A Character Equation

To be honest, I didn't really want to talk about The Book of Boba Fett or Star Wars again in this post.

But nothing else is coming to mind at the moment, and this show has been on my mind, so here we are again!

Many have complained about the best episodes of the Boba Fett show being the chapters that had next-to-no Boba Fett in them. I agree with that, but I had no complaints about it; I really wasn't liking the show very much before the shift in focus to other characters. And when we switched back to Boba Fett for the finale, it once again wasn't working for me.

It's funny that The Mandalorian, featuring a character inspired by Boba Fett's popularity, is so much more the show that I imagined a Fett series could be. When Boba "returned to life" in that show, and then his series was teased, it looked great! Fett is an older, darker and more savage version of the The Mandalorian. And his series has a setup. Boba Fett was taking over as crime lord.



There seemed like many possibilities. As tough and cool as Boba is, trying to be a crime boss would surely have many very difficult roadblocks for him to overcome (along with his partner, Fennec Shand. Gotta mention her; she is an exciting new character who I was looking forward to seeing more of).

Anyway, it was a tough watch from the beginning. Fett's character seemed all wrong. He was a softer, kinder Boba Fett. He wanted to be a crime lord, but without the crime lord part. The whole thing was very strange to me and so were the flashbacks, where Boba joins a tribe of Tusken Raiders and learns about the importance of a tribe. Which is a good idea - but for me, it just didn't work at all. The episodes were a chore to watch, and the character arc didn't ring true for me at all.

I think the main reason - and this is finally the point - was that we didn't see the character as he WAS.

Even if the whole point was to change Boba Fett, character arc writing 101 says we have to see the character first as they WERE. As they've been up to this point. You could say that we saw that in the original Star Wars trilogy, and we did. But the Boba Fett who crawled out of the Sarlaac pit at the beginning of this adventure seemed to be ALREADY a different person. Who cared about people and loved animals.

I think that's why the experiences he had with the sandpeople didn't resonate with me. At least it's one reason. There was no sense (for me) that this guy was Boba Fett. He was such a different person.

Having said that, there was a moment in the finale that worked for me. When Fett faces off against his nemesis in a classic Western gunfight –



–spoiler alert –



– It's the weapon that he uses as a Tusken Raider tribesman that he uses to win the day.


I liked that. It felt good. And when I thought about it later, I think it worked because it followed good character writing principles.

A character resolves their story and wins the day (if they win the day)
by adding who they WERE (in the beginning of their story)
to who they BECAME (in act 2 or the middle of their story)
to become something new. That's what allows them to triumph.

So Boba Fett was "a cold blooded killer" and gunfighter.
He became a Tusken tribesman.
And the combination of those came together to help him win.



The crime boss stuff didn't really come into play as far as I can tell - and we should have seen more of the gunslinger persona (when the Mandalorian showed up, doing all that cool stuff, it was like "why can't Boba Fett do anything like this???"),

but in a way, sort of, there was a character equation at work.

kind of.

bye for now!

-Banes