In the Belly of the Beast

In case you missed it, a brief, post-credit epilogue to the finale of season two of The Mandalorian on Disney+ teased a new Star Wars TV show, to be released in December of this year: The Book of Boba Fett. It’s a curious title for a television show, and for Star Wars, and for a show about Boba Fett. We don’t typically associate books with the Star Wars universe; datapads and holocrons yes, but books, when they appear, are antiquated Jedi accouterment, not things of bounty hunters.

I have a confession to make. Mass this past Sunday included a reading from the book of the prophet Jonah, and in the quiet space after the homily, my mind churned with thematic possibilities for Boba Fett, undoubtedly while I should have been praying. Whoops. But Star Wars has a penchant for incorporating Biblical themes into its narratives, increasingly so under Dave Filoni, whose creative hand shapes Star Wars television. For example, in Star Wars: Rebels, Biblical names like Kanan and Ezra orient audiences to their respective characters: an exiled, wayward Jedi and the prophetic Padawan who brings him home. Thus supposing Biblical imagery will inform The Book of Boba Fett is no great stretch (or sin, I hope); the show’s enigmatic title already lends a scriptural gravitas. And it doesn’t take a scripture scholar to align Boba Fett with the prophet Jonah, with whom he shares the strange experience of misadventuring himself into the belly of a great beast. And yet both are spared.

Jonah’s story is familiar, but here’s a recap: Jonah runs away when God asks him to preach repentance to the sinful city Nineveh. He boards a ship to escape, but God throws a fierce storm at him, and the crew throws Jonah overboard as the clear target of God’s watery wrath. Then he’s swallowed by a fish, where he shelters from the storm for three days and three nights. Still in its belly, Jonah sings a hymn in praise for God’s saving mercy. God intervenes, the fish spits him out on the Mediterranean shore, and Jonah gets another chance to do as asked. This time he complies, and walks three days through the streets of Nineveh, preaching the citizens’ impending doom. The people repent wholly, almost too well, turning away from their sins immediately. Ironically, Jonah is angry at their response, and begs God for death, because now he will be seen as a false prophet (as in Deut. 18:22; this was apparently his concern from the start, recognizing God’s mercy, but despairing instead of rejoicing in it). The Lord responds simply, “Is it right for you to be angry?” (4:4) Then the Lord gives Jonah a shady shrub to escape the heat, but takes it away again, and again, Jonah begs for death. Again, God asks if it is right for him to be so angry about a shrub. The story ends abruptly with a pointed speech by God:

“You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hands from their left, and also many animals?” (Jon. 4: 10-11)

Modern biblical scholars see the Book of Jonah as didactic fiction (Bandstra, 375; McGowan, 634), rather than historical. Jonah’s story, in both structure and content, is meant to teach a lesson, not unlike Star Wars, from a certain point of view. The lesson of the Book of Jonah centrally concerns God’s mercy. McGowan says the book’s two-fold division highlights its main character’s failing: that “Jonah benefits from the Lord’s mercy in the first part only to begrudge that mercy to others in the second part” (634). Jonah stands for all the people of God, says McGowan, who similarly receive but refuse to share God’s mercy, and the “application to our own day is obvious” (637).

The application of Jonah’s story to Boba Fett’s is more subtle, and still unfolding. Let’s review Boba’s story. Boba Fett was the “son” of Jango Fett, the bounty hunter and assassin whose genetic material was used to create the Grand Clone Army of the Republic in the Episode II: Attack of the Clones – “Son” (in quotes) because Jango did not sire Boba in the usual way. Rather, as part of his payment from the Kaminoan cloners, Jango requested one, unaltered clone to raise as his own. That clone was Boba, and their interactions in Episode II show they had a strong, loving bond as father and son.

But Jango effectively trains Boba in brutality. When Obi-Wan Kenobi comes sniffing around the Kaminoan cloning operation, looking for the assassin behind the attempts on Senator Padmé Amidala’s life (spoiler alert: it’s Fett, Sr.), Jango battles spectacularly with the Jedi, and together he and ten-year-old Boba – who exhibits a bloodlust that is more than a bit disturbing – callously hunt Kenobi. At the end of the film, as the first battle of the Clone War begins, Boba watches his father Jango beheaded in one swipe by Jedi Master Mace Windu. This arouses in Boba a thirst for revenge against the Jedi – and Windu in particular – that carries him throughout his young adulthood, as he makes his way into bounty hunting with a brutality unmatched among his colleagues.[1] Thus he becomes the Boba Fett we meet in the Original Trilogy– a universally feared baddie whose demeaning tumble into a sarlacc pit (burp!) made audiences cheer in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

But as with Jonah, we have cause to question Boba Fett’s anger. Sure, his father was taken from him by the Jedi, but this father also taught him to relentlessly hunt Jedi, or prominent Senators, or anyone else he had a mind to kill. And Boba only had the privilege of a father, unlike his millions of Clone brothers, because a fortuitous twist of fate plucked him from their ranks to fulfill Jango’s “curious” desire for a son. Jango’s whim also spared Boba the dangerous modifications imposed on his brothers, such as growth acceleration and the “inhibitor chip” that resulted in the Clone Army turning on the Jedi like murderous automatons when Palpatine dropped Order 66 in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. No, Boba’s bloodlust for the Jedi was cultivated organically, and began not with Windu but with Kenobi, who had done him no harm. Enter thematic possibility inspired by the Book of Jonah. For as Boba’s thirst for revenge drags on in The Clone Wars, one can hear the echo of God’s words to Jonah: “Is it right for you to be angry?”

