The Book of Boba Fett ruined Star Wars' coolest character

The Guardian

"What originally made Boba the most interesting and mysterious character in the franchise was the fact that we knew absolutely nothing about him," says Chris Edwards. "Back then, he was just this cool, armoured bloke who stood on the side looking hard. He never took off his helmet and he barely spoke – he had a grand total of four lines in The Empire Strikes Back, and none at all in Return of the Jedi. And yet he still went on to become one of the most popular and talked about characters of the original trilogy. So much so that creator George Lucas even briefly considered making him the main villain in Jedi, with the ambitious intention of stretching out Luke Skywalker’s story over a number of subsequent trilogies. Making Boba Fett the main bad guy, or even a central character, would have diminished his all-important mystique, something that ultimately ended up happening anyway when he was dreadfully reintroduced as a child clone in Episode II: Attack of the Clones. And now it’s happening all over again. As this Disney+ series continues to examine his softer side in excruciatingly uninteresting detail, it feels as though the circle of bastardisation is almost complete. All we need now is a subplot in which he adopts a baby version of Yoda and spends at least two episodes wiping sick off its chin. Thanks to its treatment of the once badass, nihilistic bounty hunter, The Book of Boba Fett has turned out to be just another piece of bitterly disappointing, franchise-tarnishing tosh. Proof, if you ever needed it, that some parts of the galaxy are best left unexplored."

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• The Book of Boba Fett is missing a lot of what made The Mandalorian fun: "Each episode is padded with flashbacks documenting Boba’s journey from the belly of the Sarlacc to the head of a criminal enterprise (formerly belonging to Jabba the Hutt) who we already know he becomes," says Marissa Martinelli. "In the present day, the Big Bads are a bit of a snooze, a coterie of mostly interchangeable gangster types and a corrupt mayor with minimal screen time. And unlike on The Mandalorian, there is no Baby Yoda to distract from the series’ weaknesses by sipping soup or wandering into trouble or having the sweetest widdle gween face yes he does yes he does! Ahem, so: The Book of Boba Fett needs a villain, and it needs a baby. Fortunately, there is a character who already exists in Star Wars canon that can fill both roles—a character with strong ties to Tatooine and its criminal underbelly. A character who has been a part of Star Wars for more than a decade and yet is unknown to most....Meet Rotta the Huttlet."
• In defense of The Book of Boba Fett's biker gang