Book of Boba Fett Chapter Two

Austin Gorton: The first episode of Book of Boba Fett was a bit of a slow burn, teeing up some plot points while introducing a present day/flashback narrative structure. This episode continues in that vein, but is much more action-packed while also making the world of the show feel bigger. What are your main takeaways from “The Tribes of Tatooine”, Adam?

Adam Reck: If I’m being honest, I was not feeling the first episode at all. I thought it was kind of brave to start the show with Boba Fett being an absolute loser doofus who can’t even stop from almost getting assassinated by some dorks with shields, but the flashback device of using the bacta tank. I mean, how much time is this dude spending in there? This episode dialed up the political intrigue AND the action. This is much more what I anticipated the show being, with some reservations which we’ll get into.

Friends New and Old

Austin: The episode opens in the present day, with Fennec returning to ~~Jabba’s~~ Boba’s Palace with one of the would-be assassins from last episode. We quickly learn he is a member of the “Night Wind Assassins”, and Fennec continues to be awesome as she quietly expresses her professional disdain for the group (“You’re paying for the name…”). But when the assassin won’t give up the beans on his employer, Fennec and Boba run a play from Jabba’s playbook, tossing him to the (no longer existent) Rancor).

Adam: After the empty threat of a Rancor attack, the Night Wind Assassin blurts out that the Mayor hired him and his goons to kill Boba. Only, upon visiting the Mayor and then the local watering hole, it seems another party may have taken out the contract: Jabba’s relatives!

Austin: The arrival of the Hutt Cousins was a great payoff to the running gag involving Boba Fett not being paraded around Mos Espa atop a litter. We had Fennec admonishing him for eschewing it in the last episode, and then early in this episode it got brought up by both the Mayor’s office and Madame Garsa. So, of course, when the Hutt’s appear, they do so atop a massive double wide litter being hauled by some really overworked slaves.

Adam: Props to the actors playing the slaves lifting up those CGI Hutts. They really looked like that thing was HEAVY. There was a great little bit where one of the guys loses his footing for a second that made it extra believable.

Austin: The sequence with the Hutts also featured one of the episode’s buzziest moments, as we got the live-action debut of Wookiee bounty hunter Black Krrsantan, the alt-Chewbacca to fan favorite character Doctor Aphra’s alt-Han Solo! He didn’t do much here, but his presence was deeply intimidating and the look translated off the page well. Adam, had you heard the buzz prior to watching the episode and/or do you even know/care about Black Krrsantan?

Adam: I’ve encountered the Wookiee in the pages of Dr. Aphra before, but hadn’t heard any spoilers about his appearance. I think it’s really fun when we get to see a character like this, but only if there’s a payoff. If Dr. Aphra and her evil droids pop up, I think people would lose their damn minds. If not, I guess it’s cool that Krrsantan stood there looking menacing for a minute?

Austin: Much of this Hutt material seemed like it was priming the pump for something later in the season: I doubt the threat of the Hutt Cousins was introduced only to never factor in again, so hopefully that means we’ll get some Boba-on-Black Krrsantan action at some point.

Dances with Tuskens

Austin: With the immediate threat of the Hutt Cousins allayed (for now), the episode quickly slips into flashback mode, where it will stay for the remainder of the episode. We see Boba, in the wake of his defeat of the Harryhausen-saurus last episode, becoming more integrated into the clan of Native Tatooiners. We also learn they are being menaced by elements of the Pyke Syndicate, who are crossing their lands in a big hover train to deliver Star Wars’ illicit drug of choice, spice. (Adam: Kind of funny that this episode references both Spice and Dunes.)

Boba proceeds to help his newfound tribe fight back the invaders, a plot line that seems very…familiar. And potentially problematic.

