Boba Fett

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Boba Fett first appeared in public on the 24th of September 1978, at the San Anselmo Country Fair parade. The armor was worn by Duwayne Dunham, then an assistant film editor and later a film and television director. Fett is a Star Wars bounty hunter who barely speaks and never removes his helmet. Two months after that parade, he reached television. Why does a character with so little to do in the original films still draw such devotion? Where did the armor come from, and who is really inside it? And what happens to a figure whose mystery is his main appeal once storytellers begin explaining him?

  2439253132

• 2. Designed in a Hurry

  ›

  George Lucas created Boba Fett in his April 1978 screenplay draft of The Empire Strikes Back. He based the character on the Man with No Name, the gunslinger Clint Eastwood played in Sergio Leone's Dollar Trilogy. Time was short, because Lucas had already agreed that Fett would appear in the Star Wars Holiday Special later that year.

  Darth Vader is the hidden ancestor of Fett's design. Vader was first imagined as a rogue bounty hunter. When he became more of a dark knight than a mercenary, the bounty hunter idea stayed behind. Fett took it over as an equally villainous but less conspicuous character. Ralph McQuarrie's concept art influenced the look, and Joe Johnston finalized the design and is credited for it.

  Norman Reynolds and the film's art department built the costume. The armor had first been designed for "super troopers" and was adapted for Fett as the script developed. It was screen-tested in all white. The final subdued palette placed him visually between the white-armored stormtroopers and Vader in black, and it hinted at his gray morality. The armor was meant to look scavenged from several sources, and it was adorned with trophies.

  A white-armored group of Imperial "supercommandos" had been part of an earlier idea, but it was scrapped in favor of one solitary hunter. That discarded concept later grew into the Mandalorians, a culture of warriors with strong traditions who wear armor and helmets much like Fett's. In mid-1979, a description of his armor in the Bantha Tracks newsletter set off "rampant speculation" about his origins. By 1979, his backstory included service in an army of Imperial shock troops that fought the clone troopers of the Galactic Republic in the Clone Wars.

  Two years of publicity preceded The Empire Strikes Back, yet script rewrites sharply reduced Fett's presence in the film. John Williams composed his theme, which one description called "more of a gurgly, viola-and-bassoon thing" mixed with obscure static. Sound editor Ben Burtt added jangling spurs for Fett's arrival in Cloud City. The Foley artists Robert Rutledge and Edward Steidele created and performed them. The sound was meant to make him menacing and to recall gunfighters stepping into Western scenes.

  333435366

• 3. Inside the Helmet

  ›

  Jeremy Bulloch heard about the part from his half-brother. The costume fitted him so well that it seemed "as if a Savile Row tailor had come out and made it." He needed no reading or screen test, and he never worked from a script for either film.

  Filming The Empire Strikes Back took three weeks. Bulloch liked the costume and used it to convey menace. He modeled his performance on Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars. Like the Western hero, he cradled the blaster prop, tilted his head slightly and stood in a particular way. He built no backstory, and he later said, "the less you do with Boba Fett, the stronger he becomes." It remained the smallest and most physically uncomfortable role he had played, and the heavy jetpack was the worst part.

  Return of the Jedi kept Bulloch busy for four weeks. He did not know Fett would die until filming began, and he was "very upset." He still believed the "weak" death made the character stronger, because it makes fans want him back. A 1997 Special Edition scene shows Fett flirting with one of Jabba the Hutt's dancers. Bulloch felt that it was out of keeping with the character.

  Many other performers stood in for Bulloch or gave Fett a voice. Don Francks voiced him in the Holiday Special, and Jason Wingreen did so in The Empire Strikes Back. John Morton filled in for one Empire scene. Industrial Light & Magic creature animator Mark Austin performed Fett's brief addition to the 1997 Special Edition of A New Hope. Don Bies and Nelson Hall performed the Special Edition footage in Return of the Jedi.

  National Public Radio's Star Wars dramas used Alan Rosenberg for The Empire Strikes Back and Ed Begley Jr. for Return of the Jedi. Brian Daley scripted a scene between Fett and C-3PO in Jabba's palace. Anthony Daniels rejected it, insisting the two characters should not be on friendly terms. Fett was replaced in that scene by Arica, who is Mara Jade in disguise, from Timothy Zahn's Tales from Jabba's Palace. In video games, Dee Bradley Baker, Tom Kane and Chris Cox are among those who have voiced him.

