This week’s episode of The Mandalorian has been full of fans as Mando and every little Green Force favorite has traveled to Tatooine. In a series full of credentials, including a trip to the Mos Eisley Cantina, nothing has brought the fans to a halt as much as a brief excitement that ended the episode. But was it actually Boba Fett?
(Ed. Note: This post features spoilers for the first five episodes of The Mandalorian, as well as speculation about future consequences.
In the final seconds of “The Gunslinger”, a new pair of boots enters the frame and heads for the corpse of Fennec Shand (played by Ming-Na Wen). The Star Wars fans immediately examined the boots, the only real details conveyed by the series’ faint cinematography, and concluded that this masked character must be the most famous Star Wars bounty hunter.
The fans quickly named Boba’s appearance in the post-Special Edition versions of A New Hope a similar tracking sound as in the episode and even referred to the noises of the walking character as similar to those in The Empire Strikes Back. But if Boba were fat, he would have to get himself a brand new wardrobe . and also cheat death by escaping a slow and painful demise in the Sarlacc Pit.
Lucasfilm
We do not get many shots of Boba Fett’s full cape in the series, but as we can see from this picture of him in “The Empire Strikes Back,” he wears only a small half cape resting on his left shoulder. The new character of the Mandalorian wears an almost body-long cape. And it’s not that Boba is the only one wearing this kind of thing. The fan theory gets further spoiled by Carl Weathers’ Greef Karga, who wears a long duster in many of his scenes and we know he’s still on Mando’s track.
But ignoring the fact that the cloak is not like Boba Fett and the fact that the sounds of his boots are similar, the idea that he survives the Sarlacc pit is not necessarily impossible. As C-3PO says, the Sarlacc digests its prey in the course of a thousand years. Luckily, this means you have plenty of time to escape, especially if you have a jetpack.
In the old expanded universe, now more part of the “Legends” series than the official canon, Boba Fett did just that. Although the bounty hunter was originally eaten by the Sarlacc, he managed to activate his jetpack, fly out of the beast and survive. While this is not part of Disney’s Skywalker saga continuity, it did seem like it was early on.
The Sarlacc Pit and the possible final resting place of Boba FettLucasfilm
When Disney brought Josh Trank, the director of Fantastic Four, on board to stage his own Star Wars Story spin-off film, rumors were circulating that the film would focus on Boba Fett – though this was on the track record of Star Wars Storys- Filming could be a prequel. When Trank and Lucasfilm split, it was initially assumed that the film was given to James Mangold, the director of Logan and Ford against Ferrari. However, after Disney changed its plans for the Star Wars franchise, the spin-off of Boba Fett seemed to have been negated.
Boba Fett’s appearance in The Mandalorian would mean a major new twist in the canon, and while there is not much evidence at the moment, his potential presence could serve an important purpose in the history of the show. As we learned in Star Wars: Clone Attack, Boba Fett is a clone of his father, Jango Fett, who provided the genetic basis for the entire clone army created on Kamino. Jango wanted a “son” and in return for offering his DNA, the Kamino scientists provided.
Kamino and cloning could play an interesting role in The Mandalorian, although not explicitly discussed in the series. Dr. Pershing, the client’s imperial accomplice hoping to extract material from Baby Yoda, has a stain on the arm of his uniform that alerts the Star Wars scholars.
Lucasfilm
The only other place in the Star Wars universe where a similar patch has appeared is the cloning facility on Kamino. The same symbol appears on the arms of every clone soldier trained on the planet.
Lucasfilm
The ability to reintroduce cloning into Star Wars seems to be clear: either Baby Yoda is really a clone, or even the Empire wants to recreate the genes of a small child who can exercise power. In any case, cloning seems to play a role. In the expanded universe of the Legendary Legend we know that Emperor Palpatine was a fan of the cloning process and has even cloned himself several times to escape his own mortality – something that could be relevant to his later return to The Rise of Skywalker year.
If Baby Yoda comes from clone laboratories, maybe even from Kamino, it may make sense to call Boba Fett, the most famous clone in history, an existential or otherwise threatening threat. This would also be a very meaningful way to revive the bounty hunter favored by fans while giving him an important and interesting relationship with the story.
While all this nonsense in cloning would certainly make the return of Boba Fett plausible, all we need now is the evidence. Fans might want to believe, and Boba himself might fit in well with The Mandalorian’s subtly teasing clone-twist, but we’ll just have to wait and see if the show pulls the bounty hunter out of the Sarlacc pit or not.
