The Boba Fett Series: All We Know About Star Wars’ Next Spinoff
Fans have wanted to know Boba Fett's story for years, but most were probably hoping for a Boba Fett movie. We're getting a Boba Fett TV series instead.
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Fans have wanted to know Boba Fett’s story for years, but most were probably hoping for a Boba Fett movie. We’re getting a Boba Fett TV series instead. He made his return appeared in the season 2 premiere of The Mandalorian, and it’s part of a set up to give him a limited, standalone miniseries on Disney Plus.
Questions about Star Wars‘ most popular Mandalorian began right about the time the Disney+ Mandalorian series aired. Would we see Boba Fett at some point? The first season of the show gave fans no indication it would ever happen.
Word began to leak earlier this year in May that Disney was working on a Boba Fett series. No details were given though former Disney CEO Bob Iger informed fans that “the priority [for Star Wars] in the next few years is television.” He also mentioned that there is “more coming from The Mandalorian… including the possibility of infusing it with more characters and the possibility of taking those characters in their own directions in terms of series.”
The Mandalorian’s first season came and went without an appearance by the galaxy’s most famous bounty hunter. Then came Season 2. At the very end of the second season’s premiere episode, Temuera Morrison (who is the face of Boba Fett under his armor) was shown watching Mando speed off into the distance.
HOW BOBA FETT SURVIVED THE SARLACC
Mandalorian director Jon Favreau left fans hanging with season 2’s second episode, as we didn’t catch another glimpse of Fett. But we may have determined just how Boba Fett survived his fall into the Sarlacc pit from the premiere episode. This could be shown in the Boba Fett series or maybe only referenced, but here’s what happened.
In that episode Mando went belly-up into a krayt dragon’s gut only to burst free, surviving mainly due to his Mandalorian armor. The fact that Boba Fett wore the same type of Beskar could explain his ability to survive his supposed death in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. You may recall a temporarily blinded Han Solo “accidentally” hits Fett’s jetpack, thus turning it on, sending Fett into a wall, then straight into the belly of the beast. A scream could be heard and that is the last we see of Fett. Until now.
We also learned in The Mandalorian’s season 2 premiere that the Sarlacc which ate Boba Fett may itself have been eaten by a krayt dragon. An attack by the krayt may have given Boba Fett the opportunity he needed to escape the Sarlacc’s horrific and otherwise inescapable clutches.
Unfortunately when he escaped the Sarlacc, Boba Fett was forced to leave his armor behind. The armor was eventually salvaged by Jawas, who sold it to Tatooine Marshall Cobb Vanth (Timothy Olyphant). Cobb, in turn, gave the armor to Mando Din Djarin. As of this writing it’s still in his possession. Whether the Boba Fett series will return the armor to its rightful owner is unknown at this time.
THE PLOT OF BOBA FETT’S UPCOMING SERIES
There isn’t much detail right now when it comes to the Boba Fett series. We don’t know when it will take place. Will we see a young Fett? An older one? Chances are Fett has a further storyline in the Mandalorian that will allow for a set up for the new series.
We’ve heard from some of our sources that the new Boba Fett series will be both a prequel and a sequel, showing fans just how he survived the Sarlacc pit, his escape, and then his life and adventures on Tatooine after the fall of the Empire.
Rumor also has it that the production of the new Boba Fett series will begin shortly. As in next week shortly. With Morrison appearing in The Mandalorian, it is expected he will be part of the series, at least for awhile, before jumping to his Boba Fett solo series.
How they will portray Fett in his Return of the Jedi days is an unknown. How they show his life after he escapes is also an unknown. But expect Morrison to portray the current version of the mysterious bounty hunter in the upcoming Boba Fett series.
Meanwhile, Disney has been filing Boba Fett trademarks left and right. These include journals, fiction books, and binders as well as an update to the 2010 trademark that included action figures and other toys. Marketing is all part of the play for their Boba Fett series.
THE MOVIE THAT ALMOST WAS
We can’t talk about the recently announced Boba Fett series without first talking about the proposed movie. Yes, there were plans for a movie. What seemed like a good idea quickly turned into a mess.
It all started when Josh Trank was announced as the director of a Star Wars spin-off, which was later revealed to be a Boba Fett movie. But when Trank eventually left the project, he sounded like a man who was wholly unprepared to take on such a massive pr0perty. Specifically, it seems like the pressure of something as big as Star Wars was too much for him. It didn’t help that he was also involved with the widely-derided Fantastic Four reboot.
Long before Disney decided to make a Boba Fett series, Trank talked about his departure from the Boba Fett movie with the LA Times, “At first I was like, ‘I’m just not going to say anything because it will blow over.’ But I was shocked – it just hasn’t blown over. People get so excited to raise their pitchforks.” And they most certainly raised their pitchforks. “I knew that this was going to be questioned and it was going to come under skepticism as to why I left Star Wars,” he continued. “And it was hard. It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.”
Of course, leaving the Boba Fett movie wouldn’t be simple. He couldn’t just walk away without the vicious rumor mill spinning time and again. The rumors started with Fantastic Four and the film’s co-writer and producer Simon Kinberg. Allegedly, there was a rift between the two and it was carrying on to the Star Wars movie as Kinberg was also going to be producing that film.
The rumors were so bad that Kinberg himself finally spoke out about them. “None of those facts were true – and any of the facts that were true were spun in such a maliciously wrong way,” Kinberg said. Then he went into more detail. “I’ve been around some version of this for a long time,” explained Kinberg. “This, I would say, is particularly cruel. I haven’t really seen this level of vehemence against a filmmaker. And it’s surreal and unfair.”
Josh Trank even felt the need to chime in about the rumors. “Simon and I have become closer friends through this,” Trank said. “To have the rest of the world – other than the people who know us – think that we’re in some blood feud with each other over something…”
After Trank’s departure, a new director for the Boba Fett movie was brought on board. James Mangold, who directed the hit superhero film Logan, was then tasked as the new director. Mangold had a strong relationship with Kinberg having worked together on Logan. But things went eerily silent after this announcement. A few months later, Lucasfilm head honcho Kathleen Kennedy announced that all stand-alone Star Wars films were on permanent hold, thus killing the Boba Fett movie and making way for what we’re getting now: a Boba Fett series.
