The Book of Boba Fett, Chapter Two: The Tribes of Tatooine (5/5)

Once again, The Book of Boba Fett has blown me away from start to finish. A solid five-star episode for me, building on the 4.5/5 from the premiere episode. The quality all around in this series has been outstanding thus far, and I cannot wait for more. Seriously, Wednesdays can never come fast enough. Director Steph Green did a brilliant job with this episode, taking what was begun in the first episode and building on it here. Building on the present-day timeline with the introduction of contenders for Boba’s throne, building on the past with the focus on Boba’s relationship with the Tuskens that he earned the respect of when he killed the giant sand monster that we don’t know the name of. I am still finding that I’m preferring The Book of Boba Fett in its early stages to The Mandalorian, and I really enjoyed The Mandalorian because it got me back into Star Wars. This episode of The Book of Boba Fett was longer than the previous one, and I don’t really take issue with that because it felt just as long as it needed to be.

Once again, I was transfixed from the beginning of the episode, and that was not a surprise to me at all. I enjoyed a great many things about this episode, so recap of that stuff before I get into the deeper stuff. I loved getting to see Black Krrsantan, a comic character, on screen. It gives me hope for some of my favourite comic characters and might lead to an Aphra appearance. I liked getting to see the difference between The Sanctuary in the first episode and the second, and the change in Garsa’s demeanour between the two episodes. Some people thought it meant that she was sus, and have some clues for that, but I have different thoughts and will go deeper. I enjoyed seeing Camie, a character who not even my diehard Star Wars fan partner remembered existed, which was fun for me, getting to remind him.

For the deeper level stuff, I’m going to start with Madam Garsa first because I have less to say on that front. People have suggested that the helmet full of coins was part of her plot to have Boba unprotected when the assassins attacked in episode one. I however think that her behaviour in the second episode stood out more. Boba commented on her visible nervousness and she was far less respectful towards him than she had been in the previous episode. By this point, she already knew that the Twins had laid claim to Boba’s throne. If she was under the control of Jabba and Bib Fortuna prior to Boba’s rule, which is incredibly likely, there is a chance that she would return to that if the Twins took power. In her fear of them, she wouldn’t want to be seen to have sworn fealty to any other, including Boba. I don’t see her as a bad person, merely someone who is trying her best to stay alive and stay safe. She would not have been treated well at all by Jabba, and I don’t think she would ever want to return to that.

Now onto the Tuskens! Once again, the Tusken plot was superb. I really did enjoy getting to spend the bulk of the episode on them and their culture as an important part of the story. Now, while the vision quest part of it was problematic because it’s a trope that typically used by white writers when telling Indigenous stories, I do think that the handling of Tusken culture was otherwise well done in comparison to how it has been treated in other Star Wars media. As with the last episode, I am pleased that they continued to humanize the Tuskens and allow Boba to build a relationship with them. It was incredibly important to me that Boba was on their side against the Pykes and defended the Tuskens’ ancestral claim to the Dune Sea. It was such an incredible moment to have something that is so important as the ideas of Land Back in Star Wars. Understanding and respecting ancestral lands is so important when telling stories like this, and it can do a lot of work to decolonize the genres that we work within. I have seen criticism that Boba is playing the role of the ‘white saviour’ which is also a heavy theme in a lot of stories in our colonized world, even and especially in fantasy and science-fiction stories, however this is not what is happening in this case simply because Boba, as a character played by an Indigenous actor, is not white, which removes the whole point of the white saviour trope. In my mind, Boba is giving the Tuskens the respect that they deserve on their home planet. He defends them not because he thinks he has to save them, but because he perceives the actions of the Pykes to be wrong, and he is correct. As someone who didn’t really grow up with a culture and really grew up away from things like that, away from people that he could connect to, seeing a community and culture is very important to him. When he earns the respect of the Tuskens, it is because of his own respect for them and his own strength. In the first episode, as I mentioned with my review, he never really lashes out at the Tuskens and ultimately protects one of their own. In this episode, he is learning their ways of doing things before using his own prior knowledge to help them learn more in a ‘use their technology against them’ kind of way. He went into those fight scenes properly leading them, not simply sending them out to die for glory which also goes a long way to building respect. Until The Mandalorian, we had never truly seen someone respect the Tuskens as a group of people, and I’m very happy that we are spending more time on it in The Book of Boba Fett.

Overall, yes, five out of five stars for this episode, it was incredible.