Star Wars fans eagerly awaiting the return of The Mandalorian were surprised a few weeks ago when the series returned to their screens under a different name. The Mandalorian’s first of many spin-offs, The Book of Boba Fett, started out as a Boba Fett character study. But midway through its seven-episode run, it turned into another show. The Book of Boba Fett had its moments, but structurally, it was a complete mess. It jumps back and forth between a fast-moving western storyline and a painfully slow-moving crime storyline before ditching both and becoming The Mandalorian season 2.5.
The flashbacks showed snippets of Boba’s childhood on Kamino, how he escaped from the Sarlacc Pit, and his efforts to reclaim his ship, his armor, and his groove. Meanwhile, the present-day post-Mandalorian sequences plodded aimlessly through a Tatooine gangster story that got thrown out the window as soon as Din Djarin stole the show. Since The Book of Boba Fett was spun off from The Mandalorian, a Mando cameo was expected. At most, fans expected him to have a supporting role alongside Boba.
But “Chapter 5: Return of the Mandalorian” was so ridiculously on-the-nose in handing the keys to a new series lead that it made the whole of The Book of Boba Fett feel like a big, extravagant, meta-commentary on Mando’s popularity overtaking his armor-clad predecessor. Boba is the title character of The Book of Boba Fett, and yet he’s almost entirely absent for two whole episodes. “Return of the Mandalorian” is upfront about being a Mandalorian episode, not a Book of Boba Fett episode, without a second of screen time for the title character. And then, in the following episode, Boba only makes a brief cameo as a background extra. So, Mandalorian fans waiting for season 3 now feel like they’ve already seen it.
Undermining The Weight Of The Season 2 Finale
It was a confusing turn when the last three episodes of The Book of Boba Fett lost interest in Boba and kicked off The Mandalorian’s next season early, but at least it replaced the show’s bizarre, harmless version of Boba with a much more compelling character. The most egregious thing about Mando’s role in The Book of Boba Fett is that it undermines the gravity of The Mandalorian’s season 2 finale. With an appearance by Luke Skywalker and a massive amount of emotional closure, that finale was truly momentous and felt like a real turning point for the characters. It’s so moving and satisfying that it could’ve been a series finale. But The Book of Boba Fett has cheapened everything that made it great by wrapping up its game-changing twists in a couple of B-plots.
When it wasn’t telling Boba’s story, The Book of Boba Fett was rattling through every plot point that could’ve made up The Mandalorian’s third season: Mando visits Grogu at Luke’s Jedi academy; the uncanny-valley CG Luke imparts several soundbites’ worth of wisdom; Luke asks his little padawan to choose between being Mando’s sidekick and training as a Jedi; and Grogu, of course, takes the equivalent of the blue pill and makes everything go back to normal. Now, he has his own little cockpit in Mando’s new starfighter where the droids used to go, and he’s back to being a cute companion on his surrogate dad’s bounty-hunting adventures.
Hitting The Reset Button
Essentially, The Book of Boba Fett has hit the reset button on the flagship series. The next episode of The Mandalorian after the one that ended with Luke Skywalker taking Grogu under his wing will be a standard Mando adventure with “Baby Yoda” back at his side. The lingering plot threads from the season 2 finale suggested that season 3 would take the show in a whole new direction. Mando’s tearjerking goodbye to Grogu felt heartbreakingly definitive. Their reunion on Tatooine in The Book of Boba Fett was certainly heartwarming, especially when the kid jumped up to hug his father figure, but it undid the power of the season 2 finale.
Mando’s accidental acquisition of the Darksaber and Bo-Katan’s well-documented ruthlessness seemed to tease that she would become a villain in season 3 and the war to reclaim Mandalore would become the show’s main narrative focus. But Bo-Katan is nowhere to be seen. Mando is back to collecting bounties and wielding the Darksaber just makes the bounty-hunting action even cooler. He’s been banished from the Mandalorian religion, making him a sort of intergalactic ronin, and he’s replaced the Razor Crest with a sleeker, faster starfighter. Mando visits Grogu at Jedi school, Grogu shows off all the tricks he’s learned, and the two have been reunited almost immediately after being separated.
It’s baffling that all these massive plot developments happened in a different show and disappointing that The Mandalorian has regressed back into its familiar formula ahead of the show’s highly anticipated return (the return of the actual Mandalorian series, not the one supposedly about Boba Fett). It feels like a sign that the show is afraid to take risks and it’ll just keep telling adventure-of-the-week stories with Mando keeping a watchful eye on Grogu and Grogu being consistently adorable.
The Safety Net Of A Tried-And-Tested Formula
TV shows used to covet familiar formulas that could be repeated over and over again for years. But ever since the seminal saga of Walter White emphasized change across five seasons, audiences have demanded stories and characters that keep evolving. After Mando’s affection for Grogu turned him from a grizzled antihero to a more traditional protagonist, the transformation stopped there, and the show has been content to keep telling the same father-son space adventures ever since.
When it first premiered on Disney+, The Mandalorian was a breath of fresh air, but the show refuses to embrace change. If the series doesn’t have something unexpected up its sleeve for season 3, it could start to feel stale. The last couple of Book of Boba Fett episodes felt like an ominous warning that The Mandalorian will keep coming back to the safety net of its tried-and-tested formula.