Adam: I do have a general concern about the show relying on a white savior framework. While Temuera Morrison is Maori, Boba’s rise from prisoner of the Raiders to learning their ways while also teaching them the ways to save themselves from a threat are all reminiscent of Dances With Wolves-style storytelling. The show is walking a fine line here. On the one hand, it’s doing a great job of expanding on the Raiders’ culture and traditions, much like the showrunners started to do in The Mandalorian. On the other, Boba is their great hope, and in turn is welcome as one of them. By the end of the episode, Boba has been completely adopted into the Raiders’ camp. He has been given their traditional garb, allowed to create their traditional weapon, and finally, joins in their fireside dance celebrating their win over the train. If we’re being frank, the cultural parallels for this are a little awkward.

Austin: Definitely. There’s weird stuff here involving the difference between real world races and alien races and alien races that are presented as rough cultural approximations of real world races and I’m not sure that we (two white guys) are the best positioned to unpack it all, but I’m definitely with you in raising an eyebrow in the general direction of the way this plotline is hitting the narrative beats of a White Savior plotline. (Please check out this great thread about Indigenous representation in Book of Boba Fett by Bmaawangsekwe on Twitter)

In our discussion of last week’s episode, Matt and I asked the question of why Boba, in the present day, even WANTS to be the new Jabba the Hutt, and given the way a lot of these White Savior plots go, I’m worried we’re heading towards a situation where something bad is going to happen to Boba’s adoptive clan of Native Tatooiners, which will prompt him to become a crime lord in order to install order on the planet and prevent that bad thing (or any bad thing) from happening to anyone else. Time will tell, I suppose.

Adam: It’s a great question, though I suspect given the parallel stories we’re getting that you’re probably drawing the right conclusion. Boba is being drawn as someone much more empathetic and heroic than his original bounty hunter persona. I suspect his motivations will be in the same vein and not simply selfish or power-hungry. I do wonder what long-time fans of the character think of this new version of him since he’s no longer just a faceless villain.

Heavy is the Head that Wears the Helmet

Austin: Speaking of being faceless, while I’m sure it has to do with not wanting Temuera Morrison’s face obscured all the time, man alive, Boba Fett is *constantly* taking his helmet off! I know we’ve been spoiled by The Mandalorian keeping its title character’s face obscured for large swathes of its episodes (when so many movies and TV shows work as quickly as possible to get their high priced actors out of their face-obscuring costumes), but it’s not like we don’t also have a huge chunk of the episode also taking place in a time in which he has no helmet.

Adam: They didn’t even put coins in it this time! It is really funny that this character who fans knew for decades as this faceless, masked, voiceless icon just takes the helmet off whenever he gets a chance so people can see his face. It begs the question if Boba was always walking around with his helmet in hand and we just never saw it in the original movies. I also have to wonder how hot it is on set where they’re filming. Especially later in the episode where Boba gets wrapped in black fabric, I was thinking – Yow! Not the best choice for a desert clime!

Fast & Furious

Adam: While the first episode was pretty light on action, the central set piece of the attack on the train was fast-paced and really enjoyable. The whole sequence felt right out of a Fast and Furious movie, except with aliens and lasers. The show did a great job of distinguishing the Raider who has been training Boba so that when he jumps into the fray you know he is going to kick some serious ass. In particular, I loved the train’s droid conductor who eventually just says screw this, jumps out of the engine car, and scampers away like a spider. What did you think of the sci-fi train heist?

Austin: I enjoyed this whole sequence, but I really enjoyed the conductor droid’s whole “I’m not paid enough for this shit” attitude! The train heist was another great bit of “sci fi Western” action, and while some of it was derivative of a similar sequence in Solo, it still worked because it was chiefly about the Tuskens showing off what they’d learned from Boba and learning to fight back against their oppressors.

Adam: Good point about Solo. I thought just the inclusion of the speeder bikes alone ratcheted up the action a good bit and emphasized just how fast everyone was going. Also felt a little like Snowpiercer when it was revealed the Pykes had an entire car filled with water? They do look like fish-people, but it served to emphasize the resources they had that the Tuskens did not.

Austin: The success of the attack on the train and the rebuffing (again, for now; this episode seems all about punting threats down the narrative road) of the Pykes really puts Boba into the good graces of his new friends. He’s part of the tribe now more than ever, and that membership comes with some unique gifts.

