Chris

I think we tend to remember excitable Luke from Ep IV rather than chilled Jedi Luke from VI. If you compare last night’s performance against Return of the Jedi I think it was pretty spot on. And when my daughter came into the room last night while he was on screen she gasped and asked “is that CGI? It’s amazing!” Which it was. A major improvement on his last appearance in Mando.

I loved last night’s episode. It felt like we had dropped in on a segment of a much bigger adventure. Those sequences wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Saga film set at this point in the cycle. I know one or two folks are confused and asking whether this isn’t meant to be a series about Boba Fett, but actually there’s a pretty major clue as to what they’re up to in the way the series title is formed. It’s “The Book of Boba Fett” which is quite deliberate in its Bible-like construction. When you look, for example, at the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament* you will find that on one level it tells the life story of a prophet called Samuel, but it is as interested in events that surround him or are triggered by him and persist after his death. Whole episodes of that story pass without the eponymous prophet making an appearance at all.

In the Star Wars universe it is clear that Tatooine is far more significant to the history of the galaxy than its apparent status as a backwater on the galactic rim. We’re being shown that what Boba Fett is building at Hutt Castle is likewise of much more significance than a simple turf war between gangs. If nothing else, the showrunners are giving us a taste of the theme of interconnectedness which is often inferred in the Saga films without ever being explored in depth. The Star Wars universe is finally getting some depth and breadth and I for one am absolutely loving it.

* The modern Christian Bible splits the book into ‘1 Samuel’ and ‘2 Samuel’ but in the original Hebrew scrolls, and in modern Jewish Bibles (which only contain what we call the Old Testament) it was simply one book, the ‘Book of Samuel.’ Among its significant events are the union of the 12 tribes into a single coherent kingdom under David, who was anointed to the task by Samuel under God’s direction, and David’s fight with the giant, Goliath. The book is foundational to the concept of Israel as a coherent nation state.