Catch up on the action in that galaxy far, far away with our recaps of The Mandalorian season 2 episode 1, The Mandalorian season 2 episode 2, The Mandalorian season 2 episode 3, The Mandalorian season 2 episode 4, The Mandalorian season 2 episode 5, The Mandalorian season 2 episode 6, The Mandalorian season 2 episode 7 and The Mandalorian season 2 episode 8.
The title alone is enough to get Star Wars fans excited about The Book of Boba Fett. Why? Even though you can count the number of lines Boba Fett speaks in the original Star Wars trilogy on one hand, the bounty hunter has been one of the most iconic characters in that galaxy far, far away ever since he went after Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. And he’s certainly among the best dressed, thanks to that gadget-packed Mandalorian armor.
With all that firepower at his disposal, nobody really believed that tumbling into the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi was the end of Fett’s story. So it was no surprise when The Mandalorian season 2 confirmed that the son of Jango had somehow escaped 1,000 years of pain and suffering in the wilderness of Tatooine's Dune Sea.
With Fett now reunited with his armor and famous ship, Slave I, The Mandalorian season 2 finale revealed that he’d be getting his own spin-off TV series called The Book of Boba Fett – and that it was heading Earth-wards (on Disney Plus) in December 2021.
But what will the show be about? Who will be in it? And how will it fit in with the other Star Wars TV series on Disney Plus? Here’s everything we know so far about The Book of Boba Fett…
- When is The Mandalorian set in the Star Wars timeline?
- The Mandalorian season 3: what we know
- How to watch the Star Wars movies in order
Cut to the chase
- What is it? A spin-off from The Mandalorian focussing on Boba Fett, the masked bounty hunter who captured Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, before tumbling into the Sarlacc on Tatooine in Return of the Jedi.
- Where can I see it? Like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett will stream exclusively on Disney Plus.
- When can I see it? The Book of Boba Fett will debut in December 2021.
The Book of Boba Fett: when was it announced?
Spoilers follow for The Mandalorian season 2. Don't progress past the image below unless you want the series ruined for you.
The return of Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian was a huge deal, but The Mandalorian season 2 finale saved its biggest surprise for a post-credits scene. As the twin suns of Tatooine shone over Jabba the Hutt’s iconic palace, we watched as legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett and his new bounty hunting associate Fennec Shand executed Jabba’s former Twi’lek maître d’ Bib Fortuna – and took control of what was once Jabba's criminal empire.
Then came the title cards: “THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT: Coming December 2021”. Has there ever been a cooler way to confirm the existence of a new TV show? Maybe, but not in recent times – and certainly not in such a headline-grabbing way.
The Book of Boba Fett was one of a number of new Star Wars TV shows and movies – including fellow The Mandalorian spin-offs Ahsoka and Rangers of the New Republic – announced for Disney Plus around the same time.
But while Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy revealed those shows in the more traditional surroundings of a stage at Disney's Investor Day, she saved The Book of Boba Fett for later – at the request of The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau.
“We wanted to hold this back [from Investor Day] because we didn’t want to spoil the surprise during the big Disney announcement,” The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau told Good Morning America. “They let me keep this one a secret.”
We're certainly glad Disney agreed to Favreau's request – but we do have one major question in the wake of its announcement...
Is The Book of Boba Fett actually the third season of The Mandalorian?
Short answer? No it isn't. Although sections of Star Wars fandom speculated that The Book of Boba Fett might be a completely retooled third season of the parent show, shifting the focus from Din Djarin and Baby Yoda to Boba Fett, it’s now been confirmed that the two series are distinct entities.
“[The Book of Boba Fett] is actually separate from The Mandalorian season 3,” Favreau said in his Good Morning America interview. He also confirmed that the new show is currently in production, as well as revealing a logo that shares the livery of Fett's famous armor.
StarWars.com added a little more: “Boba Fett is back. And his story is just beginning. As teased in a surprise end-credit sequence following the season finale of The Mandalorian, the legendary bounty hunter’s journey will continue in The Book of Boba Fett.”