  Daniel Logan played the younger Fett in Attack of the Clones. He had not seen any Star Wars film before he was cast, so at Lucas's request he watched the original trilogy. Bluescreen filming meant relying on his imagination. For the 2004 rereleases, Temuera Morrison replaced Fett's original voice so that it would match Attack of the Clones, where Morrison plays Jango Fett.

  1819202117

• 4. Bounty Hunter on Screen

  ›

  Nelvana Productions, a Toronto animation firm, produced the animated segment of the Star Wars Holiday Special in which Fett reached television. In it, a mysterious figure saves Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 from a giant monster. Later material calls the creature a Panna dragon. He presents himself as an ally, but he is secretly working for Darth Vader to reveal the Rebels' location to the Empire. Fett ignites his jetpack and promises that they will meet again.

  Once his identity was revealed, costumed Fett characters began appearing in shopping malls and at special events. They put up wanted posters of him, which set him apart from the franchise's Imperial characters.

  The 1985 animated series Star Wars: Droids, set 15 years before the original trilogy, brought back both the same studio and Don Francks as the voice. In the episode "A Race to the Finish," the Fromms hire Fett to take revenge on the masters of R2-D2 and C-3PO. When he fails, he turns on them and accepts Jabba's bounty on the Fromms as payment.

  Fett's theatrical debut came as an unnamed bounty hunter in The Empire Strikes Back, billed as the next major villain beside Darth Vader. He is one of six bounty hunters Vader assembles, with a reward promised to whoever captures the crew of the Millennium Falcon. Fett tracks the starship to Cloud City, where Vader captures its passengers and tortures Han Solo. Jabba the Hutt has placed a bounty on Solo, so Fett questions Vader about the carbon freeze, which Vader intends for Luke. Vader promises the Empire will compensate Fett if Solo dies. Solo survives, and Vader hands him over. Fett leaves to deliver him to Jabba in his ship, the Slave I.

  Return of the Jedi places Fett in Jabba's palace on Tatooine, where Solo's friends are captured while trying to save him. Fett aims his weapon at Princess Leia, disguised as the bounty hunter Boushh, when she threatens Jabba with a thermal detonator. Later he rides Jabba's sail barge to the Great Pit of Carkoon, home of a sarlacc, a sessile carnivorous creature. When the prisoners fight back, Fett flies over and briefly fights Luke. Chewbacca warns Solo, who is still blind from the carbonite, that Fett is near. Solo turns around and accidentally strikes Fett's rocket pack. It fires, propels Fett into the side of the barge, and he falls into the sarlacc's mouth.

  During development of Return of the Jedi, Fett was conceived as a main villain. Lucas replaced him with the Emperor once he decided not to make a third trilogy. Lucas also considered having Fett fight Lando Calrissian during the sarlacc sequence. He later said that, had he known Fett would be so popular, he would have made the death "more exciting." He considered adding a shot of Fett escaping the sarlacc to later editions but decided against it, because it would detract from the story's focus. On screen, the question of Fett's survival would stay unsettled for decades.

  2439402510

• 5. A Clone and a Son

  ›

  Attack of the Clones, released in 2002, reveals that Boba is an unaltered clone of the bounty hunter Jango Fett, played by Temuera Morrison. Jango had Boba created on Kamino to be raised as his son. This was part of his price for serving as the template for the Grand Army of the Republic's clone army.

  Boba helps Jango escape from Obi-Wan Kenobi and goes with him to Geonosis. There he watches Mace Windu behead Jango during the first battle of the Clone Wars. Boba is last seen mourning over his father's helmet, which he picks up and holds in front of his head. The image foreshadows his future as a bounty hunter in his father's armor.

  Lucas originally planned a larger part for Boba in the 2005 film Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, with Logan returning. Boba would have avenged his father by killing Windu. Samuel L. Jackson, who played Windu, objected to the idea that a young child could kill a member of the Jedi Council. Boba was written out. Lucas had also once considered making Vader and Fett brothers, but he discounted the idea as too "hokey."

