When it comes to popularity versus screen-time, there may be no bigger winner than Boba Fett.
For decades, fans have been fervently buying action figures, comics, and novels featuring
the world's favorite bounty hunter.
Sorry, Dog.
People love Fett, even though he has about four lines of dialogue in the entire Original
Trilogy before being knocked into a giant pit by a blind guy.
Because of his popularity and his limited screentime, it would be easy to think that
Boba Fett doesn't have any hidden secrets.
However, the truth is that there's still plenty you probably don't know about this mysterious
character from a galaxy far, far away…
His first real appearance
Most people know that Boba Fett first appeared on the big screen in The Empire Strikes Back...
no matter what George Lucas did to the special edition of A New Hope later on.
The real savvy fan may even be able to tell you Fett's first appearance on any screen
was during 1978's Star Wars Holiday Special.
"Maybe I can help you.
I am Boba Fett."
But neither of those are actually the first time the public got to see Boba Fett.
His first public appearance was a few weeks earlier, on September 24, 1978, at the San
Anselmo County Fair.
San Anselmo was the home of Lucasfilm at the time and George Lucas thought that taking
part in the local parade was a great idea.
While Fett didn't engage in any pie eating contests or hog calling, assistant film editor
Duwayne Dunham donned the sweaty costume and signed autographs — even though no one actually
knew who Boba Fett was yet.
All white
Even before Boba Fett took his unusual place in a local parade and a terrible holiday special,
he'd been going through some changes.
Concept artist Ralph McQuarrie had a ton of different designs for Boba that he was testing
out, ultimately settling on the Mandalorian armor fans know and love today.
The original suit was completely fabricated and screen-tested… except it was completely
Stormtrooper-white.
Sure, he still had a cool jetpack and sinister visor, but he was basically a bleached-out
version of the green-and-red guy of today.
Why?
Those original armor designs were originally planned to be old Stormtrooper armor from
an old regiment, which would have made him look like a medieval knight marching into
war with modern soldiers.
But, y'know, in space.
As plans for the film shifted and lore began to grow, the armor became Mandalorian, Fett
took a smaller role, and he finally got some much-needed color.
The big bad
According to an interview with Lucasfilm's first fan relations officer, Chris Miller,
Fett was originally going to play a much larger role in the trilogy, which is why he had such
a prominent role in the Holiday Special.
At one point, he was even going to eclipse Darth Vader as the trilogy's biggest bad guy.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
As George Lucas became increasingly bored with space, he rewrote Star Wars from a dozen
films down to three, compacted his entire second trilogy concept into Return of the
Jedi, and threw Fett into a belching desert cloaca.
Taking action
When Star Wars has an action figure controversy — and they happen surprisingly often — it
usually revolves around Leia's gold bikini or too few Rey figures on the shelves.
But the original Star Wars action figure controversy stemmed from none other than Boba Fett.
"I'm the best bounty hunter in the whole galaxy!"
"That's why you got the job."
Let's recap: Fett's first appearance was at a county fair.
His second appearance was in the Holiday Special.
His third appearance, prior to the May 1980 release of Empire Strikes Back, was on the
back of action figure packaging as a mail-away figure, when he still didn't have a backstory.
Just one problem: the Fett figure was portrayed with a rocket-firing backpack.
Star Wars fans, who were basically the original turbonerds, were pretty upset at not receiving
the action-packed Fett they were promised.
Kenner had produced some prototypes of the full figure, which have since become the Holy
Grail of Star Wars collectibles, but they were never released to the public due to safety
concerns after a child choked on a missile from a Battlestar Galactica toy.
Hasbro bought Kenner in 2010, and finally made things right when they released an actual
rocket-firing Boba Fett as a mail-away in their Vintage Collection.
Finally, adult nerds everywhere got their fondest wish: death by action figure.
If they can just figure it out without killing each other.
"Just push.
Push the button.
Push."
"I'm pushing.
Good God."
Fett's many origins
Attack of the Clones made it absolutely clear that Boba Fett is the unaltered clone of legendary
bounty hunter Jango Fett, the prototype for all of the galaxy's Clone Troopers.
Unlike his helmeted clone-bros, Boba is raised personally by Jango, and eventually takes
his own place in the galaxy as a bounty hunter.
But even before Attack of the Clones, the Star Wars Expanded Universe had developed
a rich backstory for just about every weirdo in every scene of Star Wars, no matter how
irrelevant.
Even Ice Cream Maker Guy.
Fun fact: his name is Willrow Hood, he's a Rebel hero, he has his own action figure,
he has a legion of fans, and in terms of screen time versus fan fervor, he just might beat
out Boba Fett.
Anyway, according to Tales of the Bounty Hunters, a novel released in 1996, Boba Fett's real
name was Jaster-Mereel, and he's essentially an ex-cop from the world known as Concord
Dawn who's exiled from the planet for killing his corrupt superior.