The Book of Boba Fett release date: December 2021
No need for speculation here. The Mandalorian season 2 finale’s big reveal confirmed that The Book of Boba Fett release date has been set for December 2021. Favreau told Good Morning America that the Fett spin-off will be the next show we see from that galaxy far, far away – landing before The Mandalorian season 3.
“What we didn’t say in [the Disney Investor Day] announcement is that the next show coming up – Kathy [Kennedy] said the next chapter – [is] going to be The Book of Boba Fett,” Favreau confirmed. “And then we go into production right after that on season 3 of The Mandalorian, back with the main character that we all have known and loved. So that’s going to be pretty soon following that, we’re working on that pre-production now while we’re in production on Boba Fett.”
Star Temuera Morrison talked a bit about the show's shoot in February with New Zealand news show The Project NZ (via Fantha Tracks). As well as revealing that he's formed a band called Boba Fret and the Strumtroopers, Morrison explained how Covid-19 protocols have affected the production.
“We're working with shields, masks, rapid tests every three days and a normal test once a week,” he said. “It's a different way of working now, but we're still getting through stuff. Things are still being made. You just have to go to work a little bit earlier.”
The Book of Boba Fett trailer: watch the post-credits teaser
That exciting coda to The Mandalorian season finale ‘The Rescue’ functions as a quasi-teaser, setting up the world Boba Fett and Fennec Shand will be operating in.
If Lucasfilm and Disney follow a similar promotion plan to The Mandalorian, we can expect to see the first The Book of Boba Fett trailer two or three months ahead of launch, which makes September or October 2021 seem like a reasonable prediction.
Don’t get your hopes up about learning loads about the new show before it streams, however. Lucasfilm traditionally play their sabacc cards incredibly close to their chests, and don’t even reveal the titles of episodes before they land on Disney Plus. Expect to see similar levels of secrecy around The Book of Boba Fett.
The Book of Boba Fett story: what can we expect to see?
Some have speculated that Jon Favreau’s comments on Good Morning America – that The Mandalorian spin-offs will be set “right after” Return of the Jedi – mean The Book of Boba Fett will kick off in the immediate aftermath of the second Death Star’s destruction. However, we believe it’s more likely that “right after” was just a figure of speech, and Favreau’s loosely referring to the time period where The Mandalorian already operates – some five years after the events of Return of the Jedi.
We know, for example, that the Jabba’s Palace coda must have taken place after the events of The Mandalorian season 2, because Boba Fett is wearing the iconic armor Mando recovered from Cobb Vanth in Mos Pelgo in ‘The Marshal’ . Presumably, Fett and Fennec Shand jetted off to Tatooine after Din Djarin handed Grogu over to Luke Skywalker, which would tie in nicely to Favreau's comments.
We’re guessing, then, that the show will focus on Boba Fett’s efforts to take control of the crime empire Jabba the Hutt left behind – the small number of hangers-on in Bib Fortuna’s court suggests business isn’t quite as good as it used to be.
That setting opens up all sorts of possibilities for Fett to interact with characters old and new, good and bad. It’ll be interesting to see how many of Fett’s former associates are still in his orbit. While his former mentor Aurra Sing is apparently dead – Tobias Beckett said in Solo: A Star Wars Story that he’d killed her – Cad Bane, another former bounty hunter from The Clone Wars era, may still be business. And then there’s 4-LOM, Zuckuss, Bossk, IG-88 and Dengar, the bounty hunters Darth Vader hired to track down the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back.
As a long-standing associate of Fett’s, Dengar is of particular interest. Not only was he voiced by Simon Pegg in The Clone Wars – Pegg told Collider that he’s open to returning to the role in live-action – it’s believed that he’s still alive three decades later in The Rise of Skywalker era. That said (according to SlashFilm) he’s radically different by then, a bizarre, grotesque cyborg who goes by the name of Rothgar Deng – Dengar’s journey to his new form could be a major part of the story.
Fett could easily pay a visit to Cobb Vanth to compare notes on that famous armor, seeing as they’re both based on Tatooine. And the show could also explore the various crime syndicates operating in that galaxy far, far away, like some interstellar Godfather saga. Indeed, the story of Crimson Dawn (the crime syndicate we learned was headed up by Darth Maul in Solo) was left unresolved – so maybe The Book of Boba Fett will pick up those dangling threads. And any trip off Tatooine will give us an excuse to see Fett's similarly iconic ship, Slave I, in action.
