Chris Connor reviews the sixth episode of Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett…
After taking a detour last week, The Book of Boba Fett continues the adventures of The Mandalorian for a sizable chunk of its penultimate episode. We begin with a prologue linking the main plot with the return of Timothy Olyphant’s Cobb Vanth, an instant fan favourite following his appearance in Season 2 of The Mandalorian. Here he is confronting spice runners from the Pyke Syndicate, a sign of the syndicate’s growing presence on Tatooine. After this opening we spend much of the next part of the episode following Din Djarin as he pays a visit to Grogu, now under the tutelage of Luke Skywalker.
This is where the episode begins to feel like unwarranted fan service and with five major cameos across the course of the episode, there is an awfully stacked deck of cards with not much seeming to connect to the main narrative of the show it occupies. The first and most obvious is the return of Luke Skywalker following his mostly well-received brief appearance in the season two finale of The Mandalorian. Here he spends much of the episode training Grogu with many callbacks to The Empire Strikes Back. It ultimately feels like this takes up too much of the episode’s run time and while it is always fun to spend time with Luke, his story has been told and there is not much that can be added by these fleeting appearances.
We also see the return of Ahsoka Tano played again by Rosario Dawson, who will soon be seen leading her own Disney+ series. She acts mostly as a guide as to whether Grogu and the Mandalorian should be reunited and in all honesty her appearance does little bar appease fans who have wanted to see her interact with Luke Skywalker, the son of her former master Anakin Skywalker.
Executive producer Dave Filoni of course understands this universe, having played an integral part in its animated small screen endeavours and this very much visually captures much of the joy of Star Wars. However, it is hard to appreciate a returning character’ appearance when moments later we are being introduced to another or a new character entirely, and much of this ultimately could have been saved for The Mandalorian season 3.
When attention returns to the show at hand the stakes are upped considerably with the addition of Din Djarin to the side of Boba Fett and Cobb Vanth’s allegiance seemingly confirmed. The climatic ten minutes offers some of the most forward momentum for the main strand of the story since episode three with Cad Bane’s live-action introduction, having previously been introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, becoming a firm fan favourite. His arrival makes the finale fascinating as we can expect a showdown with his former colleague Boba. One can’t help but feel that Cad Bane would have made for a strong antagonist for a lengthy part of the series and so his arrival here feels too little too late, unless he is slated to return in another series.
Chapter 6 of The Book of Boba Fett doubles down on the problems presented by the previous episode, and is seemingly fixated on setting up stories for future projects at the expense of the show at hand. This leaves the series with many questions to answer in its finale and while some of its more fan serviceable moments are sure to please the franchise’s broad fan-base, several moments feel tonally out of place and ultimately distracting. Fingers crossed that the series can deliver with its climax, as with rumours abound of even more cameos from fan favourite characters, the show still has to wrap up the story of its protagonist who has been sidelined almost entirely these past two episodes.
Chris Connor
