t all it could have been, it was entertaining and continued a story that has captured the attention of millions. I would still recommend this show to fans of The Mandalorian and Star Wars in general. Although, I would caution that the premise of this show hinges heavily on the setup provided by the first two seasons. Just think of it as the third season of The Mandalorian, because it basically was. You need the story from the earlier seasons to really understand the context and the stakes of what’s at play. If you can look past some of the glaringly obvious problems, you see a fairly dramatic continuation of a beloved saga nearly 50 years in the making. And that, at least, makes it worth watching. Thank you for reading.