Disney: Boba Fett’s starship no longer called Slave I

Slave I, the ship piloted by legendary Star Wars bounty hunter Boba Fett, debuted in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, where he used it to ferry a frozen-in-carbonite Han Solo away to Jabba the Hutt. Since then, there have been plenty of toys, tee-shirts and other stuff bearing the image of Slave I, because this is Star Wars and everything is merchandised.

And that’s going to continue…with a twist. Over the weekend, fans noticed a new Slave I LEGO debuting at LEGO Con, this one based on the starship as it appeared in The Mandalorian, where Boba Fett is played by Temuera Morrison. Once the LEGO isn’t called “Slave I.” It was simply called “Boba Fett’s Starship.”

Talking to Jedi News, LEGO Star Wars Design Director Jens Kronvold Frederiksen and Lead Designer Michael Lee Stockwell revealed that the label change was indeed purposeful. “We’re not calling it Slave I anymore,” Stockwell said. “This is Boba Fett’s Starship.”

“Everybody is [dropping the old name],” Frederiksen added. “It’s probably not something which has been announced publicly but it is just something that Disney doesn’t want to use anymore.”

Does this mean the starship will literally get a new name? Boba Fett is getting his own Disney+ series in the form of The Book of Boba Fett. Assuming the ship shows up, will characters start calling it “Fett’s Vette” or something? Or maybe they’ll just call it “Boba Fett’s ship” and get around the need to ever actually acknowledge the name. (I’m not a Star Wars expert, but has anyone ever actually called it “Slave I” in the movies?) My bet’s on the latter.

Why did Disney change the name Slave I?

Frederiksen and Stockwell didn’t explain why Disney made this change, but I think we can make some educated guesses.

Managing the Star Wars franchise has always been tricky. It birthed a merchandising empire that rakes in untold sums of money every year, which means whoever’s in charge of it wants to make sure the products are palatable to as many people as possible. But there’s also some messed up stuff in the Star Wars universe. For instance: slavery exists. Anakin Skywalker, the boy who grows up to become Darth Vader, is a slave when we meet him in The Phantom Menace.

The franchise has mostly gotten around this by making bad guys out of the slavers or just sort of side-stepping the whole issue. But now that Boba Fett is the hero of his own show, perhaps Disney thinks it’s in bad taste to have him keep piloting a ship called “Slave I,” especially if it’s going to market it in toy form to kids everywhere, and especially after a year where a lot of attention was paid to racial issues in the United States, many of which have their roots in the real-life North American slave trade.

So I can see why Disney might want to shift things around, and I don’t think it’s worth paying too much attention to folks acting like this is some kind of affront to their fandom. Although I won’t act like this isn’t funny:

The Book of Boba Fett premieres in December of this year!

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h/t ComicBookMovie