Eventually, he's taken in by the Mandalorians and becomes Boba Fett.
After Attack of the Clones, however, Jaster was rewritten to be a completely separate
character from Fett.
In the comic series Jango Fett: Open Seasons, Jaster-Mereel was the leader of Mandalore,
and the guy who took a young Jango Fett under his wing after Jango's parents were murdered.
Occasionally, though, both Boba and Jango would use Jaster's name as their own, kinda
like an intergalactic Rusty Shackleford.
He's survived a fight with Vader
The Original Trilogy implies that Boba Fett and Darth Vader have a pretty okay relationship,
but readers of Star Wars comics over the years have witnessed the rather unforgettable sight
of Vader and Fett trying to all-out murder each other.
Sure, they're mostly non-canonical now, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to see.
First, there's the fight in Star Wars Tales #11 where Fett actually holds his own against
Vader in a lightsaber battle in a cantina.
Vader and Fett faced off once again in Boba Fett: Enemy of the Empire #4, where the stakes
were a bit higher.
In truly bizarre comics fashion, the two fight over the severed-but-still-talkative head
of a fortune-telling alien queen.
Boba Fett is hired to retrieve the head in a box, but Vader wants it as a tool for his
eventual overthrow of Emperor Palpatine.
The two come to blows, with Vader deflecting blaster bolts and cutting Fett's getaway speeder
in half, until he stops screwing around and Force chokes Fett... who kicks the head off
a cliff, and jetpacks to safety while Vader uses the Force to retrieve it.
The two only ended up having a pleasant work relationship later on because the decapitated
queen-head says they will, and Vader is pretty superstitious… but they probably also bonded
over how difficult it is to go to the bathroom while wearing armor.
Eight is enough
You'd think that Darth Vader would have taken the record for the most actors portraying
the same character on the big screen, between actors, last-second stand-ins, and voice actors,
not to mention stuntmen.
But Boba Fett really wins that award since, for the most part, whoever fit into the armor
got to play him.
Jeremy Bulloch played Fett through most of the character's appearances in the Original
Trilogy, with the exception of two days, when he missed filming and the actor who played
the Rebel pilot Dak, John Morton, filled in.
Throughout the Original Trilogy, Jason Wingreen provided his voice.
For the special editions, he was dubbed by Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango
Fett.
And when George Lucas needed more Fett footage for his Special Editions, he decided to just
use three different Industrial Light and Magic employees who happened to fit into the outfit.
Finally, for the prequels, young Boba was played by Daniel Logan, who also provided
the voice for Boba Fett in the Clone Wars cartoon.
And we're not even counting video games, radio dramas, or Star Tours.
King of the Mandalorians
Though it's been wiped out by Star Wars' massive continuity overhaul, Boba Fett was once the
leader of his entire planet of Mandalore, just like his father was before him.
What's the name of the leader of all of Mandalore, the fifth planet in the Mandalore system?
Quite simply, "Mandalore."
That word probably works for everything — it's like 'aloha,' 'shalom,' 'smurf,' or 'squanch.'
"Squanchy party bro!"
"Ah, Squanchy!"
"Is there a good place for me to SQUANCH around here?"
"Squanchy you can squanch wherever you want, man!"
The actual history of the Mandalorians seems to shift around a lot, but in the 2008 Star
Wars novel Legacy of the Force: Revelation, Fett's reluctant rise to power is spelled
out clearly.
He's hired to kill the existing Mandalore leader, Fenn Shysa, who ends up saving Fett's
life, but Shysa is critically injured in the process.
As a result, Fett is bound to honor his last request: that Fett himself become the new
Mandalore...of Mandalore.
As such, Fett had the Mandalorians fight back against the alien Yuuzhan Vong invaders in
the novella Boba Fett: A Practical Man, and helped restore Mandalore after the war.
Make Mandalore great again, right?
Fett's family
Another thing lost to Disney's revised continuity was Fett's family, which he started sixteen
years before A New Hope.
It's weird to think of Fett as a doting dad, but he and his bounty hunter wife, Sintas
Vel, settled down and had a daughter named Ailyn when Fett was only nineteen.
Unfortunately for everyone, Sintas is assaulted by Boba's boss, who Boba then kills, sending
him spiralling into exile and divorce.
Sintas ends up frozen in carbonite for four decades, and their daughter goes on a misguided
quest to kill Boba Fett herself.
Not only that, but Ailyn trains her own daughter, Mirta, to follow in her footsteps.
And you thought your family was messed up.
All of that, and Boba Fett still found time to train the Expanded Universe daughter of
Han and Leia: Jaina Solo.
With the help of Fett and his granddaughter Mirta Gev, Jaina is able to kill her evil
brother Jacen and restore peace to the galaxy.
So, no matter what reality you're following, Han and Leia have one really messed up, evil
kid.
Those Skywalkers are bad news.
Thanks for watching!
Click the Looper icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!