New chapter for an old character

When Boba Fett appeared in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), he cut a striking figure in his Mandalorian armor. The mysterious bounty hunter quickly became one of the Star Wars franchise’s most popular characters despite his relatively minor role as a hireling for Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt.

The end of the original trilogy left Boba in the belly of the almighty Sarlacc to be digested for a thousand years, but now Disney has decided to resurrect the popular character giving him his own series, The Book of Boba Fett, streaming on Disney+.

In this series, Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) and his sidekick Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) step into the power vacuum left by the death of crime lord Jabba the Hutt. When the duo attempts to install Boba as the ruler of the desert planet Tatooine, they learn running a crime family is harder than hunting bounties.

Jon Favreau, who did excellent work on The Mandalorian, serves as showrunner for The Book of Boba Fett. Disney’s Star Wars feature films disappointed longtime fans, but Favreau’s dusty space westerns have proven to be a bright spot for the franchise. Fans of The Mandalorian will enjoy this series too, but because The Book of Boba Fett feels familiar, it doesn’t elicit quite the same thrill as the earlier series, and some episodes feel rather slow.

Part of that slowness comes from extended flashbacks explaining how Boba escaped the belly of the Sarlacc and how he recovered from his physical and emotional wounds. These scenes feel akin to Disney’s recent trend toward rehabilitating classic villains like Maleficent and Cruella de Vil, and it’s a little sad to see the iconic character’s mystery dispelled. However, the scenes in which Boba and Fennec try to bring order to a lawless planet are much better.

Boba styles himself as Tatooine’s “daimyo,” but he’s one crime lord among many hoping to force the others into submission. Viewers get a glimpse of politics in a world devoid of legitimate government: Criminal families, bureaucrats, and local business owners all must negotiate a new normal to restore some semblance of order. The question is, Who will find themselves atop that new order, and how will they achieve it?

The conflict over who will rule the unruly planet of Tatooine reminds me of Augustine of Hippo’s political theories. Augustine was a Christian theologian of the early church, living during the last days of the Roman Empire. In his book City of God, Augustine said without justice, a city’s government isn’t much different from a criminal gang.

Boba might be a crime lord, but he seeks law and order for the benefit of others. He’s a man of violence, but the goal of his violence is peace, rather than exploitation. Throughout the series we see an unlikely hero promoting justice in a land that doesn’t understand the concept, and the show asks us to consider whether it’s better to rule through fear or respect.