Book of Boba Fett Spoiler Recap: The Tribes of Tatooine
It’s Tusken time, baby!
Four decades after callously being dismissed by Luke and Obi-Wan as “the sand people” (I love you, Obi, but that was a bad look, sir), the Tuskens are back in greater numbers and with a greater depth to their characters.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Episode 2, “The Tribes of Tatooine”, picks up in the present day, moments after Fennec followed Boba’s orders to the letter and left exactly one masked assassin alive for interrogation. She brings the lone man back to the palace, and despite a threat of beheading, he refuses to reveal who it was that hired him. Thanks to their droid 8D8, they learn the man is an assassin from the Order of the Night Wind, known for their fearlessness. To test that theory, Fennec drops him into Jabba’s rancor pit, and as the door to the fearsome beast opens, the assassin, betraying his stoic training, shouts that the Order was hired by Mayor Mok Shaiz.
The motley crew head into town to confront the mayor, pushing past the receptionist who can’t let them in without an appointment, and the blustering majordomo. However, once they reveal who the assassin is and who he works for, the mayor has him killed on the spot, as the Order of the Night Wind is not permitted to operate in that part of the galaxy. Mok Shaiz offers Boba the bounty on the assassins head, but the one-time bounty hunter spins it into the tribute owed to him as the crime boss. He also reminds Mok Shaiz that he only remains in power because Boba himself permits it.
Unwilling to let Boba have the last word, Mok Shaiz tells him that something is afoot, and that he can find answers at Garsa Fwip’s Sanctuary. When he and Fennec decide to go check it out, the vibe is decidedly different. Garsa is no longer smooth and flirtatious, but nervous. She is no longer calling him “Lord Fett”, and has instead switched to “Mr. Fett”. Her change in mood is swayed more by fear than active dislike of Boba, because she rather quickly catches him up on the developments, namely that Jabba’s cousins, known only as The Twins, have come to Tatooine to lay claim to the underworld throne.
Between this conversation, where Boba points out that The Twins are causing a mess in Hutta, and the mayor’s remark that the Order of the Night Wind cannot operate outside of Hutt space, I wonder if the show is about to take an unexpected twist into conflict with the Hutts. It’s true that it’s a crime drama, and we all expect it to deal with the syndicates - of which the Hutts are one - but with names like Crimson Dawn being thrown around, I guess the Hutts seemed too obvious?
Obvious or not, they’re here now, and while they didn’t fight with Boba and Fennec this time, it’s clear they sense conflict on the horizon. Perhaps this is what inspires them to unite the crime family leaders under one banner, as we saw in the trailer.
The brewing tension only takes up the first third or so of the episode. Soon after their conversation with the Twins, the episode shifts back in time to Boba’s early days with the Tuskens.
While he isn’t an official member of the tribe, Boba is still taking part in the day to day routine, training to fight with a Gaffi stick. But while the warrior sparring with him is using her own weapon, Boba is left training with a blunted version of the stick. I like to imagine its the one kids use, but the truth of it is actually far more beautiful than my attempt at humour.
But before we can get to that, there is the matter of the train bandits. Because yes, The Book of Boba Fett goes full Western and gives us a train heist. The Tuskens and Boba aren’t interested in stealing the contents of the train though. Rather, would just like it to stop driving across their territory, firing upon and killing Tuskens in the process. The beginnings of a solution present themselves when Boba spies a group of speeders sneaking across Tusken territory and into Anchorhead. Speeders belonging to none other than the water thieves we saw last week.
He pursues them into town, and it is here we get two cameos that are so, so subtle you will almost certainly miss them if you’re watching without subtitles and/or don’t stay through the credits. The cantina is largely full of the water bandits, but seated at one of the tables are a deeply uncomfortable-looking young couple. The couple are none other than Camie and Fixer, friends of Luke Skywalkers who were cut from A New Hope - but who can still be seen in the deleted scenes on Disney+.
This is an example, in my opinion, of how to do cameos right. If you don’t recognize them or their names, nothing about the scene changes, short of you wondering why the camera is lingering on them half a beat longer than usual. If you recognize them, great. The universe just got that much more connected. You recognize that while Luke went off to grandeur and adventure, his friends stayed behind to live the best lives they could. Though unintentional, I also can’t help but remember Jason Fry’s The Last Jedi novelization, where Luke wonders what it would have been to stay behind and marry Camie.
