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The Book of Boba Fett Chapter Six: From the Desert Comes a Stranger

"So much like your father."

I can't think of any character on this show where that would actually be a compliment.

I'm having something of a dilemma, and it's the same one that I encountered last week. How do I judge the quality of this episode? On its own merits? Or as an episode of a show called The Book of Boba Fett, one that was marketed as telling a kind of Godfather story with the titular character?

That's the issue that I had this week and that's the issue that I had last week. This was an excellent episode for The Mandalorian Season Three. It was not for the penultimate episode of The Book of Boba Fett. Fett was only in one, very brief scene, and he didn't have any dialogue. I thought that he was supposed to be our main character! Instead, Mando has completely taken over.

And he is infinitely more watchable than Fett, which really reflects poorly on the quality of writing and development that Fett has gotten so far. Granted, this may be because Mando has been around longer, but I don't really watch The Mandalorian so I don't think that's influencing me too much. Fett simply hasn't been given a chance to shine. To justify why we should care about him or what's going on.

But enough negativity and disappointment, because like I said, this was an excellent episode of television.

I'm going to jump to the end of the episode just because that was the most exciting part. Cad Bane! In live action! He looked so good! He was so cool! I really hope that he and Fett have fun scenes together in the finale considering that Bane was one of his first mentors. Yes, his addition does run the risk of being just one cameo too far and relies more on nostalgia and the past as opposed to building something new and fully coherent, but... Cad Bane!

He does get points off for shooting Cobb Vanth, though at least he probably didn't kill him. After all, Cobb only got shot once as opposed to the poor deputy who got half a dozen blaster bolts in him. It looks like this is going to push the citizens of Freetown into siding with Fett, though, so his ragtag army is growing.

Hopefully Garsa will be there too. She was standing very close to where the bomb went off, but we didn't see a body! Billie's Rules of Television demands a body. Granted, we didn't see a body for the female Tusken Raider either, but I'm trying to hold out hope. The Pykes have certainly declared war. I may have preferred for Fett to strike first if only so that he would be proactive at least once, but this dual attack was still an exciting way to end the episode and send us off into the finale.

The brief trip off Tatooine certainly tugged at my heartstrings. Even while wearing his helmet, you could feel every second of anguish Mando went through as he debated whether or not he should see Grogu. Grogu's training scenes with Luke were also pure nostalgia and callbacks to Luke's own training with Yoda. I did not expect Grogu to destroy the training remote, though. That almost seemed... petty? Vindictive? Not something that I would have expected from a Jedi.

I also did not expect to see so much of Luke. It was... weird. The CGI looked fantastic, but I still knew that it wasn't actually Mark Hamill so my brain couldn't quite cross the uncanny valley. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the ability to completely manufacture an actor's voice and face at will. It's very cyberpunk dystopian. Could they not just hire Sebastian Stan to play Luke? (He looks like just him, it's uncanny. Seriously, Google it.)

Either way, the scenes did feel like they were more there to act as a prologue and to set up the inevitable reunion of Mando and Grogu. I am curious about the glimpse in Grogu's memories. The stormtroopers looked like members of the 501st, which was with Anakin when he slaughtered the younglings at the Jedi Temple. Presumably, that is the event that we saw.

Random Thoughts

As soon as I saw him, I immediately said "R2!" with childlike glee. I am not ashamed of this.

The ant droids were pretty cool. Such an interesting concept for construction and building things.

Those poor frogs.

I have trouble accepting the idea that Luke would be very anti-attachment when it comes to Jedi training. Was he not the person who literally brought his father back from the Dark Side through the Power of Love and Attachments?

When Cobb kicked over the chest of spice, all I could think about was how I hope the wind wouldn't just blow it all right into his face.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

2 comments:

  1. I found some scenes so boring I fast forwarded through them :(

    The 'uncanny valley' aspect for me were the Timothy Olyphant scenes. I understand that some actors just have an archetype of character they play (Kelsey Grammer got good mileage out of always being 'Frasier'), but in this episode he delivered lines stolen straight from an episode of 'Justified'. I think it was Roger Ebert that said you can suspend disbelief in a sci-fi movie as long as it doesn't do anything to pull you out of the illusion. When Timothy Olyphant began speaking the words of Raylan Givens, that made him Raylan Givens, and not just an archetype of Raylan Givens. Timothy Olyphant is good at what he does, and it's too bad the writers didn't let him be a Star Wars character.

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  2. I'm starting to think Covid ruined their shooting plans and they decided screw this we're going to take the first 2 episodes of the Mandalorian season 3 and splice them with whatever we we able to film for Boba Fett.

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