With the premiere of Lucasfilm’s highly anticipated new live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett exactly two months away, I thought today would be a good time to think ahead about which pre-existing Star Wars characters and locations I’d like to see show up in this sure-to-be-exciting spinoff of The Mandalorian.
Obviously I’m hoping for the show to be full of interesting new stuff as well, but we all know series creators Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Robert Rodriguez are going to return to the deep well of cool stuff we already know and love from A Galaxy Far, Far Away. So excluding things that have already been revealed (see: Fennec Shand), what follows is my list of Star Wars stuff I’d like to see in The Book of Boba Fett.
1 – The other bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back
Dengar, IG-88, Bossk, 4-LOM, Zuckuss. These are the names we grew up memorizing, representing the five (not counting Boba Fett) other bounty hunters gathered on the bridge of Darth Vader’s Super Star Destroyer Executor, enlisted to track down the Millennium Falcon and its crew. They received precious little screen-time in The Empire Strikes Back, and have since shown up quite a bit in ancillary Star Wars storytelling like Marvel’s current War of the Bounty Hunters comic-book crossover event, but why not feature them alongside their green-armored colleague in this new series? I think a lot of fans would be pretty thrilled by this prospect.
2 – The Sarlacc Pit
We know Fett escaped his fate of being “slowly digested over a thousand years,” but how exactly did he break free of the mighty Sarlacc’s many-tentacled grasp in the Great Pit of Carkoon? I think it’d be kinda cool to get a flashback to whatever happened right after that battle in Return of the Jedi, not to mention get a peek at the wreckage of Jabba’s Sail Barge.
3 – Cobb Vanth
Boba Fett was able to retrieve his armor from Din Djarin in The Mandalorian, but why couldn’t he do the same with Cobb Vanth– the character played by actor Timothy Olyphant in the show’s second-season premiere, “The Marshal”? Vanth first showed up in a series of novels entitled Star Wars: Aftermath, where we saw a slightly different take on how he came by Fett’s gear, but how neat would it be if Olyphant reprised his role in The Book of Boba Fett, either in flashbacks to answer the question posed above or otherwise as part of the ongoing story?
4 – The Smugglers’ Moon of Nar Shaddaa
A location that has been visited plenty of times in the Star Wars novels, comic books, and video games, Nar Shaddaa has yet to show up in live-action storytelling. The Smugglers’ Moon, as it’s also known, orbits the Hutt homeworld of Nal Hutta and played home to “a large criminal underworld of bounty hunters and crime lords,” according to Wookieepedia– the perfect kind of place for Boba Fett to hang out… or perhaps even to seek his prey.
5 – Han Solo and/or Chewbacca
It hasn’t been documented too much in the current Star Wars canon just yet, but it’s fairly well-established in Legends continuity that Han Solo and Boba Fett were arch-enemies long before the events of the Original Trilogy. With that in mind, it would be great to see Han’s reaction to the news that Fett survived the Sarlacc. Now, it admittedly might be pretty difficult for Favreau and company to make this happen, either by de-aging Harrison Ford or aging-up Alden Ehrenreich (from Solo: A Star Wars Story), but maybe we could just get a hint of Han in profile or silhouette. At the very least the creative team could probably bring back Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca to go up against the fearsome bounty hunter.
6 – The other denizens of Jabba’s Palace
I’ve always wanted to know more about some of the many weird creatures who hang out in Jabba’s court: Ephant Mon, Hermi Odle, Ree-Yees, J’Quille, Amanaman, Tanus Spijek, Pote Snitkin, and the B’omarr Monks. The list goes on and on, but since Boba Fett has now taken the throne as boss of Jabba’s Palace from Bib Fortuna, why not have a few of these weird-looking aliens around as supporting characters? We could even hear more music from the Max Rebo Band (assuming they survived the Khetanna explosion, that is) or get to know Greedo’s cousin Beedo, who happens to look exactly like his Rodian relative. The possibilities are endless.
7 – Bespin Cloud City and/or Lando Calrissian
Some recent Star Wars authors have explored what happens to Cloud City after the Imperial occupation in The Empire Strikes Back, but I think it might be fun to have Fett revisit the location where he first captured Han Solo. It would also be great to have a cameo appearance from Lando (again, played by either a de-aged Billy Dee Williams or an aged-up Donald Glover), but maybe a more reasonable request would be his right-hand cyborg Lobot.
8 – Omega and/or Captain Rex
Dave Filoni and the rest of the behind-the-scenes talent of Star Wars: The Bad Batch just spent an entire animated season establishing relationships between Boba Fett’s clone sister Omega and their faster-aging brothers, so it would be especially rewarding to have that pay off in live-action via The Book of Boba Fett. We know Captain Rex survives long enough to fight with the Rebel Alliance in the Battle of Endor, so why not have him introduce Omega to her brother in this series set six or so years after that?
9 – Batuu
We’ve visited this newly established Star Wars planet via the Galaxy’s Edge area at Disney Parks, and it has popped up in a handful of novels and comic books as well… not to mention the virtual-reality experience Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge. So now feels like an ideal time to finally see this Outer Rim waypoint on-screen. I could absolutely envision Boba Fett strolling through the streets of Black Spire Outpost in his series, hopefully prompting an appearance by the character in that section of the parks.
10 – Mace Windu
This one might sound like the furthest long-shot of them all, but hear me out: for years fans have theorized that Mace Windu may have survived Palpatine’s attack and gone into hiding, perhaps even being the Jedi responsible for sneaking Grogu out of the temple before Anakin could slaughter him with the other younglings. Now if it does turn out that Windu is out there somewhere in the galaxy, who is the person with the biggest vested interest in tracking him down? None other than the bounty hunter whose father Jango Fett was killed by the Jedi Master on Geonosis at the outset of the Clone Wars. Would it make sense that Mace would have continued to hide in the background instead of helping Luke Skywalker defeat the Empire? Probably not, but you gotta admit it would be pretty sweet to see Samuel L. Jackson rematch against Temuera Morrison (as Boba this time) for the ultimate Star Wars showdown.
Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett premieres Wednesday, December 29, exclusively on Disney+.