Today Disney announced four more Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios titles from its ever-growing list of Disney+ original series and seasons that will be making their way to physical home media this holiday season, and notably absent from this batch is Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett. Below I’ll go into why that bugs me and why I think it needs to be corrected in the near future.
Right now The Book of Boba Fett is starting to feel like the forgotten child of the Disney+ era of Star Wars storytelling. But while the series was indeed met with relatively mixed reviews and a contentious response from fans, at this point isn’t that at least partially true of pretty much everything that Lucasfilm puts out? To me, The Book of Boba Fett is just as much a part of the current Star Wars canon as each season of The Mandalorian, but those being more high-profile and perhaps better remembered has led to them all being issued on physical media before the series starring the galaxy’s most fearsome bounty hunter-turned-crimelord and his majordomo Fennec Shand.
The real problem arises when you remember (as was frequently cited as one of fans’ biggest problems with the show) that several key moments in the ongoing “Mando-verse” saga play out in The Book of Boba Fett, most notably the reunion between the Mandalorian himself, Din Djarin, and Grogu– his ward and eventual apprentice in the ways of Mandalore. As you’ll recall, at the end of The Mandalorian’s second season, Grogu was taken under the wing of Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker in the hopes that the young Force-sensitive member of Yoda’s species would become the first Padawan in a new generation of Jedi trainees.
Then in The Book of Boba Fett, which is set between the second and third seasons of The Mandalorian, we see Luke teaching Grogu on the planet Ossus. There, Grogu makes his choice to abandon his Jedi training and rejoin his adoptive father Din Djarin on Tatooine, where they have a big showdown with Boba Fett’s enemies and allies in the streets of Mos Espa. So now that we’ll have all three seasons of The Mandalorian on 4K disc but no Book of Boba Fett, there will be a fairly important chunk of the story missing for those who choose to watch these series in the highest possible resolution on physical media.
And beyond the narrative gap, I believe that Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett deserves to be preserved on 4K disc based on its own merits. Sure, it’s not my favorite of Lucasfilm’s Disney+ output, but creator Jon Favreau and executive producers Dave Filoni and Robert Rodriguez still poured their hearts and souls into putting it together, and there are plenty of memorable scenes and moments in the series even outside of the stuff involving Mando and Grogu. In my opinion the show’s shortcomings can mostly be forgiven due to production having taken place during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when major studios were still trying to figure out how to continue generating content while keeping everyone involved safe and healthy.
So I’ll wrap up by saying I was disappointed that Disney did not include Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett among its physical 4K releases this year, but I will still hold out hope that the series gets included in the next batch. After all, they still have to get to The Acolyte, Skeleton Crew, and eventually Andor season 2 and Ahsoka season 2, right? Would Willow be too much to ask for?
Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian season 3 and Ahsoka season 1 will be released on 4K UHD Blu-ray disc on December 3rd, alongside Marvel Studios’ Hawkeye season 1 and Loki season 2.