How Boba Fett Survived The Sarlacc
Boba Fett survived the sarlacc, and here's how he must have done it.
This article is more than 2 years old
Boba Fett escaped the sarlacc pit. A fan-desired moment has finally been confirmed in the official Star Wars canon thanks to the season premiere of The Mandalorian on Disney+. At the end of the most recent episode, we saw confirmation that the infamous bounty hunter is still alive, but we have yet to learn exactly how he escaped the deadly maw of that desert beast.
There have actually been prior stories in the Star Wars franchise where Boba Fett survived the sarlacc pit. In these previous takes on the concept, he is able to fight his way out, but he is always able to keep his Mandalorian armor. In the now official canon of Star Wars, he has lost his armor at some point. That detail gives us a crucial clue as to how he must have survived in the belly of the beast.
It has been shown that Mandalorian armor is extremely tough and resilient. This is thanks to the incredibly sturdy material known as beskar. In the Season Two premiere of The Mandalorian, we saw Din Djarin get swallowed by a krayt dragon and he was able to escape in part thanks to his armor. There is no doubt that Boba Fett had the same resiliency in the sarlacc pit thanks to sharing the same type of beskar outfit. The question is how long he was even in the pit.
The events of The Mandalorian started five years after the ending we see in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. From what we can tell of Boba Fett in The Mandalorian, it looks like he has been living on Tatooine for quite a long time. And more importantly, he seems surprised to see his armor again. This could very well mean that Boba Fett assumed he had sacrificed his armor to escape from the sarlacc.
If so, Boba Fett might have gotten free from the sarlacc shortly after falling in. That would mean that the only materials he would have available to him would be the remnants from Jabba the Hutt’s sailing barge that exploded right next to the pit. Those could have been what he utilized to survive in the desert, and he might have chosen a life of hermitage because he thought he’d lost his armor forever.
Or even more interesting is if Boba Fett was stuck in the sarlacc for an extended period of time, even if it was only a few days. We know that the krayt dragon ate the sarlacc that was in its cave, and it is almost certain that was the same sarlacc that held Boba Fett. Did the krayt dragon end up aiding the bounty hunter in his escape? Or had he already left the sarlacc and his armor behind, and the krayt dragon killing the sarlacc was what allowed the armor to eventually be discovered by the Jawas?
The fact that one of the most iconic deaths in the Star Wars universe has been officially retconned means we will be getting answers to these questions very soon. Hopefully, The Mandalorian will directly respond to these queries about Boba Fett and the sarlacc. It would be a shame for them to be settled by ancillary material in the Star Wars canon. Now that we know Boba Fett survives the sarlacc pit, we definitely want to see it.
