Boba Fett was “off limits” for Solo: A Star Wars Story

Few characters from the Star Wars universe have had the staying power of Boba Fett. The masked bounty hunter’s first appearance in The Empire Strikes Back was hardly more than a cameo — Fett had a grand total of four lines and less than seven minutes of screen time, according to Disney+’s new Under the Helmet: The Legacy of Boba Fett featurette. Yet there was just something about him that captured the imagination of fans. Even before Disney bought Lucasfilm and started churning out new Star Wars projects left and right, there were still new stories about him. From seeing him as a kid in 2002’s Attack of the Clones to Josh Trank’s aborted Boba Fett spinoff film, the bounty hunter has simply refused to die.

And yesterday, he finally got his own show with The Book of Boba Fett on Disney+. Temeura Morrison, who played Fett in season 2 of The Mandalorian as well as his clone-daddy Jango Fett in the prequel trilogy, returns to the role and is doing a killer job exploring the depths of this iconic character.

Now that the Fett’s out of the Sarlac (sorry, I couldn’t help myself), we’re getting all sorts of new information on the journey he’s taken to get to this point, including the very interesting tidbit that Lucasfilm and Disney have held Boba Fett back from other projects in order to keep their options open.

Lucasfilm didn’t allow Solo: A Star Wars filmmakers to use Boba Fett

Han Solo, the smuggler with a heart of gold played by Harrison Ford in the original Star Wars trilogy, has quite a bit of history with Boba Fett. As you’ll recall, Fett originally came into the Star Wars movies specifically to hunt Solo down during The Empire Strikes Back. He was the one responsible for bringing the captain of the Millennium Falcon to the palace of Jabba the Hutt. In Return of the Jedi, luck swung back in Solo’s direction when he accidentally knocked Boba Fett into the pit of the Sarlac, an enormous creature that lives on the desert planet Tatooine which digests its victims very slowly and painfully. That, it appeared, was the end of Boba Fett.

So it should come as little surprise that when Han Solo was getting his own spinoff in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, the idea of including Boba Fett was floated. After all, Solo included parts for Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca. Why not throw Boba into the mix?

As it turns out, the reason the bounty hunter never appeared in that film was because Lucasfilm wouldn’t allow it. Per SyFy Wire, Solo writer Jonathan Kasden recalled that during the production of the film, “Boba was always off limits because he was in development elsewhere.”

It’s not clear where that “elsewhere” was, but it seems like a relatively safe bet that the studio might have already had its eye on Fett’s eventual inclusion in The Mandalorian. Disney is pretty good at scoping out which of its characters are ripe for more screen time, so of course they would know what they had in Boba Fett. After all, fans had been clamoring to see more of the guy for almost 40 years.

I think we can all agree that this turned out for the best. The Book of Boba Fett‘s first episode was pretty solid. Given the choice, I’d gladly take that over a shoe-horned cameo in some other project. Finally, the bounty hunter gets his due.

Whether the residents of Mos Espa are as happy about it, well, we’ll just have to wait until Episode 2 premieres next Wednesday to find out.

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