I’m gonna say it:
After one episode, The Mandalorian is my favorite Star Wars since the original film.
It’s everything I’ve wanted from Star Wars since I was 10 and 11: it’s a Star Wars TV series AND it’s got a guy who looks like the guy that I liked from the cartoon in The Star Wars Holiday Special.
Seriously, I’ve wanted a TV version of Star Wars since I saw the original movie. I even imagined episode descriptions as listed in TV Guide, like “Artoo gets captured by the Jawas again.”
And Boba Fett has been my second favorite character since I first saw him in that animated short in 1978.
I’ve gotten lots of shit from people over the years because Fett was a ‘do nothing’ character, much like Captain Phasma in the newer films. But like Phasma, Boba Fett was a much better character in other media, like comics and novels, and my own imagination.
My gaming group actually met Boba Fett during one scenario, where my bounty hunter character called in a favor from him.
It was the look, and the mystery of Fett and his Mandalorian armor, that made him one of my favorites.
And even back then, and through the years, I never let other people’s opinion’s about him change my fandom.
If there’s one thing I actually hate about the prequels, it’s the way they changed the back story of Boba Fett, making him the son a guy who was the original clone of the Clone Wars. No more Jaster Mereel, no more Mandalorian background except for the armor.
Which brings us to now, where this new Mandalorian character is everything Boba Fett SHOULD had been, but wasn’t, but it doesn’t matter now because he’s just as much of a badass as I imagined Fett to be in the first place.
Thanks again to Jon Favreau, for breathing life into the side of the Star Wars universe that always appealed to me: bounty hunters and the scum and villainy of the underworld in a galaxy far, far away.