Fed up with having their drinks stolen and being made to feel like intruders at home, Fixer decides to say something and a fight breaks out. Boba, with as impeccable timing as ever, shows up to take care of the bandits and make off with their entire complement of speeders.
Now in possession of machines powerful enough to give them a fighting chance, the Tuskens train in their use and the next time the train comes around, they actually manage to stop them. Boba delivers his edict, that the spice runners using the train are not to pass through Tusken land as they please any longer.
As a gesture of thanks, and to welcome him properly as one of their own, the Tusken chief offers Boba a little lizard that he claims can guide him. Boba is confused, until suddenly he isn’t when it crawls up his nose.
Once up his nasal canal, the little lizard does do as advertised. In a beautifully-shot, trippy sequence, Boba is led to a tree in the middle of nowhere, while the ground around him shifts from the sands of Tatooine to the seas of Kamino. When he reaches the tree, he is pulled into its clutches and forced to face his recent near-death in the belly of the Sarlacc, while also flashing back further to his childhood in Tipoca City. In a surprising flash, the series uses deleted footage from Attack of the Clones showing little Boba - played by Daniel Logan - lingering at the window watching his father fly away.
These key moments in Boba’s life swirl about in his mind until he breaks free of the spell - and the tree - by snapping off a thick branch holding him in place. He returns to the camp bearing the branch, and is at last officially made a member of the tribe. Dressed in his now signature black robes, he is taken to a Tusken carpenter, branch in hand, to carve his very own Gaffi stick. That night around the fire, he and the other warriors rise and perform a pattern dance with their weapons. The entire scene was beautiful for how it took so many elements that had previously been painted as barbaric, and gave them every bit of significance that the galaxy grants to things like Kyber crystals.
Credit must be given to Temuera Morrison, who does such good work showing so many facets of Boba’s character. Nearly 5 years separate the flashbacks from the present day, and in his performance alone, you can already see the connections being drawn from where he was to where he is now. He grounds Boba and brings such a humanity and warmth to a man who went faceless and virtually speechless for so long.
This entire sequence was the finest example of the Tuskens we have ever seen in Star Wars. Though the show is obviously drawing an indigenous parallel with the Tuskens - in that they are the original group to live on the land, and the settlers are encroaching and stealing their resources. - anecdotally, I have seen many POC (myself included) really resonate with the way they were depicted. It might be the way they were treated by those who trespass on their land, simply because the trespassers can. It might be in the way they are relegated to the desert while outsiders plunder their resources. Whatever it may be, I hope to see more of this going forward both in The Book of Boba Fett and beyond.
A likely candidate for this would be Obi-Wan Kenobi whenever that releases. John Jackson Miller’s novel Kenobi details how he came to a sort of peace with the Tuskens during his Tatooine exile, and protected them from the malicious intent of some of the settlers. I would love to see the Star Wars shows connect on thematic levels like this, and not just on the basis of Easter eggs and name recognition.
I’m not above a bit of petty as well though, such as when one of the Tusken warriors shoots a wild animal accurately on the first try. “These blast points are too accurate for sand people” indeed.
My lone complaint with this episode is that there just wasn’t enough Fennec Shand for my liking. I know it was primarily set in flashback, but I hope we get more and more time with her and Boba as the season progresses. She has a fantastically dry sense of humour. The small comment she makes mid-interrogation that hiring the Order of the Night Wind is overpriced because all you’re doing is paying for the name, or her amusement at the assassin’s confession spurred by an empty rancor cage serve to offset Boba’s more solemn pleasantness and intensity.
Give me more banter is what I’m saying. The show isn’t strictly about Fennec Shand, but Ming-Na Wen plays her so well, walking that edge between tense, sarcastic and calculating, it would be a shame not to explore the dimensions of her character.
What did you think? Did you miss Fennec? Were you moved by the Tuskens and their story? Did the lizard make your nose itchy too? Let us know on Twitter!
For more Book of Boba Fett, be sure to catch our episode recap panel - The Book of Bonnec - on Space Waffles, and check back here each week for a spoiler deep dive!
The Book of Boba Fett airs new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+