The Mandalorian is set to introduce Boba Fett in season 2, and in doing so could set up another Disney+ show about the notorious bounty hunter. A character from the original trilogy who only had four lines of dialogue and was unceremoniously thrown into a sarlacc pit in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Boba Fett nonetheless became hugely popular among fans.
Capitalizing on this popularity, the prequel trilogy established that Boba's father, Jango Fett, was the genetic blueprint for the entire clone army. Boba himself returned as a child in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, where it was revealed that he was also a clone who had been raised like a son by Jango. The animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars continued Boba's story, revealing what happened to him after Jango's death, but stopped short of showing his complete journey to becoming a feared bounty hunter.
Without the popularity of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian would likely have never been made. It was Boba's distinctive armor that garnered fan interest in the Mandalorians and their culture, and Din Djarin's silhouette is familiar to any Star Wars fan. Now, with Boba Fett set to appear in The Mandalorian season 2, could Disney be planning to finally give the character his own turn in the spotlight?
Star Wars: The Clone Wars brought back the young Boba Fett, who was determined to get revenge for his father's death by assassinating the man who killed him: Jedi Master Mace Windu. His failed efforts to do so ultimately landed him in prison, though he later escaped. While The Clone Wars showed parts of Boba's life as a child and a young adult, including the early days of his career as a bounty hunter, he was considerably underdeveloped compared to other characters in the show.
Boba was also noticeably absent from Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 7. The show recently returned after its cancellation with a revival that was built on previous plans and animations for a seventh season. Boba Fett was a part of those plans and even had some of his scenes already animated, and yet his origin story (which would have featured his time as a protege of the bounty hunter Cad Bane) was left out of The Clone Wars season 7. The best explanation for Disney's decision not to use the plans for Boba is that his origins were being saved for something else. In fact, at one point they were going to be seen in a big-screen spinoff movie, like Solo and Rogue One.
Riding the high of his success with low-budget science fiction movie Chronicle, filmmaker Josh Trank pitched a Boba Fett movie to Lucasfilm and Disney in 2014, and was hired to direct it. However, following the disastrous release of Trank's Fantastic Four a year later, the director decided to quit the Boba Fett movie before he was inevitably fired. Disney handed the project to veteran X-Men writer/producer Simon Kinberg and Logan director James Mangold, with plans for Mangold to direct. However, the studio lost confidence in the idea of a Boba Fett movie after Solo proved to be a box office disappointment. In summer 2018, THR reported that the Boba Fett movie was being "reconfigured" and "scaled down," and a few months later it was reported that the movie had been outright cancelled.
While this was naturally disappointing for fans of Boba Fett, there is a positive side to all of this development hell. Between the Boba storylines that went unused in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the movie that Trank, Kinberg and Mangold all worked on, a lot of work has gone into developing an origin story for one of the galaxy's most dangerous bounty hunters. Lucasfilm was excited enough about Trank's original pitch to start moving forward with a movie based on it, and with so much already having been done on Boba Fett's story, it wouldn't be surprising if the studio was still looking for a way to tell it. That's where The Mandalorian - and Boba's appearance in season 2 - could come into play.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Temuera Morrison, who played Jango Fett in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, will return in The Mandalorian season 2 to play his original character's son. There are also rumors that Morrison will be playing more than one role, which is interesting given that most of the clones age more rapidly than regular humans, and they'd therefore likely all be dead or very decrepit by the time The Mandalorian takes place. Boba Fett is the exception to that rule, since he ages normally, but Morrison could be playing Jango again in flashbacks.
Regardless, Boba Fett's return in The Mandalorian (which is set about eight years after his tumble into the sarlacc pit) could be the perfect way to reignite fan interest in seeing him in his own story, as well as a way for Disney to gauge general audience interest in the character. While Boba is popular among Star Wars fans, he's not as well-known as characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi (who is also getting his own show on Disney+) or Han Solo. By building him up again in The Mandalorian, and perhaps featuring flashbacks to his youth, Lucasfilm could turn an episode of its currently successful show into a back door pilot for a young Boba Fett show, or one that explores his life after the fall of the Empire.
There is, of course, an inherent challenge in Disney+ having two shows featuring characters who wear almost identical helmets. But Boba Fett is not subject to any strict rules about never letting his helmet be removed, like Din Djarin's clan is, so a Boba Fett show could have him out of the helmet more often than he wears it - particularly if it's a young Boba origin story. If the Boba Fett movie was being reconfigured before its cancellation in 2018, it's possible that it was actually being reconfigured into a TV show rather than a movie, and that Disney has been developing it for Disney+ ever since.
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