With just under two months before the premiere of The Book of Boba Fett, and nearly eleven
months after it was originally announced, we finally have the first trailer for the
series.
It’s less than two minutes long, so there isn’t a ton to go off of, but still!
It’s exciting to have something to look at.
It opens with a b’ommar monk in the desert, headed for Jabba’s palace.
Or I guess I should say Boba Fett’s palace now.
And that first shot is an odd choice to me.
The monk’s movements look a little off.
I think they’re going for a stop motion feel, which they achieved, I’m just not
sure I like it.
But Mollie loved it so I might be alone in that.
It kind of reminded me of seeing the first look at season one of The Mandalorian at Celebration
2019.
The effects weren’t polished and I was taken aback by that, and I was definitely overly
focused on it, because of course the series came out, everything looked great, all the
elements worked well together, and any anxiety I felt wound up being completely misplaced.
So let’s just move onto Boba Fett suiting up and announcing that he is not a bounty
hunter.
That feels significant, because of course that’s how we’re used to seeing the character.
It’s how we were introduced to him in The Empire Strikes Back, and most stories involving
him are about bounty hunting.
But he’s moving beyond that and searching for something more.
He’s a crime lord now.
Or something, I’m not sure how he would refer to himself.
Underworld ruler?
With his return in The Mandalorian there was a lot of speculation that maybe he was turning
over a new leaf.
He saved Fennec Shand.
He helped save Grogu.
And I’m still seeing that potential change hinted at in this trailer.
Fett claims that Jabba ruled with fear, but he intends to rule with respect.
Which is interesting, because that was exactly how Timothy Zahn wanted to set Grand Admiral
Thrawn apart from Darth Vader and the Emperor when he first wrote the villain into the Star
Wars Galaxy.
But I’ll come back to Thrawn.
Fett is saying all this to an Ithorian gangster, I assume.
Some other underworld ruler in a city I think looks really cool, built inside and around
a massive crater.
It reminded me a lot of Jedha.
I think the locations were maybe my favorite part of the trailer.
They looked great, and this is coming from someone who is constantly like, “Hey, can
we go to a planet that’s maybe not a desert of some kind more often?”
There’s still sand everywhere, but the city’s design still felt fresh and exciting.
Who knows?
It might be another city on Tatooine.
Maybe Jabba only ruled over one part of it.
At one point the Hutts ruled the entire planet, but the War of the Bounty Hunters comic recently
showed us that the entire Hutt Council except for Jabba was wiped out just before Return
of the Jedi.
So Jabba’s death leaves a pretty massive power vacuum in the galaxy, and explains why
any surviving Hutts may not have been equipped to take the planet or the palace back and
just left it for Bib Fortuna to grab.
Anyway, the gangster also looks really cool.
I'm digging the character design.
I’ve already seen a lot of people asking if that’s Dok Ondar and if we’re going
to see Batuu.
I’d love to see Batuu, but I don’t think that’s Ondar.
This guy in the trailer dresses more extravagantly, and I don’t see his little beard.
But this is also twenty five years before we can visit him in Galaxy’s Edge.
And Ondar does have ties to the criminal underworld.
We know Crimson Dawn invited him to their parties in Solo.
I’d love to be proven wrong, because I think Dok Ondar would be a fun connection, but I’m
not expecting that to be the case.
That Ithorian might not be long for the world anyway, because their meeting looks like it
comes to a tense standoff.
It sounds like Fett is approaching other gangsters to try to get them to cooperate instead of
compete with each other.
We see him meeting with a couple Trandoshans, Klatooinians, and Aqualish, and by the way,
that dude at the end of the table dressed in purple and yellow robes?
From a distance I thought he was a Falleen and maybe a member of Black Sun.
I was pretty bummed to see he wasn’t.
Because if that’s Fett’s goal, to unite the underworld, I would hope to actually see
some known major factions instead of a bunch of new, random faces.
Black Sun keeps getting danced around in other stories but it exists.
We haven’t seen them since the Clone Wars.
And we can revisit the Pykes.
What’s left of the Hutts is obviously relevant to this story.
And yeah, having that Ithorian be Dok Ondar does make some sense.
So I’m hoping the trailer is just showing us the randos for now, and the series will
build to some more substantial appearances.
