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Whelp... that trailer sold Disney+ subscriber to me. Wow...

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I'm assuming this guy is a true Mandalorian warrior who had his wife and child killed (maybe that is them in the trailer in the water) and is adrift on his own, ending up bounty hunting to pay the bills as he hunts down the guy who killed them (probably the guy in the black armor). It's an old cliche, but one that continues to work.

If anything, if this guy is a real dyed in the wool Mandalorian warrior that just happens to have taken up bounty hunting on a journey to revenge, Boba Fett is in effect a poor copy-cat of HIM, especially if now all of his EU exploits are non-canon, because without all the crazy lengths the fiction took him to, nothing makes him a Mandalorian except his being a clone of one.

If anything , with everything EU being moved to legends in relation to the current material, wouldn't Fett just be dying in a Sarlaac at this point?

Nah... Fett in the EU fought his way out of the Sarlaac... no reason why they couldn't do it here.

Also, I'm pretty sure Fett was the last of the Mandalorian... right(at least in the EU)?

Fett wasn't a Mandalorian.

In the EU he was a Mandalorian, and in the later EU novels winds up as the 'ruler' of Mandalore.

Pretty much all of the EU Mandalorian stuff went straight out the window during the Clone Wars cartoon run (leading to the Kathy Traviss' rather well-publicised dummy spit and exit) and the current cannon is that Jango claimed to be Mandalorian, but the Mandalorian government disagrees.

Fett, being a clone of Jango and 'born' on Kamino, would be of even more dubious citizenship.

 insaniak wrote:
In the EU he was a Mandalorian, and in the later EU novels winds up as the 'ruler' of Mandalore.

None of that matters now. Disney cast the EU aside when they took over. The only things that still counted were the movies, Clone Wars and... maybe something else. It's slipped my mind.

Yes, I pointed that out in the line after the one you quoted...

To be fair, I feel like it can be said that Disney just seems to carry over that Boba is a Mando. They've never said it, but the Mandos still wear armor based on his, operate as mercenaries and bounty hunters, and even have a TV show that might as well be named "The Not Boba Fett Show."

I actually feel comfortable saying "Boba Fett is a Mandalorian" until Disney comes out and contradicts that because they just seem to operate on the assumption that these two things are one and the same, in-universe technicalities be damned.

 LordofHats wrote:
To be fair, I feel like it can be said that Disney just seems to carry over that Boba is a Mando. They've never said it, but the Mandos still wear armor based on his, operate as mercenaries and bounty hunters, and even have a TV show that might as well be named "The Not Boba Fett Show."

You have that backwards. The whole thing with Boba and Jango is that they claim to be Mandalorian, but aren't. So other Mandos wear armour based on Boba's design because Boba (and Jango before him) is wearing Mandalorian armour.

 insaniak wrote:

You have that backwards. The whole thing with Boba and Jango is that they claim to be Mandalorian, but aren't. So other Mandos wear armor based on Boba's design because Boba (and Jango before him) is wearing Mandalorian armour.

That the Mandalorian government says Jango wasn't a Mandalorian is easily handwaved as Satine's government not wanting to be associated with the guy who tried to kill a sitting Senator. Unless Disney actually comes out and says "They're not Mandalorians, they just wear Mando armor" which to my knowledge they have not, I feel like it's safe to keep them in the camp of being Mandalorians.

The Mandalorians are literally a race of Boba Fetts. That's the whole reason they came to exist.

Perhaps the show based around an actual Mandalorian might clear up this issue. Since we've never seen a true Mando (perhaps).

Fett's status as a "true" Mando is actually irrelevant to my point. To the wider SW audience, both Jango and Boba are Mandos as are all who wear that style of armour.

All this debate about EU and stuff that has been later established in canon doesn't matter. Anyone in that armour is going to draw comparisons to the Fett's. Period.

Disney should know this. So why would they develop a show about a Mando Bounty Hunter that uses Boba's original appearance proned rifle, is set around the time Boba could have escaped the Sarlacc, teams up with a IG-88 look-alike and that show NOT be about Boba Fett?

