Oddly enough, if you take his appearances and lines together from the Original Trilogy, you can get a pretty solid grasp on his character. Not as solid as if he'd gotten major screen-time, but enough to know more-or-less what the guy's about.

The dude is supposed to be extremely good at what he does (being one of a handful of bounty hunters hand-picked by Darth Vader for a very high-priority job implies this), ruthless (the guy literally got a "no excessive force" warning from a goddamn Sith Lord in ESB), cold-blooded (is upset at the notion that Han might be killed by the freezing process, but is 100% cool with it once Vader assures him the Empire would compensate him for the lost bounty if that happened), doesn't seem to mind enjoying the "perks" of a job (we see him using his position in Jabba's court to flirt with the slave girls, which has some potentially unsavory implications since they may not actually be allowed to reject advances like that from Jabba's favored employees), and he's an obvious loner when he's not on retainer for Jabba.

So far, the Book of Boba Fett has repeatedly contradicted each and every one of those points, with not a shred of explanation given for the changes in characterization, or even any acknowledgement that a change has occurred.

Firstly, the "Toxic, misogynistic and overwhelmingly negative toward change" label represents an absolutely tiny minority of internet trolls, and is otherwise a gross mischaracterization that's been systematically used by Disney and the entertainment media outlets that take their money to smear anyone who criticizes what they've done with not just Star Wars, but with every popular franchise they've taken over and screwed up. It's their go-to way of keeping people from actually listening to the criticisms levelled against them, and I see you've fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.

Notice that pretty much no one in the fandom has any actual problem with Ahsoka, or Leia, or Padme or Mara Jade, or Jyn Erso, or any number of female protagonists/leads who aren't god-awful Mary Sues. With that in mind, the accusations of misogyny in particular would be pretty funny if they weren't so brain-dead and annoying.

If you actually honestly listened to the majority of the coherent criticism, it is actually the same basic kinds of things we have criticized stories for here on DLP for years: Mary Sue protagonists, tokenism, shitty writing (good lord, the shitty writing...), poor characterization, style-over-substance thinking, rampant continuity errors, drastic overuse of clichés and shitty tropes like the Idiot Ball, etc.

That said, you're not wrong about where BoBF has gone wrong. At this point it's just a circus of forced references and clumsy callbacks. The fact that they've gone out of their way to create a nonsensical scenario where Danny Trejo and Boba Fett can ride a Rancor around for kicks - while simultaneously failing completely to establish any meaningful motivation for its main characters to be doing what they're doing - is just shameful.

 

I... actually liked episode 3? Much more than episode 1 and 2 tbh.

Yeah, the street gang's costuming is cringe, and the chase scene was way too slow (that is a consistent problem for sure, none of the action on this show feels particularly fast-paced), but they did a ton of quality worldbuilding in this episode, and they did it all without much exposition, setting the stage for a big Syndicate showdown later in the series.

I think the fight against Krrsantan was actually not bad. Wookies are supposed to be forces of nature in a close quarters brawl. A half-naked human with a stick and blaster isn't going to have the advantage there.

In regards to Boba's character... keep in mind that he had tons of development in Clone Wars, far beyond the handful of lines we got in the original series, and that's really what they're going off of here. Clone Wars Boba was portrayed as being uncomfortable with acts of cruelty if they didn't directly service him or his plot to kill Windu. The last time we see him on that show, he's running his own crew, a teenager playing at being a big time Bounty Hunter badass. He makes some morally questionable decisions for money, and is rewarded with being humiliated by Ventress.

I honestly think honorable!Boba is a good place to evolve that character to.

 

That would make sense, except that Boba's OT characterization is chronologically after his Clone Wars characterization. Which means that it still needs to be addressed because that kid who was "uncomfortable with unnecessary cruelty" grew up to be the guy that had to be lectured about disintegrations by a Dark Lord of the Sith.

This makes his overall characterization very schizophrenic without some elaboration on how and why he's changed over the years. I agree that honorable!Boba is as good an evolution of the character as any, but it must be acknowledged that it is an evolution, a change. And, so far, the show seems to be pretending that this is just who he's been all along.

 

I suppose my point was that I don't feel his OT persona was rich enough to really give a full idea of who he was. Clone Wars gave us that context, and his Clone Wars persona and OT persona are not mutually exclusive.

Established by OT: Boba is a bad guy, who does bad guy things.