  The animated series The Clone Wars, launched in 2008, brought Logan back as Fett's voice. Its second season ended with three episodes titled "Death Trap," "R2 Come Home" and "Lethal Trackdown." They aired on the 30th of April 2010 and drew an average of 2.756 million viewers. Fett's entrance marked thirty years since The Empire Strikes Back.

  In that story arc, Boba slips aboard Windu's flagship disguised as a clone trooper cadet, seeking revenge for his father. After a failed attempt to bomb Windu in his quarters, he sabotages the ship's engines, and it crashes on a nearby planet. He and his bounty hunter accomplices take hostages from the crew. Fett balks at violence against fellow clones, and the tension peaks when his mentor Aurra Sing executes Windu's clone trooper second-in-command. Plo Koon and Ahsoka Tano track the group to the base of the pirate Hondo Ohnaka. The Jedi capture Fett and send him to prison on Coruscant. He expresses regret for the collateral damage but vows never to forgive Windu.

  In the fourth-season episode "Deception," Fett escapes prison. He later forms a bounty hunter syndicate called Krayt's Claw, which includes Bossk and Dengar, both of whom debuted alongside him in The Empire Strikes Back. In the episode "Bounty," the group is hired to deliver a package to a dictator. The cargo turns out to be a young woman destined for a forced marriage. Fett is indifferent to her plight and insists on finishing the job. Temporary member Asajj Ventress turns on him, strangles him with the Force, binds and gags him, and delivers him in the container in the woman's place.

  The Bad Batch, a computer-animated sequel to The Clone Wars that premiered in 2021, gives Fett an original code name, Alpha. The episode "Bounty Lost" names Omega as his sister. She is an enhanced female clone who joined Clone Force 99 after the rise of the Empire, and she is a second unaltered replication of Jango. The episode "Plan 99" adds another sister, a clone named Emerie Karr.

  2241434456

• 6. Legends and Lost Projects

  ›

  In April 2014, Lucasfilm rebranded the Expanded Universe of novels, comics and games as Star Wars Legends and declared it non-canon. The goal was a blank slate for the sequel trilogy. Fett had been a fixture of that world since the newspaper comic strip and Marvel's Star Wars series, which ran alongside the original films.

  A 1983 issue of Marvel's Star Wars comic, set just after Return of the Jedi, shows Fett briefly escaping the sarlacc pit. Dark Horse's Dark Empire series, published in 1991-1992, built further on his survival. Daniel Keys Moran narrated part of Fett's time inside the sarlacc in a 1995 anthology story. A 1996 story by Dave Wolverton shows Dengar finding him and restoring his health. In the 1997 comic Boba Fett: Twin Engines of Destruction, a bounty hunter named Jodo Kast impersonates him, and Fett hunts the impostor.

  Moran also wrote The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett in 1996, set 15 years after Return of the Jedi. In it, Fett was once named Jaster Mereel, a "Journeyman Protector" lawman convicted of treason. Westerns influenced Moran, who reasoned that, against the Empire's stark evil, Fett had to be either evil himself or a harsh, unforgiving believer in a greater good. The second approach resonated with some readers. Attack of the Clones then contradicted this backstory. The 2003 Dark Horse comic Jango Fett: Open Seasons answered by turning Mereel into Jango's mentor.

  K. W. Jeter's trilogy The Bounty Hunter Wars appeared from Bantam Spectra in July 1998, November 1998 and July 1999. It makes Fett more talkative than in the films, because the plot requires "an ability to convince people as well as kill them." The first book, The Mandalorian Armor, begins just after Jabba's sail barge is destroyed. Dengar stays with Fett after his near-death experience and meets Neelah, a dancer from Jabba's palace who has lost her memory. Flashbacks reveal that Fett joined the Bounty Hunters Guild in order to break it up. Prince Xizor had secretly arranged this so that only the best hunters would remain for the Empire to use.

  Karen Traviss's e-novella Boba Fett: A Practical Man was published online by Del Rey Books in August 2006. It is set 20 years after Return of the Jedi. A Yuuzhan Vong named Nom Anor meets Fett on Mandalore and starts directing the Mandalorians for the invasion. Fett pretends to help while planning to do as much damage to the invaders as possible. In the Legacy of the Force series, set some 35 years after Jedi, Han and Leia's daughter Jaina asks Fett to train her to defeat her corrupted brother Jacen.

