A young boy, surrounded by numerous Jedi Knight corpses and the husks of slain battle droids, stares disconsolately into the helmeted face of his decapitated father. Somehow one doubts that the Cult of Boba Fett expected this as their antihero’s origin. In the two decades of speculation concerning Boba Fett’s past, innumerable theories emerged, even though Fett’s creator, George Lucas, long forbade any certain answers. Was Boba Fett a former Imperial stormtrooper guilty of murdering his commanding officer? Was he a “Journeyman Protector” from Concord Dawn named Jaster Mereel? Was he actually a woman? Or was he, as the Star Wars fan club’s official newsletter, Bantha Tracks, wondered in 1979, the last of the “Shocktroopers” who were otherwise “wiped out by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars”? With Episode II—Attack of the Clones we learned that the truth was far more mundane. The galaxy’s most fearsome mercenary was merely an unusually angry chip off the old bounty-hunting father’s block.

Before Lucas began the sometimes interesting but more often distressing process of revising his original trilogy, Boba Fett appeared in only two of the Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He had four lines of dialogue, all in Empire, unless Fett’s “Aaaaaaaaah!” as he meets his maker in Jedi counts as a line. His ten scenes take up only a few minutes of screen time. And yet, in 1998, Star Wars Insider magazine surveyed fans for their favorite character. In a contest eerily reminiscent of 2000 Florida, Boba Fett placed second to Han Solo by less than one percent of the vote. Strangely, the person most surprised by Boba Fett’s popularity is Lucas himself. “I’m mystified by it,” he said in 1999. “He seems like an all-powerful character, except he gets killed.”

Indeed he does. After 21 years of retrospection, it seems clear to many Star Wars fans that things began to go wrong not with Episode I—The Phantom Menace or even with the introduction of the Ewoks, but the moment Lucas sent his trilogy’s most arresting character to a death so inglorious—falling headlong into the vagina dentata of Tatooine’s Sarlacc—that its only payoff was a burp gag. “That seems to me typical of [Lucas’s] dark sense of humor,” one Lucasfilm insider has said. Well, that, or typical of Lucas’s inability to recognize what is best about his films.

The thing is, Boba Fett first appeared in what is beyond argument Lucas’s absolutely worst idea ever. This is the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. Broadcast once, on November 17, 1978, its effect on audiences was roughly akin to Ben Kenobi’s reaction to the obliteration of Alderaan: “As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.” The only portion of the special worth reliving is its animated 11-minute short, which depicts Fett as an altogether friendly sort before he’s unmasked as an agent of Darth Vader. Fett’s appearance, alas, was largely an effort to sell toys; the following spring Kenner unveiled the Boba Fett action figure. (See “A $3,500 Jawa . . . ,” page 98.)

Big bad Boba contrives yet another simple twist of Fett in Return of the Jedi.

PHOTO ©LUCASFILM LTD.

Favorite Star Wars villian: Boba Fett   0% Darth Vader   0% Darth Maul   0% Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious   0% General Grevious   0% Greedo   0% Jabba the Hutt   0% Jango Fett   100% TOTAL ENTRIES: 1