You might be wondering how Boba Fett could appear in The Mandalorian when he was last seen plummeting to a horrible fate in Return of the Jedi. But anyone familiar with the classic Legends timeline knows that the Sarlacc was far from the end of Fett’s story. Read on to learn how he could have lived, how the Expanded Universe continued his journey and what role Fett could play in The Mandalorian: Season 2. These are the topics covered in this article:
- Did Boba Fett Die in Return of the Jedi?
- Boba Fett in the Expanded Universe
- Boba Fett’s Return: The Clues So Far
- Boba Fett in The Mandalorian: Season 2
- Boba Fett vs. Captain Rex?
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Did Boba Fett Die in Return of the Jedi?
When we last saw Boba Fett in the classic Star Wars movies, he was being doomed to an inglorious death in the Great Pit of Carkoon. For all his fearsome reputation, Fett was ultimately taken out by a blind, bumbling Han Solo and doomed to spend a thousand years being slowly digested by the Sarlacc.
However, the silver lining for Star Wars fans who feel Fett deserved a more spectacular sendoff is that there’s no reason to assume the character is actually dead. Again, C-3PO himself established that it takes centuries for the Sarlacc to fully digest its victims. Thanks to its uniquely disgusting biology, the Sarlacc is able to keep its prey alive for a very long time so that it can slowly absorb their nutrients. It even seems to form some sort of symbiotic relationship with its prey, eventually absorbing their consciousness into a larger hive mind.
With The Mandalorian taking place roughly five years after Return of the Jedi, Fett still has 995 years left before he’s completely dissolved. We have to assume a guy renowned for being the most fearsome bounty hunter in the galaxy has a few tricks up his sleeve and secret weapons tucked away in his armor. This casting rumor suggests Fett ultimately did find some way of escaping the Sarlacc. The real question is why he didn’t immediately hunt down and murder Han Solo.
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Boba Fett in the Expanded Universe
Like many unexpected Star Wars plot twists – Darth Maul surviving the events of The Phantom Menace, Emperor Palpatine returning through the magic of cloning, etc. – the idea of Boba Fett surviving his run-in with the Sarlacc has its roots in the classic Expanded Universe. In fact, Fett went on to play a surprisingly critical role in the post-Return of the Jedi Star Wars saga until the EU was finally shelved by Disney.
Marvel Comics didn’t wait very long after the release of Return of the Jedi before bringing back Fett in the pages of its monthly Star Wars series. 1983’s Star Wars #81 shows an amnesic Fett being spat out by the Sarlacc and then captured by a group of Jawas. A chance run-in with Han Solo jogs Fett’s memory and he attempts to settle their score. Instead, the story ends with Fett, along with his new Jawa friends, being dragged back into the Sarlacc.
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The Marvel series already had a dubious place in official Star Wars canon even before Disney came along, so this story is necessarily part of accepted EU lore. Instead, his true return came in Dark Horse Comics’ 1991 miniseries Dark Empire. Set six years after Return of the Jedi, Dark Empire deals with a clone version of Palpatine resurfacing to attack the fledgling New Republic. While not the main focus of the series, Fett also comes out of hiding and attempts to claim a new bounty on Han Solo’s head. He didn’t succeed, but this story paved the way for plenty more Fett-centric comics and novels. The Bounty Hunter Trilogy of novels is especially notable for fleshing out the character’s past and his actions after the movies, even if a lot of that material was rendered moot by Attack of the Clones.
Fett eventually evolved beyond his role as a silent bounty hunter. The New Jedi Order series of novels takes place two decades after Return of the Jedi and showcases a devastating conflict between the New Republic and an invasion force known as the Yuuzhan Vong. In this era, Fett has become the leader of Mandalore, rallying his people to resist the Vong invasion and forge an alliance with the New Republic. Later books introduced elements like Fett having a family and helping train Han and Leia’s daughter Jaina to confront her corrupted brother Jacen.
Obviously, none of these stories still hold true in Disney’s revised Star Wars timeline. However, given how much recent Star Wars projects have drawn inspiration from the EU, we wouldn’t be surprised if some of these plot points wind up being repurposed.
Boba Fett’s Return: The Clues So Far
It’s always been assumed Boba Fett’s return was a question of when, not if. For one thing, Disney wasted little time before moving forward with a standalone Boba Fett movie as one of its first Star Wars anthology movies. Chronicle director Josh Trank was brought on board the untitled project in 2014, though Trank ultimately left the film in 2015. Trank only recently discussed his real reasons for leaving the Boba Fett movie, telling Polygon, “I quit because I knew I was going to be fired if I didn’t quit.”
It was never clear whether the movie was meant to take place after Return of the Jedi or flesh out the character’s earlier years (as with the canceled Star Wars: 1313 game). And either way, Disney seems to have shelved the project for the time being. But it’s clear from multiple recent Star Wars projects that bringing back Boba Fett was always part of the plan.
The first clues to Fett’s return happened in the 2015 novel Star Wars: Aftermath. A passage in the book features a scavenger on Tatooine coming across a suit of Mandalorian armor “pitted and pocked as if with some kind of acid.” This strongly suggests Fett escaped his captivity in the Sarlacc and discarded (or possibly even sold) his acid-worn armor. That scene paves the way for Fett’s return, while also leaving the door open for infamous Boba Fett impersonator Jodo Kast to make his Disney debut.
Meanwhile, multiple installments of The Mandalorian: Season 1 hinted that Fett is alive, well and taking an interest in the misadventures of Din Djarin (a.k.a. the Mandalorian of the title). Vanity Fair spotted a background Mandalorian character in the series premiere whose suit looks an awful lot like Fett’s. Later on, Episode 5 ends with a stinger scene of a mysterious figure wearing a cape and spurs approaching the lifeless body of Fennic Shand. The spurs alone strongly point to Boba Fett, as the character’s costume was intentionally designed to evoke images of Wild West gunslingers.
With all that in mind, the report that Fett is emerging from the shadows for Season 2 isn’t terribly surprising. Clearly Disney has been building up to this point for a while. The only question is why Boba Fett is so interested in the exploits of Din Djarin. On that note…
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Boba Fett in The Mandalorian: Season 2
With the Mandalorian doing so much to flesh out the culture of Mandalore and the sorry state of its people in the post-Imperial era, it makes sense to include the most famous Mandalorian character of them all. On the other hand, Boba Fett isn’t technically a Mandalorian at all. Like his father, Jango, Boba Fett is considered an outsider and pretender who simply wears Mandalorian armor.
That fact could explain both Fett’s presence in the series and his interest in Djarin. From what the series has revealed about Djarin’s origin story so far, we know that Mandalorians aren’t a specific race of people, but rather a group bound by time-honored traditions and a warrior spirit. Djarin wasn’t born a Mandalorian, but he became one after being orphaned in the Clone Wars and becoming inducted into the ways of Mandalore. Boba Fett may be jealous of Din Djarin – a rival bounty hunter who has eclipsed his own reputation while also being hailed as a true and worthy Mandalorian.
There may be a simpler explanation, too. Fett may be interested in stealing The Child and claiming the large bounty on is head. As the original trilogy showed, Fett is perfectly happy to work with the Empire if it means a hefty payday. His old benefactor Darth Vader is gone, but perhaps Fett found a new employer in the ruthless Imperial warlord Moff Gideon. Clearly there’s a story to be told in how Gideon acquired the Mandalorian weapon known as the Darksaber, and Boba Fett may play into that story (along with the Darksaber’s former owner, Bo-Katan Kryze, who will also reportedly appear in Season 2).
A great many actors have portrayed Boba Fett over the years, most notably Jeremy Bulloch in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. However, The Hollywood Reporter specifically names Temuera Morrison as the actor cast for The Mandalorian: Season 2. Morrison made his Star Wars debut in Attack of the Clones, where he played Jango Fett and the many Clonetroopers who were created from Jango’s DNA. Morrison later dubbed over Boba Fett’s handful of lines for a DVD rerelease of The Empire Strikes Back, but this will be his first time actually playing Boba Fett in live-action.
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Boba Fett vs. Captain Rex?
It didn’t take long after THR’s story to drop before fans began speculating Morrison will be playing more than one role in The Mandalorian: Season 2. Many fans believe Morrison will also play the part of Captain Rex, an ex-Clonetrooper who eventually became a member of the Rebel Alliance.
This theory is fueled by the recent news that Rex’s friend and comrade Ahsoka Tano is making her live-action debut (played by Rosario Dawson) in Season 2. Given their close friendship, it makes sense that Ahsoka would be accompanied by Rex, one of the very few Clonetroopers who managed to break free from Palpatine’s conditioning. It would certainly make for an interesting conflict if Boba Fett went head-to-head with one of his fellow Jango Fett clones. Rex would surely be an uncomfortable reminder of Fett’s tragic past.
Normally, we’d question whether Rex is even alive by the time of The Mandalorian, as it’s been established clones were given artificially accelerated lifespans. Unlike Boba Fett, who was designed as an identical copy of his father, the Clonetroopers were built to age rapidly into adulthood and die off before they could become a liability to Palpatine’s new Empire. But for whatever reason, Rex has seemed to age slower than his brothers. He appears as an older but still virile soldier in Star Wars Rebels, and the Rebels finale even confirmed Rex took part in the Battle of Endor.
At this point, it’s not a stretch to assume Rex is still alive during the era of The Mandalorian. He may very well be the last Clonetrooper still standing. And with Director of Lucasfilm Animation Dave Filoni so heavily involved in the development of The Mandalorian, it stands to reason we’re going to keep seeing new connections between this live-action series and its animated cousins as time goes on.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
