‘The Book of Boba Fett’ welcomes a talented new director to ‘Star Wars’
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The second chapter of The Book of Boba Fett just hit Disney+, and it does a lot to make up for last week’s shorter runtime and somewhat predictable story beats.
“The Tribes of Tatooine” clocks in at 52 minutes, delivers nearly everything I could ask for from one episode of a Star Wars television show and welcomes a shining new talent to the galaxy far, far away: director Steph Green (The Americans). Joining her as DP is Dean Cundey, the legendary cinematographer behind John Carpenter’s Halloween and The Thing. So here’s a bold, beautifully crafted episode that lets Temuera Morrison explore more of his character than we’ve ever seen in a live-action Boba story. In a word, this one’s special.
How can you watch ‘Boba Fett’?
In order to watch The Book of Boba Fett, you need to subscribe to Disney+, the platform that serves as the online home for all things Star Wars. You can watch Disney+ using streaming devices, desktop browsers, a wide range of mobile devices, smart TVs, and video-game consoles.
A subscription to Disney+ costs $7.99 per month or $79.99 for the full year, though you can save by signing up for the Disney Bundle with ESPN+ and Hulu, which gives you access to all three streaming services for just $13.99 a month.
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What happens in this episode of ‘Boba Fett’?
Things pick up where we left off with the Order of the Night Wind—the assassin Fennec captured after she and Boba were ambushed in the streets of Mos Espa. “Who sent you?” Boba asks, but all the prisoner offers in reply is a curse in Huttese. So they drop him into the gladiator pit beneath Jabba’s old throne room and raise the gate that once held back the mighty rancor. The assassin cries out that it was the mayor of Mos Espa who sent him, and Fennec reveals there’s no rancor in the palace at all. But they have the answer they need.
Fett and Fennec stroll into the mayor’s office with their prisoner, demanding to know why the assassins were hired, and the mayor orders the prisoner’s execution before he can do any more talking. “Thank you for turning him in,” the mayor says, explaining that the assassins aren’t allowed to operate outside of Hutt-controlled space. He tells Boba and Fennec to head to the Sanctuary to find out who truly hired the Order of the Night Wind. While Boba gets straight to business talking to Garsa Fwip, the bar’s owner, we hear a large kettledrum beating in the distance. The Twins, we’re told, have come to claim their cousin’s estate.
“This is Jabba’s territory,” the brother twin says. “And now it is ours.”
Boba doesn’t mince words with the Hutts. He is the daimyo in this territory, now, and all that was Jabba’s is now his. “If you want it, you’ll have to kill me for it.”
“Sleep lightly, bounty hunter,” says the male Hutt.
Back in the bacta tank that sustains him, Fett again dreams of his time among the Tuskens. They train him in the proper way to hold a gaffi stick, to fight as a Tusken Raider fights; he’s become respected as more or less equal among them, having saved one of their young from the monstrous sand beast in last week’s episode. He honors them in return, and when several Tuskens are senselessly massacred by a passing train, Boba participates in the ritual burning of the dead, and takes it upon himself to find a way to stop such violence from being done again.
“Be back by morning,” he tells them, communicating in the Tuskens’ own sign language as he speaks the words aloud. He ventures alone out into the night, finds the gang of swoop bikers from episode one, roughs them up and takes their bikes back to the Tusken camp. The tiny saloon where he confronts the gang offers some brief yet meaningful cameos from Camie and Fixer, the other half of Luke and Biggs’s friend group from a scene left on the cutting-room floor of Star Wars in the late seventies. (In the novelization for The Last Jedi, Luke daydreams about a life in which he and Camie were eventually married.)
Back at their camp, Boba teaches the Tuskens how to ride the swoop bikes and to leap from one to another, in order to prepare for the next time the hostile train passes through.
When it does, Fett and the other warriors chase after it, climb aboard, and relieve the droid conductor of its station. The Pykes on board the train are spice runners, and they put up a fair amount of resistance, but Boba and the natives manage to bring the train to a halt. The Pykes will be spared, Fett explains, only if the syndicate marches to Anchorhead and leaves the planet to deliver his terms.
“These sands are no longer free for you to pass. These people lay ancestral claim to the Dune Sea,” says Boba, “and if you are to pass, a toll is to be paid to them. Any death dealt from the passing freighters will be returned tenfold.”
After nightfall, the Tusken chief presents Fett with a gift beside the campfire—a gesture of thanks for all that he’s done to help. Fett opens the tiny wicker basket to discover a lizard, and the chief blows a brownish powder into Boba’s face.
“You are a good guide,” the chief says. “Now this gift will guide you.” As the small lizard burrows into the Mandalorian’s sinuses, Fett slips into a nightmarish hallucination; his memories, the sands of Tatooine, and the realm of the mystical are blended together.
In his vision, the Dune Sea turns to a saltwater ocean under a dark blue sky. Lightning illuminates the distance. And Boba comes to a pair of similar trees: one large, one small. He climbs the larger of the two, feels himself become enveloped by its branches and sees a glimpse of his youth on Kamino—watching out a viewport as his father, Jango, heads off-world in their Firespray-class starship. Fett breaks free by snapping one of the larger branches, and we find him carrying it as he arrives back at the Tusken camp.
From this branch he crafts a gaderffii stick of his own, and the Tuskens dress him in black ceremonial garb. He and the tribe dance around the firelight as one.
Watch ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ on Disney+
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