SERIES REVIEW – The final episode of The Book of Boba Fett brings an increasingly crowded and chaotic series to a close. The finale, however, still failed to resolve the various plot threads of the series into a satisfying conclusion, although the creators really went all out in the final confrontation. Our review is spoiler-free this time.

Unfortunately, while the story of this week’s finale fell flat compared to the rest of the series, it was at least a lot more exciting and action-packed than all the other episodes combined. Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) is still strangely overshadowed in the series that bears his name, his fearsome reputation transformed into a more family-friendly hero. Fett’s character has always been full of potential: a morally ambiguous bounty hunter who roams the galaxy in cool armour and a cool-looking spaceship. And the series leaves viewers with more questions than answers about who Boba Fett is and what he wants out of life.

The Book of Boba as a whole is ostensibly three series. There is a thread that is supposed to be the main story, in which Boba Fett establishes himself as a scapegoat in Mos Espa. Then the flashbacks filled in the last gap between the last time we saw Boba (when he disappeared from Jabba’s floating ark in the mud pit) and his reappearance in The Mandalorian. And finally, there were the two episodes of The Mandalorian, in which Boba Fett was a guest appearance.

Unfortunately, the first story thread – which was supposed to be the main plot of the series – was the one that The Boba Fett Book was least interested in telling.

They explain every damn thing over and over

Star Wars has an unfortunate tendency to leave no corner of its universe unexplained or unconnected, and The Book of Boba Fett takes this habit to the extreme. It feels like someone at Lucasfilm really wanted to tell fans exactly what happened to Boba Fett between his appearances in previous films and series. It would have been unfortunate and wouldn’t have fit the whole backstory into the next season of Mandalorian, so Boba got his own series. But these flashbacks are not enough for an entire TV series, so a pretty much nonexistent main storyline had to be added.

But after this more extended series of flashbacks ended, The Book of Boba Fett didn’t really know what else to do with its rehabilitated new hero. Boba has nothing to really aspire to, no motivation for what he does, and no ambition other than to “ride a rancoor” (which Boba apparently does in a moment that can only be described as rancor ex machina).

Even the characters in the series are confused. During his confrontation with Fett, Cad Bane notes, “One thing I don’t understand. What is your purpose?”

Anything for the city, but to what end?

“This is my city. These are my people.” declares Fett, as he faces almost certain death with the sudden commitment of a man who almost certainly doesn’t know the name of a single person in Mos Espa. (This premature commitment to ideals is particularly odd from someone who watches in disbelief only a few scenes earlier as Din Djarin is willing to risk his own life for his Mandalorian creed.)

On the other hand, the problem is that the series has no real adversary to confront Boba meaningfully or a real threat to stand in the way of what Boba really wants. The Hutt twins who show up to claim Jabba’s territory don’t even get names before they fly away. The rest of Mos Espa’s crime families are meaningless. And the “big bad” of the series, the Pyke syndicate, is just a bunch of dorks who die in waves as needed and whose leadership is instantly eliminated by Fennec Shand in one fell swoop.

Cad Bane: botched character

The closest the finale comes to giving Boba a real nemesis is a half-hearted attempt to make the Clone Wars live-action debutant Cad Bane a worthy adversary. It’s an 11th-hour story that requires viewers to know that the character is known from his animated appearance and that his and Boba’s mentor-student relationship was soured in a planned but never actually happened arc of The Clone Wars TV series.

Suggesting a long and meaningful story between two characters is no substitute for an actual relationship and certainly not a relationship on which the entire climax of the series can be built.

The end result is less a meaningful opportunity to examine how Boba (and his newfound morality) differs from the morally grey Bane, and more an opportunity for creator Dave Filoni to try once again to retroactively canonize the character’s original story. And even so, it’s not the dramatic climax of the episode: that moment comes a scene later, when Grogu and Mando team up to fight Boba’s runaway rancor.

Where do we go from here?

It’s not clear where The Book of Boba Fett goes from here. The series ends with Fett and his newfound team just hanging out in Mos Espa, having won over the townspeople thanks to their exploits. Disney has yet to announce a second season of the series, and the series finale scene – which once again shifts the focus to the Mandalorian and Grogu’s flight together – suggests that the Disney Plus version of Star Wars will return to continue this story with a third season of The Mandalorian when it arrives in the future.

If Boba Fett does reappear, it appears he’ll be in the same appearance category as Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris) or Cobb Vanth (Timothy Olyphant), a recurring character who we’ll next see when Din and Grogu are on Tatooine.

Less is more, but at Disney, there’s never enough

Boba Fett’s book has always been at a disadvantage: The Mandalorian has already taken over what would have been a perfect series for an armoured bounty hunter. But like the midichlorians or Solo, the series is further proof that if you try to explain everything in Star Wars, you lose a bit of the magic that made it so cool in the first place. Sometimes, less is more – but in a world where the entire Disney Plus streaming service depends on the new Star Wars series, it’s likely that “more” will be all we get from these characters.

-BadSector-