The Book of Boba Fett might have finally found its Star Wars saga footing in Episode 3, titled "The Streets of Mos Espa." While it's still too early in the season to know if this show is going to really find its storytelling teeth, it was nice to have an episode focus on the Star Wars side of things a bit more than the "Old Western" or Kung-Fu show that it seemed to want to be in the first two episodes.
It should be pointed out that while the back and forth between past and present was both a bit jarring and annoying simply because it didn't allow for viewers to really get a sense of where the season was going, it was actually done fairly well in retrospect. After all, when the big payoff happened in the early part of Episode 3, it really hit with some emotion. There shouldn't have been anyone asking why the audience was supposed to care.
That's not to say that everyone was perfect when it came to carrying out the latest episode of The Book of Boba Fett. There are still a few glitches here and there, almost all of them encompassed by the former bounty hunter's kind heart. His continued squeamishness whenever real violence is called for continues to feel like a retconning of a character that was well established, even if he didn't have a ton of time on screen. On the other hand, the show seems dedicated to the retconning and at least in this episode explained a bit more about why he's ok with doing things like letting someone go who had just tried to kill him. It's believable if still feels a bit discordant.
No Time Like The Present
Easily the best part of this third episode of The Book of Boba Fett is that the story stops swinging back and forth from when Boba was spending time with Tusken Raiders to the present when he's trying to establish a crime ring. There's also a bit of underlining that this show is not going to go in the same direction as The Mandalorian and give the former bounty hunter a young child as his ever-present sidekick. That seemed to be confirmed in Episode 2 but that message was delivered in no uncertain terms this week.
Focusing on the present was also simply needed as far as making sure that the main story, the trials and tribulations of Boba Fett as the kingpin of crime in Mos Espa were fleshed out. While the first two episodes did show that he was struggling to hang onto his little fiefdom, it felt as though the audience wasn't really supposed to care about it all that much, considering how much time was spent focusing on Boba Fett's time with the Tuskens.
By shifting entirely to the present and wrapping up the backstory of Boba Fett the way the showrunners did, it also retroactively makes all the time the show spent in the past in the first two episodes worth it. This was basically Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau telling the audience that any handwringing that was being done after the first two episodes was really an overreaction and that Star Wars fans should have trusted them all along. Noted. That doesn't wipe out some of the mistakes the first two episodes made when it came to pacing but it certainly makes those mistakes more palatable, as long as this really is the beginning of moving forward and the end of looking back.
More Fennec Shand Please
One area where even the story of The Book of Boba Fett in the present is failing is simply not giving Fennec Shand enough to do. Ming-Na Wen is one heck of an actress and she's also one heck of a combatant. She's showed off the ability to deliver a punch and a kick in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. but so far in this show, she largely sits around and tells Boba that he's wrong. Granted, one of the funnier parts (intentionally or not) is when they were discussing what to do about the Hutt twins and she was proved almost immediately right. She got to do a bit of fighting in Episode 1, but she still seems massively underutilized. That's especially the case when an assassin snuck into Boba's inner sanctum and was largely fought off by literally everyone else in the former bounty hunter's employ.
War Comes To Tatooine
The show focusing on the present in the latest episode of The Book of Boba Fett also allowed the show to do what Star Wars does best. Unabashed speeder chases, high-tech weapons, and war. The episode also goes a long way in making sure that Boba isn't seen by the audience as the incompetent rube that it appears quite a few people in Mos Espa see him. He spent quite a bit of the first two episodes talking about how violence wasn't the answer and that he wanted to be the kinder, gentler mob boss. Considering that he was routinely being hip-checked by the very people who were supposed to be paying tribute, it made him look like someone who was indeed in over his head. Especially when he kept making the same mistake of being too nice. This time around, when he's informed that war is on the horizon, instead of trying to talk his way out of it, he simply says "we'll be ready."
There's a reason that people were very excited to see the return of Boba Fett in the first place. It's never more fun than watching the former bounty hunter play with his toys and shoot down a couple of dozen bad guys with very little effort or compunction. Star Wars fans got to see that when he made his reappearance in The Mandalorian and they've seen bits and pieces so far in this series, but it seems as if the best is yet to come. "The Streets of Mos Espa" took some steps in making Boba someone who didn't take any guff anymore. The very end of the episode might have completed that transformation for the better.
The Book of Boba Fett premieres new episodes every Wednesday on Disney Plus.