  Star Wars: Underworld, a live-action series Lucas developed before the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, would have featured Fett. Bulloch and Logan both expressed interest in returning for it, but the series remains undeveloped. The LucasArts game Star Wars 1313, announced at E3 2012, would have followed Fett's career as a young adult bounty hunter between the prequel and original trilogies. He would have moved through Level 1313, an underground area of Coruscant. In 2013, after Disney's acquisition, all LucasArts projects then in production were shelved. In a December 2015 interview, Kathleen Kennedy called the concept art "unbelievable" and said the studio might develop 1313 and Underworld further.

  More Clone Wars episodes were planned before its cancellation. Western-inspired episodes would have paired Fett with Cad Bane to rescue a child kidnapped by Tusken Raiders on Tatooine, with Aurra Sing appearing as well. Fett would have put on his Mandalorian armor for the first time. The arc would have ended with Bane blasting Fett in the head, creating the iconic dent in his helmet, an idea that came from Lucas. Animatic footage of the climax was shown at Star Wars Celebration.

  In early 2013, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced a Star Wars spin-off film written by Simon Kinberg, which was reported to focus on Fett during the original trilogy. Josh Trank was announced as director in mid-2014 but left a year later over creative differences with Kinberg, and a teaser for the Fett film was scrapped from Star Wars Celebration. In May 2018, James Mangold was reported to be writing and directing, but both he and Kennedy denied it. That October, the Fett film was reportedly dead, with the studio focusing on The Mandalorian instead.

  6667697080

• 7. Return of the Hunter

  ›

  In 2014, after Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, Star Wars historian Jonathan W. Rinzler revealed that Lucas had privately acknowledged Fett escaped the sarlacc. The canon confirmed it years later, through Temuera Morrison's appearances in The Mandalorian. That success led to the spin-off The Book of Boba Fett.

  The first-season episode "Chapter 5: The Gunslinger" of The Mandalorian ends with a mysterious figure in boots and seemingly a cape. He approaches the body of the assassin Fennec Shand on Tatooine. In June 2020, it was reported that Morrison would appear as Fett in season two. The series is set five years after Return of the Jedi, so this confirmed his survival and undid his apparent death.

  In the season two premiere, "Chapter 9: The Marshal," Jawas salvaged Fett's armor after his supposed death. Cobb Vanth, a character from the Star Wars: Aftermath novels, bought it and used it to protect the Tatooine village of Mos Pelgo. Vanth relinquishes it so that it can return to its rightful owners, the Mandalorian people. As the Mandalorian leaves with the armor, a heavily scarred Fett watches from a distance.

  Fett's first full appearance comes in "Chapter 14: The Tragedy." He saved Fennec's life after she was mortally wounded, and she owes him a debt. He also wants his armor back. On the planet Tython, he explains that it belonged to his late father Jango, a Mandalorian foundling, and is therefore his birthright. In exchange, he and Fennec agree to keep Grogu, the alien infant the Mandalorian has adopted, safe. When Moff Gideon's Imperial forces attack, Fett puts on the old armor and kills most of the stormtroopers with a gaffi stick. Gideon's Dark Troopers still take the child.

  Fett and Fennec help the rescue effort in "Chapter 15: The Believer" and "Chapter 16: The Rescue," with Fett now in clean, repainted armor. Bo-Katan Kryze, the former ruler of Mandalore, calls him a disgrace to the armor because he is a clone. They still work together reluctantly, and Fett creates the distraction that lets the crew board Gideon's ship. In a post-credits scene, he and Fennec return to Tatooine. Fett kills Bib Fortuna, who has run Jabba's palace since Jabba's death, and sits on Jabba's old throne.

  The Book of Boba Fett premiered on Disney+ on the 29th of December 2021. Morrison and Ming-Na Wen reprised their roles as Fett and Fennec Shand. Finnegan Garay played a young Fett, with Daniel Logan's likeness superimposed over his own. The pair begin rebuilding the old criminal empire of Jabba on Tatooine, where Fett becomes the planet's new daimyo. Joe Johnston and Morrison himself criticized the decision to show the character without his helmet. Morrison said it was done to avoid comparisons with the title character of The Mandalorian.