The Book of Jonah ends abruptly, and we do not learn if that prophet came around to the gratitude that is a hallmark of God’s most cherished friends. Boba, on the other hand, may surprise us in his book. I’m not one for predictions, mostly because I hate being wrong, but subtle signs in The Mandalorian suggest the resurrected Boba Fett is and will be a new man.

His first appearance in The Mandalorian (Season 1, Chapter 5, “The Gunslinger”) is cloaked in ambiguity. We see only his boots, and don’t know who he is or what he will do with the bounty hunter Fennic Shand, who has been left for dead on Tatooine’s sands. His next appearance in Season Two’s “The Marshal” is similarly uncertain. But in Chapter 14, “The Tragedy,” we learn Fett used his apparently boss skills at cybernetics to rebuild Shand’s gut, saving her life. His explanation for showing such radical mercy is full of that Biblical gravitas: “She was left for dead on the sands of Tatooine, like I was. But fate sometimes steps in to rescue the wretched.” Shand makes a fate/Fett wordplay, driving home the point: Fett showed her the mercy that was shown to him. Fett’s subsequent willingness to help the Mandalorian rescue the Child, just when Mando needs help the most, is more noble than Fett seems on the hook for. That nobility endears him in to audiences more profoundly than his proficiency with deadly gadgetry ever could.

In addition to these indications, a detail Boba changes when he refurbishes his armor between The Mandalorian episodes “The Tragedy” and “The Believer” also signifies his new trajectory. The gold markings (sometimes called “kill stripes”) on the left side of his helmet have been changed to red. According to Star Wars sources,[2] gold stands for vengeance in Mandalorian armor design and culture, whereas red signals honoring a father. (Big thanks to Bobby Covitz of our local 501^st Academy for pointing this important detail out to me.)

Don’t get me wrong, being a killer will always be part of Boba Fett’s charm. Temuera Morrison (the actor who played Jango in the Prequels, now Boba Fett in the new continuity)’s performance in “The Tragedy,” mowing down Stormtroopers with only a Tusken gaderffii, was frankly awful, in the archaic sense: awe-inspiring and terrifying to behold. But in the new era of Star Wars, Fett directs his wrath against the bad guys, for a change. This holds true in the teaser for his new show; Fett and Shand enter Jabba’s old Pleasure Palace, guns blazing, but after clearing the room (most people flee), Shand frees a Twi’lek who is chained to the dais, and Fett eliminates Bib Fortuna, Jabba’s majordomo who has usurped Jabba’s leadership, his habit of enslaving Twi’leks, and some of his flab. These acts by Fett and Shand are more heroic than criminal, by Star Wars standards.

So this is my prediction: in The Book of Boba Fett, we’ll see a nobler, more outwardly-focused Boba Fett. So often, redemption for Star Wars characters means moving from a state of isolation in the material world to a state of community, embracing a shared, transcendent reality (think of Vader, Ben Solo, Agent Kallus, Luke Skywalker). Fett has already teamed up with Shand, another bounty hunter who narrowly escaped death. Perhaps Boba will take up the cause of Mandalore; in The Mandalorian he moved from scoffing at Bo Katan’s efforts to playing an essential role in assisting her. Perhaps Fett will find meaning and community in the ancient Way. Or perhaps he and Shand will turn Jabba’s legacy on Tatooine into something other than a hive of villainy. Maybe he’ll simply go back to bounty hunting, but follow Din Djarin’s example of protecting the vulnerable along the way – “rescuing the wretched,” as he has already begun to do. The redemptive possibilities abound for Boba Fett, who unlike the Prophet Jonah, seems eager to share with others the mercy that has been shown to him.

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[1] Boba’s revenge-driven coming-of-age is detailed in Star Wars: The Clone Wars television show. See especially the following episodes: “Death Trap,” “R2 Come Home,” “Lethal Trackdown,” “Assassin,” Deception” and “Bounty.”

[2] See https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mandalorian_armor/Legends. The article relies on sources that are non-canonical, but the current creators of Star Wars (both film and tv) clearly enjoy drawing details, plotlines and even characters from the pre-Disney Expanded Universe of books, games, novels and comics. This Mandalorian symbol scheme for colors is also observed by the Mandalorian Mercs, a professional costuming alliance.

References:

Bandstra, Barry L. Reading the Old Testament, Second Edition. Wadworth, 1999.

McGowan, Jean C., RSCJ. “Jonah.” In The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, S.S. Prentice-Hall, 1968.