Book of Boba Fett 104: The Storm Is Finally Brewing

The first three episodes have been a wild roller coaster ride with Book of Boba Fett. The first episode set up an intriguing story; the second episode felt really slow, whereas the third episode seem to pick up the pace and tried to make up for missed opportunities.

But we are finally getting somewhere in the latest episode of the series.

We are starting to see the dots being connected between the present-day story of Boba Fett, his past days with the Tusken tribe, and when we first saw him in The Mandalorian. The episode reveals how Boba Fett came across Fennec Shand (which was teased in The Mandalorian), how he was able to retrieve his ship, the Firespray (the name of the ship was changed last year), and where now stands with his territory and the Pyke Syndicate.

Director Kevin Tancharoen made a wise decision to have the action focus more on Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand, rather than Temuera Morrison’s Boba Fett. It felt like it was faster-paced and more believable than the slower action scenes we’ve seen with Morrison. The episode did a great job of setting up the trust and partnership with Boba and Fennec and was paced right in a way where if it was any faster, it would have felt rather rushed, going from retrieving the Firespray and their attempt to get Boba’s armor from the Sarlacc pit.

Although the storyline has gained more momentum and higher quality in this episode, there still seem to be some small continuity errors that present themselves. In episode 1, we see that Boba escaped the Sarlacc pit with his armor on, and saw that the Jawas were stealing his armor straight from his body. It probably also stands to reason that after he was captured and made friends of the Tuskens, they would have had a conversation about his armor and they would have told him that he did not have any when they found him. So it was still a bit confusing why in this episode Boba thought his armor was still in the Sarlacc pit. One could argue that when he was awakened by the Jawas he may not have been completely aware of what was going on, but the showrunners did not do a good job of getting that experience clear on the screen (what would have been better is if they did a blurred POV scene from Boba to show how he’s not completely conscious of what’s going on and let the viewers experience it the same way he did). The showrunners need to tighten up the continuity in the story as now we’re seeing errors within the show itself in addition to the larger Star Wars Universe.

From a production standpoint, the show was exceptional again. They did an amazing job of capturing the cyborg-like machinery in the operation on Fennec Shand, and all of the creatures and shots were very well done and were hardly noticeable that they were CGI. But it still suffers from showing their droids being stuck in a Robo-Cop-like animation, where the movements of the droid seem to be skipping frames. It’s unclear what the reason is behind this performance, whether it was a stylistic choice or a budgetary issue. Either way, the result has been a little jarring and disappointing.

Towards the end of the episode, we get a glimpse of the upcoming, ominous event that the series has been teasing since the first episode and that the story will finally catch up with itself. And if you listen closely to the ending music, we will get a hint of who may be showing up in next week’s episode (Although I’m still waiting for C-3PO to make its appearance from the tease in Chapter 1).