Fett would be an ideal guide through these shady worlds, seeing as his The Mandalorian arc saw him evolve from villain to antihero. Remember, Fett was renowned as the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy, so the fact he helps Mando to rescue Grogu reveals a code of honor we never knew existed. We bet he's still partial to the occasional disintegration, though...
Flashbacks could also be a major element of The Book of Boba Fett. Possibly the biggest question on Star Wars fans’ lips is the issue of how Fett escaped 1,000 years of pain and suffering in the belly of the Sarlacc. While at least one version of the story was told in the old ‘Legends’ version of the Expanded Universe, it’ll be cruel if the details of Fett’s survival aren’t enshrined in canon. It would also leave five years of Fett’s life unaccounted for.
And The Book of Boba Fett could go even further back in time, to explore Fett’s origins. Although The Clone Wars revealed his tentative first steps in the world of bounty hunting after his father, Jango Fett, died, we don’t really know how he became such a big player in Jabba the Hutt’s crime empire. And while Marvel comics have revealed that Fett helped Darth Vader look for Luke Skywalker after A New Hope – and that he and Skywalker duelled – there are still plenty of gaps in his timeline to fill.
Disney era Star Wars has also borrowed plenty of ideas from those aforementioned Legends stories, so don’t be surprised if we see Boba Fett acting as best man at Dengar’s wedding. Yes, that really did happen in one Expanded Universe story.
Will The Book of Boba Fett cross over with The Mandalorian?
It’s not been officially confirmed, but we wouldn’t bet against it. For starters, Boba Fett, Fennec Shand and the Mandalorian himself, Din Djarin, have worked together before and operate in similarly morally ambiguous regions of the Star Wars galaxy, so it’d would be no stretch for them to cross paths again.
Also, at the Disney Investor Day, Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that The Mandalorian and spin-offs Ahsoka and Rangers of the New Republic are “interconnected” and “will culminate in a climactic story event”. While The Book of Boba Fett wasn’t included in that announcement, it’s likely its absence was down to the fact the show hadn’t been announced at that point.
It would be weird if Boba Fett and Fennec Shand weren’t involved in such a major event, seeing as they’re going about their business in the same part of the Star Wars timeline. We imagine that they'll go off on their own adventure for a while, but that they'll reunite with Din Djarin, Bo-Katan Kryze and other sympathetic characters somewhere down the line. Perhaps they'll be helping Bo-Katan restore her home planet of Mandalore after the Great Purge wiped out most of her people? Or simply trying to stop an Imperial remnant from increasing its influence across the galaxy.
And with all of these shows set in the decades between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, we know that the First Order is secretly on the rise somewhere in the Unknown Regions – presumably they won't take too kindly to a bunch of bounty hunters sniffing around their business.
The Book of Boba Fett cast: who will return
Unsurprisingly, Temuera Morrison (who'll also appear in Aquaman 2) is back as Boba Fett
Morrison’s first Star Wars appearance came in Attack of the Clones, where he played Boba Fett’s bounty hunter ‘father’, Jango Fett. Jango was the template for the Clone Troopers who fought for the Old Republic in the Clone Wars. As payment for his genetic material, Jango asked the cloners on Kamino to create Boba, an unmodified version of himself, so he had a son to call his own.
And since the 2004 DVD release of the original trilogy, Morrison also voices Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars creator George Lucas decided to replace lines originally recorded by Jason Wingreen, so there's some continuity there too.
Morrison’s co-star in The Book of Boba Fett will be Agents of SHIELD/Mulan star Ming-Na Wen, who reprises her role as bounty hunter Fennec Shand. She's also playing the character in animated Clone Wars spin-off The Bad Batch. No other stars have been revealed yet, but we'll update this section when announcements are made.
Behind the camera, The Mandalorian's brain trust of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni will executive produce, along with Robert Rodriguez. The Sin City/Alita: Battle Angel director has been brought into the Star Wars fold after helming Fett’s big comeback in The Mandalorian season 2 episode ‘The Tragedy’. Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy will executive produce.
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