Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett - Episode 4 - Review

After space mopeds and slow speeder chases, I was hoping that the fourth episode would move the story forward, in a fast and meaningful way and while there was some good story, the bulk of it was contained within a flashback, which is proving to be a more interesting part of the series.

With Boba still making use of the bacta tank to recover from his time within the sarlacc pit, we got to experience more of his time before the series began and rather than him picking up another random character that gets killed off, we saw how he encountered Fennec Shand. We know that he found her, after she was shot and left for dead, but now we got to see how she survived and why she had mechanical parts inside of her, as was shown off back during the second season of The Mandalorian. It was an interesting start to the show, though again, space mopeds, they will not become a thing going forward. Still with Shand all healed up and in debt to the Fett, she agreed to help him recover his ship, the Slave 1, I mean Boba’s ship, gotta change the name to be more politically correct.

Ship in hand, Boba’s sense of righteous fury at the speeder bike gang that destroyed his adopted family was satisfying to watch, though it was perhaps over a little to quickly, more so when you think back to the comment from Shand, that a speeder bike gang taking out a Tusken Raider group is unlikely. Still with them working together, somewhat, Boba opted to recover his armour from the Sarlacc Pit, which involved a very cool sequence of events, which I won’t spoil, needless to say, it was a great way to fight back. My only concern here is that Boba’s armour was taken from him by Jawa’s and he either doesn’t remember that series of events, due to being near death and burning in acid, or the shows writers have forgotten the events. While hearing Shand admit that it served its purpose was a nice line, something about how maybe he lost in once he escaped would have made more sense.

Still, once the flashback was done, it was time to move the events back to the modern age, where Boba was still attempting to become the big bad crime boss of the area, but first a random trip to the only other location worth visiting, the gambling den. I get that they can’t have an infinite supply of locations to visit in a tv show, but at this point there are three locations for this one and honestly the gambling den is the least interesting. Seeing Black Krrsantan sitting there, enjoying a drink and getting more enraged, the more he saw the Trandoshans win and play without a care in the world. The problem is that the show doesn’t explain anything as to why he would be angry at people winning, inside of a gambling den, it is a sequence that does not fit, unless you know your Star Wars lore, the Trandoshan race are slavers and would raid the Wookie home planet of Kashyyyl to steal and enslave them, Black Krrsantan being one such Wookie. I enjoyed the sequence, because as a fan, I know that backstory and while I can appreciate Garsa Fwip, the twi'lek in charge of the den, talking him down, explaining that he is not in the arena anymore, it still doesn’t connect to his reason for the anger.

That leads me to the final moments of the episode, Boba hosting a dinner for the other crime lords of the area, saying either work with me, or stay out of my way. It isn’t a very big crime boss move to make the others not bow down to you and I can appreciate the type of boss that Boba is trying to be, the problem is, it doesn’t make for very good tv. That is the issue the show has right now, it keeps throwing us back into a time when Boba Fett is somewhat interesting, even if its mostly just him trying to obtain all the pieces he needs to match up with his appearance in The Mandalorian, but the show was hyped up on his becoming a bigtime crime boss, the hired gun now making the calls and we haven’t seen any of that. Each week, we get snippets of story that point to what could be happening, but we are more than halfway through this story and the modern-day story hasn’t really moved forward and when it does, we get so little, that right now they could all be cut into a single episode.

I really want this show to be good, Boba Fett was always hyped up to be this incredibly dangerous character, even now when Fennec Shand first heard his name, there was a look of recognition and danger in her reaction, but we are not seeing anything that proves that point. The way that the episode was left off, did make me think that some more dangerous folks could be joining the fight, The Bad Batch would be amazing to see in live action, but honestly who knows. What I do know is that unless Boba Fett starts to become interesting, The Rise of Skywalker could move up above it, in terms of a good story.

The Score

6.5

The Pros

+Seeing how Boba and Fennec came to be a team was fun

+Slave 1 launching an assault on various targets, never gets old

The Cons

-The flashbacks honestly feel like they are just there to explain how he got all his stuff back

-What is set in the present is not interesting and somehow makes Boba Fett less cool