  The 2021 anime anthology Star Wars: Visions features Fett in its second episode, "Tatooine Rhapsody." Morrison voices him in English and Akio Kaneda in Japanese. In the 2023 game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Fett makes a cameo in a side quest, again voiced by Morrison. Cal Kestis fights and defeats the bounty hunter Caij Vanda. Fett appears at the end of the fight to collect the bounty on Vanda, and Cal lets it happen.

  139475751

• 8. Cult Following

  ›

  In 2008, Empire magazine selected Boba Fett as the 79th greatest movie character of all time. IGN ranked him the eighth top Star Wars character, and he appears on Fandomania's list of The 100 Greatest Fictional Characters. The San Francisco Chronicle describes his fans as among the most passionate. Writer Tom Bissell asserts that no one knows why Fett became so popular, or cares. Lucas and Bulloch both point to his mysterious nature. Bulloch never fully understood the appeal but credits the costume and the respect Fett earns from Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt.

  Scholar Henry Jenkins suggests that children's play helped Fett take on a life of its own, and that the first Boba Fett toy may matter more than his film appearance. Moran pointed to Vader's order to Fett in The Empire Strikes Back, "No disintegrations," as the line that gives him credibility. Logan compares Fett to "that boy in school who never talks," the one who attracts everyone's curiosity. Bissell finds in Fett a "wicked ambiguity" akin to John Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost and Iago in William Shakespeare's Othello. He also places Fett beside Beowulf, Ahab and Huckleberry Finn, characters "too big" for their original presentation.

  Breckin Meyer voices Fett in various Robot Chicken sketches. The rapper MC Chris included a Star Wars song, "Fett's Vette," on his 2001 debut album. The creator of the Spartan helmets for the 2006 film 300 painted one to look like Fett's helmet. Fett's following before he even appeared in The Empire Strikes Back influenced Damon Lindelof's interest in developing Lost across multiple media. Between filming Empire and Return of the Jedi, Mark Hamill pitched Lucas the idea that Fett was Luke Skywalker's mother, which Lucas did not like. Around 2000, a feminist campaigned online to have Fett unmasked as a woman. David James created Boba Phat, a cosplay "intergalactic booty hunter."

  Fett also turns up in newer stories. In the first issue of Marvel's Darth Vader comic in 2015, Vader hires Fett to capture the pilot who destroyed the Death Star. Fett tracks the pilot, Luke Skywalker, to Tatooine, then tells Vader the pilot's surname. He unknowingly informs the Sith lord that he has a son. Fett is a playable character in Star Wars Battlefront in 2015 and Star Wars Battlefront II in 2017. On the 24th of December 2021, he was added to Fortnite Battle Royale as a wearable cosmetic.

  Reviews of The Book of Boba Fett were mixed, though Morrison's portrayal was praised. Megan O'Keefe of Decider wrote, "Boba Fett is the least interesting character in The Book of Boba Fett." Rich Knight of CinemaBlend said he had once disliked Fett but grew interested because Fett was the only one in the series who "seems like an actual human being." Chris Edwards of The Guardian said Disney+ had ruined one of the "coolest and most mysterious characters" in Star Wars.

  Fett is one of the five best-selling Star Wars action figures, and his products are among the most expensive Star Wars merchandise. He was the first new mail-away action figure created for The Empire Strikes Back. It was advertised with a rocket-firing backpack, but safety concerns led Kenner to sell it with the rocket attached. One rocket-firing prototype sold at auction for $16,000 in 2003. Two prototypes sold in 2018 and 2019 for 69,000 pounds and 90,000 pounds, each setting the record for a Star Wars toy at the time. In 2024, one of only two existing hand-painted missile-firing figures sold for $525,000 at Heritage Auctions. An unopened figure sold for 18,000 pounds in the UK in January 2015.

  In August 2009, Hasbro released a figure based on McQuarrie's white-armored concept. Fett as both a child and a bounty hunter has become a Lego minifigure, and Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Trading Card Game includes several Boba Fett cards. Hallmark Cards made a Boba Fett Christmas tree ornament. In mid-2021, Lego released a Slave I set that renamed the ship "Boba Fett's Starship." The design director of Lego Star Wars said the Slave I name is something Disney no longer wants to use. Fans objected, including Mark Austin, who had performed Fett in the Special Edition of A New Hope. In a press release for variant covers of Marvel's War of the Bounty Hunters, the ship is called "Firespray," a reference to its fictional class.

  37146163