Star Wars Reviews: The Book of Boba Fett Series Review

 Good morning everyone! How're you all doing today? Welcome back to Star Wars Reviews, the series where I review and discuss all things Star Wars. Today I'm going to be reviewing The Book of Boba Fett, which just had it's finale on Disney+ this morning. So, let's get right into it. There will be spoilers, including for the finale, because I think by this point anybody reading this review has at least caught up on the first six episodes, if not watched the finale by now. So, like I said, let's get right into it.

I can't seem to find anything about whether this is a limited series or not. Wikipedia doesn't say it's a limited series, but the way Jon Favreau talks about it in the Wikipedia article, it seems like there won't be a second season for the show. Which makes sense because when it comes to franchises like the MCU, Star Trek, and Star Wars, the studio producing the shows knows which shows will be multi-season shows and what will be limited series shows when they start producing a new series. So I'm writing this review as if we're not getting a second season.

I said this in my last My Geek Life post, but I think that The Mandalorian and it's spin-offs, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka, should all have their titles dropped and just be called Star Wars because season 2 of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett set up both Ahsoka and The Mandalorian season 3. Plus with the number of cameos this show had, including Luke Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano in episode 6. Plus it's all Star Wars anyway, so why not call it that, without all the second titles.

I'll be honest, I was very skeptical about this show going into it. I mean Boba Fett really isn't that interesting of a character in the movies considering he has a total of five minutes of screen time and three lines of dialogue in the entirety of the Original Trilogy, and he was a kid in Attack of the Clones. And yes, I know he showed up in The Clone Wars and has had numerous comics and novels written about him, but what I saw of him in The Clone Wars wasn't all that interesting, and pretty much all of those novels and comics were written in the mid to late '90s, before Lucas made Attack of the Clones. All of which were completely superseded by the Prequel Trilogy because they had a very different backstory for Fett in them.

The first four episodes of this show were okay. They weren't great, but they also weren't bad. The biggest problem I had with them was the flashbacks. They attempted to do these flashbacks the way Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg did them in seasons 1-5 of Arrow and it just didn't work for this show because of how unbalanced those episodes were. To be fair the flashbacks in Arrow could be unbalanced too, but usually the flashback heavy episodes happened only when Oliver was incapacitated in the main story, like in the season 1 episode where Felicity finds out that Oliver is the Hood, but for this show, the flashbacks really weren't necessary the way they did them. Particularly in episode 2, just because of how short this show was. When you have seasons or series that are under ten episodes long, you REALLY don't have that much time to divert to other storylines, or doing entire episodes that take away from the main story you're trying to tell. This show did that three times. Episode 2 was almost entirely flashback, episode 5 was the return of Din Djarin, a.k.a. the Mandalorian, and episode 6 was the return of Grogu, a.k.a. Baby Yoda, plus appearances by Luke Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano.

The first four episodes were still pretty good, even though I didn't like the flashbacks. Episode 2 was interesting, because it called back to older Star Wars tales, namely the deleted scenes from A New Hope, as Luke's friends, or former friends I guess, Fixer and Camie make appearances. This was actually their first appearance in filmed canon ever. Deleted scenes don't count, but they have appeared in novels since Disney bought Lucasfilm.

The best episodes of this show were episodes 5, 6, and 7 simply because they drew in the wider Star Wars Universe, which is how it should be with this franchise as a whole. Unlike with Marvel, DC, and Star Trek, where a story isn't necessarily served by having the wider universe come in and intrude, because Star Wars was always a more collaborative endeavour in terms of the expanded universe material and the authors reading each other's work, supporting each other, and using each other's characters, a story is more fleshed out when characters from elsewhere in the Star Wars Universe show up.

To be honest, this show does have it's problems. For example, it's way too short. I've been saying this since season 2 of The Mandalorian but the superhero and Sci-Fi stuff on Disney+ need more episodes because six to eight episodes isn't enough to be telling these grand, epic, stories in these universes. And this is a Disney problem because if you look at the DC shows on HBO Max and The CW, and the Star Trek shows on Paramount+, they all have between ten and fifteen episodes per season and they work out much better than the Star Wars and Marvel shows do. And The Book of Boba Fett seems to be the worst offender of this because Favreau and Filoni are trying to tell this epic Boba Fett story but it's hindered by the fact that there's too much story to tell and not enough time to tell it in. 

So when you have a show with a particular character's name in it's title, that show should focus only on that character. Which is a problem I had with the more recent seasons of The Flash. Too much time was put into developing the supporting characters, like Iris, Caitlin, and others that Barry himself ended up not being as interesting. Especially when the writers, just like they did to Oliver Queen in the last four seasons of Arrow, kept writing Barry like he's stupid, when the Flash is supposed to be an intelligent character. And yes, I just went on a tangent on the Arrowverse shows in a Star Wars review. I'm a geek, what do you expect me to do?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that The Book of Boba Fett, the way it was written, is unnecessary. I liked it for what it was, but it could've been alot better than it was, and I do feel like the character was wasted in his own show in favour of setting up the wider Star Wars Universe for what's coming with Ahsoka and season 3 of The Mandalorian. Personally, I liked it, especially after episode 4, but it could've been way better.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with another post. I just started reading Radio Fifth Grade by Gordon Korman, so I think that's going to be my next book review. As for comics, I'm trying to figure that out still, and I'm working out some details for other posts that I want to do, like that Walt Disney Classics VHS series review that I've been promising for the last week or so. And I will try to get to the last part of my Movies I Saw in Theatres series that I've been doing lately. Until then have a wonderful afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care!