The Book of Boba Fett: Episode 5

There’s still no sign of any actual books, but the Book of Boba Fett goes full buckethead with episode 5, which should contain a warning; contains no actual sightings of Boba Fett. Yes, after taking four episodes to set up the immense, epic battle that Boba Fett was about to launch against someone or other, we spend a third of the remaining episodes with a whole lot of bucketheads; the episode is title The Return of the Mandalorian, so it’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that it’s the titular character from Disney+’ s other bucket-bonce series who does all the heavy lifting this week.

So while Boba Fett goes off for a well-earned kip in his scratcher beneath his well-accessorised beige drapes, we focus instead on The Mandalorian, aka Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), who is introduced making short work of some villains in a nasty-looking alien-abattoir. He collects a bounty, has a lengthy flashback to the violent history of his home planet Mandolore, practices using a tricky weapon called a darksaber, flogs some toys by fixing up an old spaceship from The Phantom Menace and test driving it around some familiar Tatooine rock formations, and then gets asked to join Boba Fett’s gang in the final scene.

None of which really takes us any further forward; while The Mandalorian himself is clearly a fans’ favourite, and online reaction to this episode seems positive, it derails any momentum in terms of the on-going narrative. If Boba Fett is ever going to get his bad-ass thing on, he’s only got two episodes to start doing it, and the series is beginning to seem like all wind-up and no actual action. As noted before, the call-backs to the original film are fun, with X-Wing fighters, Beggar’s Canyon and womp-rats all making an appearance, and this week’s distraction was only-face-in the-episode Amy Sedaris turning up to talk about ‘dating Jawas’. The Star Wars universe has expanded in many ways, but when we’re talking about romantic Jawas trying to lure potential dates back to their sand-crawler to see their etchings, we really have passed through the looking glass in terms of side-character minutiae.

And not for the first time in this franchise, a withering view is taken of gantries, which are revealed to poorly thought-out and dangerous structures; the Mandalorian does much of his training on a catwalk with no handrails on either side. It’s been a Star Wars tradition for characters to topple off precarious gantries that would never pass muster for health and safety purposes, which begs the question of why they’re constructed so perilously; sure, the Mandalorian has a jet pack to rescue him, but surely falling into deep space isn’t a risk worth taking just for training. In short, it’s the usual mx of the sublime and the ridiculous in Star Wars land, entertaining enough, but barely inching the mythology forwards to any noticeable degree.