There are two kinds of mysteries in the Star Wars franchise. The biological aspect of the Force should not be revealed, as it is a big-picture, galactic-level kind. There are character-based mysteries that deepen and enrich the galaxy far, far away when finally revealed.
Star Wars fans were thrilled when the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett dropped on Disney+. We had been expecting the return of beloved musical characters. Five years prior to the present day, the events of Return of the Jedi took place. These character mysteries are the most enduring in Star Wars history because they have been around for nearly four decades. Let's break them down.
The surprise was sarlacc.
The sarlacc on Tatooine is hard to escape. lucas film
The fact that the bounty hunter escaped his death in the pit is something we have known since Temuera Morrison's beloved bounty hunter reappeared in The Mandalorian Season 2, episode 1. The show avoided answering how he survived. It made sense to avoid the incident since none of the new friends in The Mandalorian would have known about it. Boba was not likely to volunteer a story about the time a blind Han Solo accidentally activated his jetpack and sent him hurtling to his doom.
Since Return of the Jedi, we learned that the sarlacc was not a creature to be trifled with, there had to be a good story to the escape. The Sarlacc was said to digest its victims slowly over a thousand years, as Threepio put it. If anyone had ever done it before, Jabba the Hutt would not have gone to the trouble of dropping his enemies there.
The fact that Star Wars has a long-standing set of comic books and novels comes in handy. Fett escaped the Sarlacc by means of his unique tools, which included a jetpack and a flamethrower, in no-longer-canon tales. Book of Boba Fett had its star escape using the first of these tools, after introducing the body of a long-dead Stormtrooper, who used to supply himself with air.
After burning his way through the guts of the sarlacc, Boba appeared to have simply clawed his way up through the sand to the surface. It makes sense for the story in many ways. Not all his equipment was going to be in working order, after all, he was covered in digestive juices. The character's strength is established by requiring such a high amount of sand-digging effort. A jetpack escape wouldn't feel right, and wouldn't explain why the Jawas stripped his armor from his catatonic body, leaving him a sunburned wreck to be picked up.
Book of Boba Fett establishes that it will use a cinematic device rarely seen in any Star Wars movie or show so far: the flashback. We're likely to get more of them as the book unfolds, since episode 1 didn't establish how Boba escaped his captivity, or why he feels the need to rule the Tatooine crime scene in Jabba's stead. The answer to a character mystery should lead to new character mysteries.
Tatooine supergroup.
It's possible that Tweet has been deleted.
Tatooine-based pop sensations were provided by the original Star Wars trilogy. The backdrop to the spaceport cantina in A New Hope was provided by the band Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes. The Max Rebo band performed a style of music called "Jizz" in Return of the Jedi. Max's band played a song called "Lapti Nek" for the denizens of Jabba's palace before George Lucas tinkered with the music in the Special Editions of 1997. "Jedi Rocks" was Lucas' replacement and it was a rather busy tune.
Max Rebo was the star of the Jabba's palace scenes. Max, the blue elephantine, stole the show from his lead singer, the stick-legged Sy Snootles, by hammering away on a primitive form of keyboard. Lucasfilm says that Max signed a music deal that was the worst in the history of the universe, his band would perform for Jabba for life and get nothing more than free food in return.
It's possible that Tweet has been deleted.
Max Rebo's band was in mourning after Jabba's death. There is something of an answer in the Book of Boba Fett. Jabba's former empire has a cantina where Max is playing. The rest of the band are not visible.
Who is performing next to Max? A Bith musician who may be a member of the Modal Nodes, perhaps even band leader Figrin D'an himself. He might have branched out from his traditional horn to a space mandolin. The connection is made clear by the fact that they appear to be performing a smooth acoustic version of the classic New Hope cantina music, featuring an aechstrom droid on drums.
Could this be a sign that Tatooine's two most famous musicians have joined forces to form a new supergroup? How acrimonious was the break up of their bands? Is it possible that Sy Snootles went solo? Are they working on a new material or are they working on the old cantina classics? The unexpected reappearance of background characters leads to intriguing new mysteries. Hopefully Book of Boba Fett answers them in later episodes.
