This post contains spoilers for season 2 of The Mandalorian

So I’m just gonna rip the bandage off and say it — I think Boba Fett is a shitty character. You might be wondering where this is all coming from and to answer that I’d point you towards the hit Disney+ exclusive show, The Mandalorian for this particular blog. You can also thank my friends for the part they played in this blog, specifically how every conversation we’ve had since the latest episode went live have included some sore of Boba Fett themed joke. They know I hate this dude, and I’d like to explain why.

When I was younger, my mother introduced me to the world of Star Wars through the lens of the original trilogy. Back then they were the only Star Wars movies, so heaping praise on them and calling them “classics” was an easy thing to do. Yet even as a kid, there was one scene in particular that always made me chuckle. It was that scene where Darth Vader is meeting with all of the bounty hunters he’s hired, and feels compelled to specifically call out Boba Fett with the line, “No disintegrations.” As a kid, I saw this lineup of characters and thought they all looked absolutely absurd. Aside from Boba Fett, you’ve got Dengar desperately trying to look cool while standing next to the very “topple-able” IG-88, along with Bossk, 4-LOM and Zuckuss standing over to the right in the “who gives a shit?” section of the lineup. All of them are perfectly placed to highlight the man himself, Boba Fett, who according to Darth Vader and only Darth Vader, is very infamous for disintegrating folks.

One could argue that back in 1980 these guys looked imposing, but seeing this “rogue’s gallery” as a kid just made me snicker and laugh more than anything. None of these guys registered as threatening to me, especially not when compared to the guy hiring them, Darth motherfucking Vader. But that was kind of it as far as me thinking about Boba Fett until I watched Return of the Jedi and saw him basically get killed in what could be described as a comedy of errors. The dude gets shot in the jet-pack, launched into the sky, and immediately loses any semblance of being cool as he slams into Jabba’s ship and falls right into the mouth of a Sarlacc Pit. As a kid, that was the height of comedy for me.

But when I got older and noticed that the Star Wars fans around me were sincerely into Boba Fett and the things he could do, I was genuinely confused. They were talking about the same guy who flailed in the air, crashed into a wall and fell in a hole to be digested for centuries? This guy was cool? Why? Well the answers I’d usually get involved some books or expanded lore that did nothing but desperately try to paint this joke as a cool guy. That and his equipment was neat.

Tracking the official canon of Star Wars is tricky and to be completely honest, I don’t care enough to it. But my understanding is that all of the cool shit Boba Fett allegedly did in those books and comics are no longer canon now. I don’t know if that’s still the case or if some books are still legit or whatever, but the fact remains that I still don’t care. The official canon in my mind is that Boba Fett shows up in The Empire Strikes Back, has some unearned accolades thrown at him (i.e. “no disintegrations”), and promptly falls into a hole where he is munched on for an eternity. That’s it. I guess he also has a nice lunch with Darth Vader in the Cloud City, but that’s about it.

Then there’s his “cool stuff.” First, the helmet is cool. It’s always been cool and I will never take that away from the Mandalorians as a people. But aside from the helmet, Boba Fett looks like a kid trying on his dad’s clothes and pretending to be cool… oh wait, that’s exactly what it fucking is. He’s got these dumpy sweatpants, piss colored cape, big dumb orange lifting belt, and the stupidest looking knee-pads on, all of which paint the picture of a man who is desperately trying to look cool. The dude looks like he just rolled out of bed and hastily slapped something together that might look imposing. Eventually however, I was able to stop thinking about Boba Fett and Star Wars all together.

Then The Mandalorian came out, and I was genuinely scared that they’d try to redeem the eternally shitty, yet somehow beloved character of Boba Fett. The first season came and went without him rearing his stupid face, but the second season decided it was time to justify this character’s unearned fandom. As if Disney had been listening to my complaints for years, they sought to make an episode in which Boba Fett did a bunch of dope shit. They even went so far as to make his stupid fucking knee-pads shoot missiles, which I took personally.

The entire episode felt like a ret-con of everything I had specifically called Boba Fett out on for years, and I think that’s what’s pissing me off the most. Like, they went out of their way to do this knee-pad bullshit. But if I’m being completely honest, seeing Boba Fett actually do something effective for once was pretty cool. It was a good action sequence that really seemed to do right by the expanded lore of the character, and that’s fine in my book. Don’t get me wrong, I still think the titular Mandalorian is a much better character than the Fett-man, but I’ll give credit where it’s due. But nothing that Grandpa-Fett can do will make me forget the time he was bested by a blind man and his big dog which resulted in him residing at the bottom of a living hole for a couple of centuries. But I’m sure they’ll ret-con that too.