I'd certainly enjoy if the Mango was Boba, but I'd also enjoy if he WASN'T Boba.
But what it look's like we are getting is Schrödinger's Fett: a character that is and isn't Boba at the same time.

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 Galef wrote:

But what it look's like we are getting is Schrödinger's Fett: a character that is and isn't Boba at the same time.

"Me and my wife are Boba Fett!"

But indeed, there is no logical necessity in any of this stuff, only narrative necessity. There is a logic in keeping things vague and seemingly indeterminate, in the sense that it allows the writers/developers to just do whatever they want, since then anything could be "explained" or "hand-waved" in or away. So, anything deemed "narratively necessary" is permissible and possible. Unfortunately, that often doesn't make for terribly interesting things under any sort of scrutiny. Which is the exact sort of scrutiny people are prone to when the narrative does not suffice...

 Galef wrote:
Fett's status as a "true" Mando is actually irrelevant to my point. To the wider SW audience, both Jango and Boba are Mandos as are all who wear that style of armour.
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I don't consider myself one of the unwashed masses of casual Star Wars fans and probably have more of an encyclopedic knowledge of the franchise (at least until roughly the second season of the clone wars cartoon) than 98 out of 100 people you'd randomly meet on the street and yet I didn't know there was any question as to whether Fett was a "true" mando or not at least according to the abandoned old standards set forth in the Dark Horse comics and Traviss novels until reading this thread. For all intents and purposes, the Fetts are the prototypical mandalorians to the vast majority of people who even have any concept of what universe the word refers to.

 warboss wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Fett's status as a "true" Mando is actually irrelevant to my point. To the wider SW audience, both Jango and Boba are Mandos as are all who wear that style of armour.
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I don't consider myself one of the unwashed masses of casual Star Wars fans and probably have more of an encyclopedic knowledge of the franchise (at least until roughly the second season of the clone wars cartoon) than 98 out of 100 people you'd randomly meet on the street and yet I didn't know there was any question as to whether Fett was a "true" mando or not at least according to the abandoned old standards set forth in the Dark Horse comics and Traviss novels until reading this thread. For all intents and purposes, the Fetts are the prototypical mandalorians to the vast majority of people who even have any concept of what universe the word refers to.

Right, so by making a story about a Mando that isn't Boba, you create confusion for the broader audience.

I get that leaving it ambiguous, the writers have more freedom, and that's great. But as I said before, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
It seems they want the freedom to do what they want, and apparently what they want is to make a story with Boba Fett as the main protagonist. So why don't they just do that?

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 Galef wrote:
Right, so by making a story about a Mando that isn't Boba, you create confusion for the broader audience.

I get that leaving it ambiguous, the writers have more freedom, and that's great. But as I said before, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
It seems they want the freedom to do what they want, and apparently what they want is to make a story with Boba Fett as the main protagonist. So why don't they just do that?

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That's not at all what I was saying btw. I was simply referring to Fett's status as a mando to the vast majority of people who have any knowledge of the word. I don't think there will be much confusion personally beyond the premiere given that we already had Jango in the prequels. All it takes is a little bit of background exposition to explain to casual fans what the word means in the first episode. I actually prefer that they introduce a new character as another Mandalorian than drag up Boba's half digested corpse to be reanimated for the series (since the old EU stories of him escaping are abandoned leaving him in canon still stewing in the Sarlacc pit). I like that he is, at least as this point, mysterious.

 warboss wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Right, so by making a story about a Mando that isn't Boba, you create confusion for the broader audience.

I get that leaving it ambiguous, the writers have more freedom, and that's great. But as I said before, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
It seems they want the freedom to do what they want, and apparently what they want is to make a story with Boba Fett as the main protagonist. So why don't they just do that?

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That's not at all what I was saying btw. I was simply referring to Fett's status as a mando to the vast majority of people who have any knowledge of the word. I don't think there will be much confusion personally beyond the premiere given that we already had Jango in the prequels. All it takes is a little bit of background exposition to explain to casual fans what the word means in the first episode. I actually prefer that they introduce a new character as another Mandalorian than drag up Boba's half digested corpse to be reanimated for the series (since the old EU stories of him escaping are abandoned leaving him in canon still stewing in the Sarlacc pit). I like that he is, at least as this point, mysterious.

