The Weird Story Behind Star Wars Legends Boba Fett Imposter
Star Wars Legends is full of weird characters who, for one reason or another, will probably never see the light of day in canon. One of these odd characters was Jodo Kast, a bounty hunter who made a living impersonating Boba Fett. Kast went around wearing Mandalorian armor painted similar to Fett’s and often claimed to be Fett in order to get bigger bounties—something that wound up biting him in the end.
Jodo Kast
Older Star Wars fans may remember when Boba Fett’s popularity used to be chalked up to him having a cool-looking suit, and that was about it. Jodo Kast is the personification of this Boba Fett opinion cranked up to 11. Kast tried to build a career solely off of having a set of Mandalorian armor—something that at the time was associated almost solely with Boba Fett.
Before Much Of The Lore Was Established
Younger fans have to remember that this was before Jango Fett and the prequels, before the Clone Wars series, and even before Knights of the Old Republic.
Boba Fett was pretty much the only one running around in Mandalorian armor until Kast came along. With seemingly only two Mandalorians in the whole galaxy, it was very easy for Jodo Kast to get away with pretending to be Boba Fett.
Kast Was No Fett
Unfortunately for Jodo Kast, he wasn’t a very good bounty hunter. He made mistakes and sometimes failed missions outright. Kast didn’t even think twice before pulling a blaster on fellow bounty hunter Dengar right after he saved his life. It was that act that led to Jodo Kast’s eventual downfall at the hands of Boba Fett.
Jodo Kast hurt Boba Fett’s reputation as the top bounty hunter in the galaxy every time he botched a bounty. He was also taking money away from Fett by taking jobs that would otherwise go to the bounty hunter. Because of this, one of the first things Fett decided to do after escaping the Sarlaac Pit was to set a trap for Kast.
The Trap
Boba Fett pretended to be someone else and hired Kast to pursue a bounty. When Jodo Kast showed up to the last known whereabouts of the bounty, he instead found Boba Fett waiting for him. After an intense fight, Fett left Kast to die in a Mad Max-type scenario.
Jodo Kast was paralyzed thanks to a nerve toxin-tipped dart from Boba Fett and left wearing a leaking jetpack. Fett gave Jodo three vials and told him that one was the antidote to the nerve toxin. If Kast could pick the right one and muster up enough strength to take it, he could potentially survive the encounter.
Sadly, he did not.
Even Thrawn Got In On It
Interestingly enough, Jodo Kast, the Boba Fett impersonator, was once himself impersonated. At one point, Kast tried making a career for himself under his own name and, through either luck or sheer will, became something of a top-tier Bounty Hunter long enough for Grand Admiral Thrawn to notice.
During a single mission, Thrawn actually dressed up as Jodo Kast in order to intimidate someone he was meeting.
Jodo Kast was never a hugely successful character like Boba Fett but he did manage to get two action figures made of him and even appeared as an unlockable character in the video game Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi.
Sadly, thanks to the prequels retconning Boba Fett’s EU continuity, it’s a long shot that we’ll ever see Jodo Kast in the Disney canon. Like Mara Jade, Kast is destined to exist as an interesting “What if?” character forever relegated to Legends status.
