How Boba Fett Survived The Sarlacc Pit In Legends
As a final gift to 2021, Disney gave the Star Wars fandom the premiere of The Book of Boba Fett, a spin-off of The Mandalorian featuring the fan-favorite character of Boba Fett. When the grizzled bounty hunter extraordinaire showed up in season 2 of The Mandalorian, fans were immediately excited, and the love for the bounty hunter was renewed. However, more questions were raised as we remember the last time we had seen Boba Fett on screen he was rolling in the sands of Tatooine into the mouth of the dreaded Sarlacc, never to be seen again. So, what happened to him? It depends on your of knowledge of the Star Wars universe.
With the acquisition of Star Wars in 2012, Disney declared the Extended Universe (EU), which was a jumbled mess of novels and stories trying to bring clarity to the films when no one thought there would be any more Star Wars movies, to be null and void. Rather than trying to erase history, Disney rebranded the EU as “Legends,” and anything they would create thereafter would become canon. We certainly can dedicate multiple pages on this decision, but what it ultimately did was give us two versions of every character’s history and future. Boba Fett’s escape from the Sarlacc was no exception.
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The season premiere of The Book of Boba Fett gave us a canonical version of the story. The Sarlacc suffered a fatal injury when an entire flaming barge landed on top of it. It lost a lot of its strength, and was subsequently dying. Boba was then able to launch a missile into its side and was able to crawl out. This was similar to the descriptions in Chuck Wendig’s 2016 canon novel Aftermath: Life Debt. This was certainly an escape worthy of the bounty hunter. However, in Legends, his escape was a lot crazier.
In Legends, Boba’s escape from the Sarlacc was covered in the short story "A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett" from the book Tales from Jabba’s Palace. Boba literally fought his way out of the Sarlaac’s belly using pure strength and willpower. After a rough landing and losing his memory, Boba was then captured by Jawas, who mistook the unconscious bounty hunter for being a droid. They then shackled him up on their sandcrawler and put restraining bolts on him. However, soon enough, a familiar face was also captured by the same Jawas – R2-D2!
The droid had been captured from a hangar in Mos Eisley, and Han Solo and Leia were working to get R2 back. They raided the sandcrawler, and as Leia called out to Han, Boba's memories came flooding back to him. Boba managed to escape, only to be eaten up once more by the Sarlacc.
Boba then learned that another of the Sarlaac’s victims, Susejo, had formed a telepathic bond with the Sarlaac, and had some control over the monster. With the help of Susejo, Boba goaded the monster into contracting around his jet pack, blowing it up, and creating a hole for him to leave. However, this left him severely injured. He was then picked up by fellow bounty hunter Dengar, who was searching the area for valuable leftovers. Dengar nursed Boba back to health, and the two became friends, eventually going on various adventures together.
It is not unusual for Dave Filoni and Jon Favereau to use pieces from Legends to help build their stories. We see that Boba is getting a rougher time immediately out of the pit, given his time with the sand people. It would be interesting to see who will eventually rescue him, and how Boba will make his way back to where we see him in The Mandalorian.
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Source(s): Screen Rant