I think you and I are talking about different things, and aren't necessarily disagreeing.

My issue is that this mysterious character is so friggin close to Boba Fett in concept so far, that he just should have been Boba Fett.
Or they should have gone the opposite route and made the protagonist a NON-Mando Bounty Hunter in cool NON-Mando armour that was mysterious. Ya know, something a tiny bit more original.
One way or the other would have been great. But by making him "Not-Boba", he just looks like a rip-off, regardless of how cool and mysterious they might make him

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Stop trying to make Fett happen. Fett's not going to happen.


Star Wars is a universe full of faceless goons who wear identical armor that determines their entire purpose and personality. Making a not-Boba Mando is speaking the Star Wars language (Aurabesh?). One suspects that the entire point of such identity-hiding armor is to create a mystique about an entire group based on the gestalt reputations of their most famous members.

Also, in universe it works for another reason: there are hundreds of trillions to quadrillion so of humans in the SW Galaxy and quintillions of droids. Extrapolating from a bell curve, there's like, hundreds of dudes who all dress the same way and talk the same way for their similar bounty hunting gigs. They might not even be doing it out of homage to the famous Boba Fett, but out of sheer coincidence. Somewhere, the bounty hunter Borba Fretch keeps running into people he's never met who are glad to see he "crawled back out", whatever that means.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Stop trying to make Fett happen. Fett's not going to happen.

That's kinda my point. If Disney isn't going to make a Fett story, why they heck are they trying so hard to make a "Fett" story?
From what we've seen so far, you could 100% swap the Mandalorian protagonist with Boba Fett and nothing would be different. They are CONCEPTUALLY INDENTICAL. So why are they trying to not make it Fett, while at the same time making him basically Fett.

Like I said, it Schrödinger's Fett

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 Galef wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Stop trying to make Fett happen. Fett's not going to happen.

That's kinda my point. If Disney isn't going to make a Fett story, why they heck are they trying so hard to make a "Fett" story?
From what we've seen so far, you could 100% swap the Mandalorian protagonist with Boba Fett and nothing would be different. They are CONCEPTUALLY INDENTICAL. So why are they trying to not make it Fett, while at the same time making him basically Fett.

Like I said, it Schrödinger's Fett

To bank on the appeal of the aesthetic, nostalgia and collective memory of Fett, without being beholden to the existent character?

In other words, to tell a sort of Fett story, but without the "complication" of Fett's actual canonical elements?

 Galef wrote:
My issue is that this mysterious character is so friggin close to Boba Fett in concept so far, that he just should have been Boba Fett.
Or they should have gone the opposite route and made the protagonist a NON-Mando Bounty Hunter in cool NON-Mando armour that was mysterious. Ya know, something a tiny bit more original.
One way or the other would have been great. But by making him "Not-Boba", he just looks like a rip-off, regardless of how cool and mysterious they might make him

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I can see your point even if it's not entirely in agreement with my own. I'd have been just as fine with a non-bounty hunter mando (maybe a bouncer/enforcer, merc, smuggler, whatever) but I don't know if that's different enough for you personally. The nameless mando spaghetti western gunslinger thing for me is key and I love the idea of it. We'll see how it actually works out and I'm waiting until the season is over and the reviews are out before giving disney any money. They lost the benefit of the doubt with TLJ and it's aftermath (although they were admittedly on thin ice with me after abandoning the EU and then coming out with TFA as a poor copy of ANH).

 warboss wrote:

I can see your point even if it's not entirely in agreement with my own. I'd have been just as fine with a non-bounty hunter mando (maybe a bouncer/enforcer, merc, smuggler, whatever) but I don't know if that's different enough for you personally. The nameless mando spaghetti western gunslinger thing for me is key and I love the idea of it.

That's fair. And don't get me wrong, this look really cool. I'm just torn between my desire to A) see more Boba Fett and B) wanting to see something new. Rather that kill both birds with the same show, I feel like I'll be constantly reminded that the show is neither of those things

We'll see how it actually works out and I'm waiting until the season is over and the reviews are out before giving disney any money. They lost the benefit of the doubt with TLJ and it's aftermath (although they were admittedly on thin ice with me after abandoning the EU and then coming out with TFA as a poor copy of ANH).