There is a really fast shot of Tusken Raiders walking through a sandstorm.
I’m gonna go ahead and guess this is a flashback about how Fett survived the sarlacc pit.
And by the way, he’s looking a lot better in this trailer than he did in The Mandalorian.
Maybe he finally took a spa day and got some bacta after five years.
Maybe Jabba’s palace has some great medical facilities right underneath the droid torture
dungeon or something.
I dunno.
But back to the Tuskens, they look like they’re wearing darker robes, like the ones Fett wore
in The Mandalorian.
So maybe they come across this guy in the desert, near death, but obviously crawling
out of a sarlacc.
I could see them treating that like a big deal, a warrior who can survive a sarlacc
would be worth saving.
They nurse him back to health and he lives with them for five years for...some reason.
I hope we find that out.
Maybe he was like, “You know what?
I’m finally feeling pretty good.
I’m gonna go ask that nice and handsome Sheriff Cobb Vanth for my armor back so I
can unite the criminal underworld and make the galaxy a better place,” and right when
he makes that decision, Din drives off with all of it.
I say all that, but I don’t know how noble Fett’s intentions actually are.
I’m honestly probably giving him too much credit.
I mean he’s still working with criminals.
He’s talking about how cooperation can make them all rich.
That shot of a bunch of coins in his helmet was pretty striking.
And crime bosses get rich off the exploitation of others.
Jango Fett also instilled a major sense of legacy and reputation in his son.
So maybe Boba is just trying to improve his status and make his father proud.
Whether he’s doing all this for riches or notoriety, they’re both selfish reasons.
As interesting as I think it would be to see Fett turning over a new leaf, there’s nothing
really in this trailer to suggest any major life changes.
He’s still got that rage and brutality we saw in The Mandalorian.
Maybe this story is actually about the struggle of trying to be better in an environment that
doesn’t want to cooperate.
It does seem like Boba and Fennec might be going around to crime boss after crime boss
and offering an olive branch only for them to be like, “Nah.
That’s not how we do things.”
Whether we’re talking about the Sith or the Empire or the scum and villainy faction,
cooperation isn’t their thing.
They’re selfish.
They look out for themselves first and foremost, and they all stab each other in the back for
more power or money or whatever it is that they value.
So Fett’s main task might be attempting to convince them all to change their ways.
With words at first, but a gaffi stick to the face if need be.
I do really like the idea of unifying the underworld, because it makes sense for the
Grand Admiral Thrawn storyline that I assume most of our live action Star Wars series are
building towards.
In the original Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn, he comes back to wage war against the
New Republic, and he does very well.
But one of the things he doesn’t anticipate is a united front of smugglers coming in to
fight against him at a key battle.
They’re united under a man named Talon Karrde in the books, and he helps lead the Smugglers
Alliance against the Imperial Remnant.
Basically a bunch of Han Solos who had previously neglected to take sides in the battle between
good and evil decided it was time they did their part.
So maybe we’ll see something similar happening with the criminal underworld.
I think Boba Fett has a much bigger challenge ahead of him, if that’s where things are
headed, because we’re not talking about a bunch of Han Solos this time.
These are people with hearts of gold buried deep down.
They’re going to resist any threat to their power and wealth.
Probably violently, as the trailer shows us.
I’m probably really grasping here because, again, the trailer is very short and doesn’t
reveal much.
It’s more of a teaser, giving us some really great shots of new locations and characters.
There’s a definite sense of foreboding.
I think we might get a lot of scenes like Mayfeld shooting that Imperial in The Mandalorian’s
last season where the tension climbs and climbs until it finally breaks and everything falls
apart.
This definitely feels like it fits within The Mandalorian’s aesthetic, and I’m sure
it will wind up connecting to that story more than the trailer lets on.
I think there are still plenty of surprises to come, and I bet we’ll get more to talk
about and more plot details to discuss whenever the second trailer drops.
Probably in four to six weeks or so.
Overall I liked the trailer.
Didn’t love it.
I guess I wish there was one bombshell dropped.
But that’s just me being impatient.
It’ll be a lot more fun to experience those bombshells in the actual episodes next month.
So let me know what you thought of the first trailer in the comments!
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As always, thanks for watching and may the Force be with you!