Established by Clone Wars: Boba is a morally ambiguous guy who does bad guy things for money and then has feefees about it. He likes money and he likes comforts, and he has no qualms doing bad to get those things. But he also has an honorable streak. His father was an honorable man despite being a mercenary, and his rage at losing his father led him down a dark path of revenge and criminality. He grew up hanging around heartless assholes (Cad Bane and Aura Sing) and tried to emulate their lives. But their cruelty was never something he fully managed to emulate. He is still his father's son.

 

I think they spent a little too long on the ship recovery, but Episode 4 was good. Nuff said.

I do wish "The Mods" gang and affiliates had better costuming and makeup. Like, none of these people look like they belong on Tatooine. They're all too clean-cut and their tech doesn't fit Star Wars' old/busted futurism vibe

 

The flashback sequences in this show are decent enough. The present day sequences very much aren't. And it looks like we've run out the clock on the flashbacks. Maybe this means it'll stop dicking around with the present day plot and do something now that there are only three episodes left, but who knows. My expectations are not high.

Also who the hell greenlit the Cyberpunks?

 

I really like the idea of the cyberpunks. I think that it would be really cool if it were a more cosmopolitan planet Boba was on with them. Corellia maybe.

On Tatooine its very jarring.

 

It feels like they fit Taris or Corusant more than here.

 

Episode 4 was a lot better than previous ones, even if we did spend an unreasonably long time watching a legendary bad-ass fail hard at chasing after a robot rabbit. They finally gave us an actual motivation for doing what they're doing (even if it was a little flat because of a lack of show), praise be! It only took them until past the half way point of the season to do it.

I do have some questions though. Apparently the flashback story has spanned years? I saw no indication of that in the previous episodes, but it would have made it make a whole fuckload more sense at the time.

The bikers mentioned as being 'no ordinary bike gang' and I thought maybe something would happen there. Nope. Quickly nipped that thought in the bud.

It felt very much like this episode realised just how little was achieved in past episodes, and tried to hurriedly fill in the gaps. It could almost have been episode 1 and nothing of value would have been lost.

 

I believe his time with the Tuskens specifically lasted years? We don't really see it, but I got the impression he'd been living with them for a good long while before they got dead. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been so broken-up about it.

 

Before this episode if you asked me I would have guess maybe a month or two.

 

Yeah, I did not think it had been years. Weeks or months, sure. Years? Not the feel I got. Did the kid Tusken from the early days of his, ah, stay grow up at all? I thought he was still just a kid, but to be honest I couldn't really tell them apart all that well.

Again, just another of those things where the early episodes completely failed to show us stuff, which then had to be fixed through some exposition in episode 4.

 

Ahhhh, that’s what I wanted. 5/5

 

Episode 5 was phenomenal. Too bad it was a Mando episode and not a Boba episode. Kek.

No but seriously this was a top tier episode.

A) Had great worldbuilding for both the Mando plot and the Boba plot.

B) Had tons of callbacks (big lol at the "Wizard") that felt natural.

C) The dialogue was snappy and served a purpose.

D) They brought back my all time favorite ship, the N-1 (and one that is modded out with a Grogu baby seat! Like.... that's going to be the cutest fucking thing ever seeing him peak out of that little port). They gonna sell a fuckload of toys goddamn.

 

Man, Mando just keeps getting cooler. Black bladed lightsaber, flowing cloak, silvery nigh-invulnerable Boba Fett armor, a hot rod Starfighter with matching color scheme...

Though as cool as the starfighter is, how is he supposed to transport bounties that aren't a severed head?

I'm guessing what he had made for Grogu was a little ball made of beskar, as something to remember him by. Maybe it will make its way into becoming a pommel for his future lightsaber.

 

Or sleep? The old ship was a campervan, this is a motorbike.

 

Maybe he'll be able to rustle up a larger J-Type as well, that the N-1 can dock with. That would be neat.

 

That was pure nostalgia porn + din and I'm here for it

 

I revise my earlier prediction: it's probably a mudhorn crest, to indicate Grogu is part of Djarin's clan.

Two other gripes about the episode:
- Wasn't the thing about not removing your helmet also including not being able to put it back on again? Why did they let him leave with his armor?
- "Beskar is for armor, not for weapons." I guess those whistling darts don't count, then?

 

I have the same questions. Also, why does the Book of Bobba Fett have a Mando episode? lol Not complaining too much though, this was good.