That might be a while. From what I've heard, this show is going to "air" like traditional shows. i.e 1 episode per week, rather than the whole season dropping at once.

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I'm willing to wait. After seeing almost all of the MCU movies starting with Iron Man on opening weekend, I chose not to see Endgame and I had, in a way, been waiting for that for over a decade. I'm equal parts bitter and patient on top of being not particularly adverse to spoilers.

 H wrote:

To bank on the appeal of the aesthetic, nostalgia and collective memory of Fett, without being beholden to the existent character?

In other words, to tell a sort of Fett story, but without the "complication" of Fett's actual canonical elements?

And also possibly to not be stuck with a 58-year-old actor in the lead role.


Honestly, 'confusing' the character with Fett might have been more of the thing before the Clone Wars and Rebels, but Mandos as mercs and bounty hunters are a pretty well-established thing by this point, and the fact that his armour is painted differently, and its a different bloke inside the helmet is more than sufficient to sell it as a new character.

Screw Boba. I want a Cad Bane show!

 insaniak wrote:

 H wrote:

To bank on the appeal of the aesthetic, nostalgia and collective memory of Fett, without being beholden to the existent character?

In other words, to tell a sort of Fett story, but without the "complication" of Fett's actual canonical elements?

And also possibly to not be stuck with a 58-year-old actor in the lead role.


Honestly, 'confusing' the character with Fett might have been more of the thing before the Clone Wars and Rebels, but Mandos as mercs and bounty hunters are a pretty well-established thing by this point, and the fact that his armour is painted differently, and its a different bloke inside the helmet is more than sufficient to sell it as a new character.

Not to a general audience. A good chunk of the SW audience (to say nothing of the general audience) cares nothing for books, cartoons and games.
For those folks Boba (well and 5 pointless minutes of Dad Fett) is the only point of reference for this character.

Voss wrote:

Not to a general audience. A good chunk of the SW audience (to say nothing of the general audience) cares nothing for books, cartoons and games.
For those folks Boba (well and 5 pointless minutes of Dad Fett) is the only point of reference for this character.

For those folks, Boba Fett is a guy who appears on-screen for about 5 minutes in total over three films, and never actually does anything noteworthy... so they're unlikely to be attached enough to care whether or not this new guy is the same character.

So... I've completely changed your argument then?

Not really. My 'argument' was that having this character not be Boba wasn't going to be particularly confusing. Whether that's because people are familiar enough with the background to know that Boba isn't the only Mando bounty hunter, or because people don't particularly care whether or not it's the same character ultimately makes little difference.

Not to mention that for all this talk of 'character', we actually know nothing about this new chap at all beyond what he looks like, and that he doesn't mess around when it comes to a bar-room brawl. He could be just like Boba, a largely silent professional who's hard to read and keeps to himself, he could be a total bastard who relishes his dastardly work, or he could be a wise-cracking heart of gold Mal-Reynolds-In-Armour for all we know.

Not that that latter is particularly likely, but the point is, beyond the look we know absolutely nothing about this guy, and Disney's trailers across Marvel and SW are so good these days at fooling (or outright lying to) audiences to get them thinking one thing when the reality is totally different. Obviously at this point, they kind of want us to be drawing parallels with Fett (or rather, the idea of Fett), but I think it's entirely likely that they're only doing that so the reality of it ends up a surprise.

Given that they've cast someone that was recently popular in GoT, the idea that he never speaks or takes the helmet off is a pretty remote one. Why not just let the stuntman play the role all the time if that's the case?

I know a lot of people who were/are expecting to boot up episode 1 of this show and have it be "The Boba Fett show". So it will be interesting to see the reactions when it drops. Most of my friends will be watching trailers and things pretty heavily so as soon as one says the name of the character and it's not Boba, they won't care and will watch the show anyway. But I'm curious what the general reaction is going to be from people that don't watch the trailers/follow the news and are expecting boba fett.