Is It the Greatest Star Wars Ever?

 I will try to be good and keep this all spoiler free, but I make no promises. If you are big on keeping spoiler free, best not to read on.

This season of The Mandalorian has been really good. The story has developed well, with a lot of connections being made with other Star Wars storylines such as the two animated series Clone Wars and Rebels as well as getting to see the first live action versions of characters from those series. They did deal with the Mandalorian Helmet issue I talked about a few posts back and I was very close to being correct about how it all works. They just keep doing it right to make the show a solid part of the Star Wars universe and in this last episode, they did what needed to be done for forty years.

While it was really awesome, it was no surprise that Boba Fett was going to be back and be used in a significant way. When you start off the season with an episode all about his armor and giving him a brief cameo at the end of that episode, there was no way he was not going to have a bigger role before the season was over. In Chapter 14: The Tragedy Boba Fett returns and make it clear he will be a strong character in the series going forward.

I saw this episode called 'The Best Star Wars Since [The] Empire [Strikes Back]', 'Better Star Wars than any of the last five films', and so on. I don't necessarily agree with them, especially that jab at the Disney Star Wars movies, as I very much have enjoyed all those films, but I will say it was a great episode in so many ways.

As I said before, it did a great job with the story and moving the plot of the series itself along. This episode made it clear that they were not just going to run in circles. Enough happened here to make it clear they can't go back to how it was. There really is no easy way to reset things at this point and that is good sign of things to come.

Now we will get to the big impact of the episode, what everyone is actually excited about, what was 40 years in the making. The character of Boba Fett was clearly an early one Lucas created, as production aspects of him can be found from early on. We first get to see him in the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978. There he was in a two part cartoon adventure, which is the main reason to watch the special, as the rest of it really feels like some kind of odd social experiment gone wrong. Then we got him in live action in The Empire Strikes Back and he appears to die in one of the worst conceived deaths scenes in film history in Return of the Jedi, and then we back track and get to see a young Boba in Attack of the Clones and the Clone Wars series. While he was brought back in the old expanded universe stories that are now the 'Legends' continuity, none of that is canon now. This is the first time we get an active Boba Fett as an adult, live action even, as part of the new continuity. But that is not all. In the past we got to hear about the reputation of Boba Fett, and it was made to be something significant. Yet we had never seen him come close to living up to that reputation. His deaths seemed to actually go against the legend.

Chapter 14: The Tragedy, gave us a live action Boba Fett who fully shows himself to be an undeniable badass, not to be messed with or taken lightly. This is what we have been waiting 40 years for. We are shown that even without his armor he is to be feared. This is what has all the fans cheering. Then on top of that we get the answers to the big questions concerning him and his father.

This is one time they did so much right in filling in gaps and repairing mistakes of the past. What we saw before clearly was Fett having a bad day. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, as I am sure this is far from the last time we see them expanding on ideas that were not fully realized before now. That is one thing a show like The Mandalorian can do.

I am looking forward to seeing just where it all goes from here. While I don't expect every connection to past Star Wars storylines to be done this well, I believe they will do a good job going forward with more such moments.