Star Wars Story Writer Says Boba Fett Was “Off-Limits” in Han Solo Spinoff

Before his return in The Mandalorian Season 2 and upcoming spinoff series The Book of Boba Fett, the most feared bounty hunter of the Star Wars galaxy was “off-limits” to the filmmakers of Solo: A Star Wars Story. A prequel and origin story about a young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich), the anthology film was in the final stages as Disney-Lucasfilm was developing more Star Wars stories about Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi. But after Solo failed to take flight at the box office and Lucasfilm pumped the brakes on theatrical Star Wars spinoffs, canceling the Boba Fett movie, it was decided Boba (Temuera Morrison) and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) would return elsewhere — on Disney+. 

Interviewed by The New York Times, screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan said he hoped to use Boba in Solo but was told by Lucasfilm that the character “was always off-limits because he was in development elsewhere.” 

Two years after Lucasfilm pulled the plug on the never-made Boba Fett movie with attached director Josh Trank, the character officially returned in the second season of Disney+’s The Mandalorian. Set five years after Fett’s fall into the Sarlaac pit in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, Season 2 of the live-action series ended with a coda spinning Fett and Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) off into their own show: The Book of Boba Fett. 

The Mandalorian spinoff, premiering December 29 on Disney+, will “fill in the gaps” and truly unmask the mystery man who hunts Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in 1980’s Empire Strikes Back. 

Despite speculation at the time that Solo might pit its titular smuggling space pirate against his famed arch-enemy from the original Star Wars trilogy, the prequel instead involved the seedy underside of the galaxy with new characters like crime boss Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) and the gangster Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). 

In The Book of Boba Fett, set after the events of Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian, