Disney+’s ‘The Book of Boba Fett’: TV Review

His mask and single-minded mission made him enigmatic. But it was scarcity that rendered Boba Fett so alluring to so many Star Wars fans who made the backstory-deficient bounty hunter a key player in backyard battles spinning familiar action figures off into their own side adventures.

Would the allure of Boba Fett have been as strong if his journey from Star Wars Holiday Special oddity to Han Solo tormentor to sarlacc kibble hadn’t been so abrupt, and forged from so little screen time? It’s hard to tell, but George Lucas and the subsequent shepherds of the Star Wars legacy have been committed to draining this world of all mystique, filling in gaps whenever possible and leaving as little as possible to the imagination.

To be clear, that hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing: The tendency toward over-explanation yielded the rousing thrills of Rogue One and the consistent entertainment of the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, which has proven to be both an Emmy winner and a service centerpiece for Disney+.

Disney+ didn’t send advance screeners for The Book of Boba Fett to critics, so this review is based only on the 38-minute premiere that debuted on December 29. That one episode was definitely insufficient in terms of determining if this seven-episode series will be the Boba Fett showcase fans have been clamoring for or an entertaining bit of filler while audiences await the further chronicles of Baby Yoda.

The premiere, written by Jon Favreau and directed by Robert Rodriguez, feels more like filler — or rather more like a chapter in a larger narrative than an actual book of its own.

The Book of Boba Fett, thus far, is doing two things at once, neither with any real urgency.

The pilot opens with Temuera Morrison’s Boba Fett in a healing chamber experiencing flashbacks or dreams tied to the aftermath of what appeared to be his Return of the Jedi death in the gaping maw and phallic tentacles of the sarlacc. That story, like multiple episodes of The Mandalorian including the second season premiere, involves a roll call of Tatooine favorites, including Tusken raiders, banthas, a red Rodian (like Greedo, only, well, red) and more.

Like that second Mandalorian season premiere, this was an opportunity to give some cultural specificity to the nomadic sand people who were introduced as territorial hostiles in Star Wars. And as in that second Mandalorian premiere, the Book of Boba Fett‘s climax involves the revelation of the giant monsters who lurk under the Tatooine sand — in this case, a many-armed creature whose resemblance to Ray Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans kraken is, surely, intentional.

That’s the flashback side of the story. In the present, we see Boba Fett taking over Jabba the Hutt’s palace and his crime syndicate, with the help of Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand, a master assassin introduced in The Mandalorian.

There are lots of protocols to be followed in Boba Fett’s new position, but he isn’t interested in being the next Jabba or Bib Fortuna. As he puts it, “Jabba ruled with fear. I intend to rule with respect.” The lack of intimidation, though, may explain why a different group of assassins wants Boba Fett dead or captured, or something.

Presumably, we’re supposed to wonder what adversarial power wants Boba Fett’s reign to be a brief one, but nothing in the premiere offers any reason to actually care about that. Favreau and Rodriguez are playing with Western archetypes, with Boba Fett as one of those quintessentially terse antiheroes living by his own code in a lawless land. If you only have seven episodes to tell a story, it isn’t unreasonable for a viewer to watch the first of those episodes and wonder what Boba Fett’s objective is here — and what cause there would be for anybody to invest in whether or not he succeeds.

Like Din Djarin, Pedro Pascal’s character in The Mandalorian, Boba Fett is a mercenary. But with the introduction of Baby Yoda — if you call him “Grogu,” you’d darned well better have started calling the Staples Center by its “Crypto.com” name immediately — that series gave viewers a point of empathy and a reason to root for its hero’s journey.

If nothing else, Morrison has already gotten to show his face more in one episode than Pascal has in two seasons, and he’s a compelling presence if not a dynamic performer. Paired with Wen’s confident cool, they make a solid central duo. But if all you’re giving me is Boba Fett receiving tributes from local figures and shoring up his clout as daimyo — a feudal Japanese position below shogun and a reminder that the franchise’s DNA is half-samurai, half-Western — I’m going to eventually ask “Why?”

In the short-term, the “Why?” can be answered mostly with nostalgia. The Mandalorian has always worked better for me when the episodes have standalone plots with clear stakes, and even better when the guest stars have real characters to play (see the parts embodied by the likes of Timothy Olyphant and Bill Burr last season). Here, it’s storytelling by checklist. Were you a fan of the porcine bodyguards known as Gamorreans? You’ve got Gamorreans! Want a cantina and a Max Rebo cameo? You’ve got it! And speaking of cameos, yes, that was Matt Berry voicing a robot and Jennifer Beals as the cantina proprietor. And, if you’re like me and you loved Lodge 49, yes, that was David Pasquesi as a representative for a local politician. Will any of them return? If The Mandalorian is any indication, probably not.

In lieu of establishing a real premise or direction for The Book of Boba Fett, the premiere gives us some breathtaking desert photography from cinematographer David Klein, a fun rooftop chase and one or two fights staged without any memorable choreography. Didn’t Rodriguez used to have more distinctive action flair than this? And shouldn’t the arid milieu let Rodriguez showcase the muscular chops from his Desperado/From Dusk Till Dawn heyday? Anyway, much too much is happening to ever be bored, and all the incidents are tied together by Ludwig Göransson and Joseph Shirley’s music, which contributes to that sensation that this this is a detour within The Mandalorian instead of a story with standalone value.

Though it has won piles of awards, The Mandalorian has always felt primarily like popcorn TV. The Book of Boba Fett‘s debut episode feels like something more like salt or butter — an appealing accompaniment, if nowhere near substantive enough to be a snack, much less the main course. Will it aspire to anything more than that or just be content as an interlude between Disney+’s tentpole shows in the Marvel and Star Wars universes? We’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.