Adam: By far my favorite part of the episode was when Boba received the gift of a psychedelic lizard that climbed up into his brain and helped Boba trip his way to get the branch to carve his traditional Tusken weapon. Especially when he returns and snot rockets out the lizard and says “I thought that was part of the dream.” Nope! Fett, you had a gecko up there!

Austin: For a very brief moment when he was given the gecko, I was worried we were heading for a Disney-esque pairing of Boba Fett and a sassy animal sidekick accompanying him on his adventures. But giving Boba a psychedelic snot lizard is a WAY better plot beat. It’s very Star Wars in the way it reflects the difference between “alien” cultures that are more in turn with a natural existence and the colder, more technologically driven Imperial culture. And the subsequent head trip the lizard produced gave us another brief glimpse of Baby Boba Fett!

Adam: I asked myself, was there new footage of young Boba Fett in this episode? Then I looked up Daniel Logan’s age and he’s 34. Then I remembered Uncanny Valley Luke from The Mandalorian and wondered, what exactly am I looking at here?

Austin: Right? Daniel Logan is credited in the episode, but given Attack of the Clones came out almost twenty years ago (god, I am old), the sequence of a young Boba watching his dad flying away (presumably) had to have been a case of the actor’s younger face being digitally placed over someone else. I’m not sure it was necessary (we could have simply seen an actor dressed like Young Boba from behind and gotten the same effect) but, again, I appreciate the series not shying away from Boba’s origins in the Prequels.

Adam: The digital recreations are something that drives me crazy (I still have nightmares about Leia in Rogue One), but I did think – if that’s what it was – it was done tastefully for this short shot.

Austin: The episode ends with Boba – newly attired, his guided-to-it-via-a-gecko-induced-hallucination Gaderffii stick in hand – joining the Tuskens in a celebratory dance. For all the potentially problematic implications of the storyline, it’s a surprisingly uplifting moment for the character, but there’s enough threats looming on the horizon – in both narrative time periods – to keep the audience from feeling too good about the state of things for Boba.

Force Facts

The Mayor of Mos Espa is revealed to be an Ithorian (aka Hammerhead), the same member of the species that made a visually memorable debut in the original Cantina scene and was dubbed “Hammerhead” in his Kenner action figure. I believe this is the first time we’ve heard an Ithorian talk in live-action.
The Hutt Cousins are not named in the episode or the credits, so we’ll have to wait to find out who exactly they are and which Kajidic of the Hutt clan they belong to. While Boba tells them to return to Nal Hutta, the Hutt homeworld, it doesn’t tell us much about their criminal associations.
Two other fan favorites (?) made appearances in this episode as well: Camie and Fixer, the childhood friends of Luke Skywalker who existed only in the pages of the official Star Wars novelization and a few leaked stills after their early scene was cut out of the movie (it later appeared amidst the deleted scenes in the first Star Wars saga Blu ray release). Here, they’re amidst the patrons at a bar being menaced by a group of Nikto thugs, whose speeder bikes Boba accosts in the flashback, and the casting, costume, and makeup departments did a great job recreating the looks of the characters (Fixer’s “leather jacket over desert wrappings” look is an amazing evocation of the early “American Graffiti…in space!” vibes of the original film).
Given the setting of that deleted scene featuring Camie and Fixer, some fans are assuming that scene in this episode took place in Anchorhead, possibly even in the Tosche Station whose power converters Luke Skywalker once yearned to acquire.
They’re not yet identified as such, but the spice merchants menacing the Tuskens in this episode are members of the Pyke Syndicate, one of the various criminal factions operating in the galaxy. They were previously seen running the spice mines of Kessel in Solo, and ran afoul of Ahsoka Tano in the last season of The Clone Wars.
The rock water gourd things the Native Tatooiners have been digging out of the sand are apparently called “black melons”. As with much of Tatooine’s ecosystem, I am deeply curious how the environment supports their existence.
Apparently, different tribes of Native Tatooiners live in different ways; the group that has taken in Boba is said to be one of “hiding” tribes, which suggests they are less aggressive than, say, the group which kidnapped Anakin’s mom in Attack of the Clones.

Austin Gorton

Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton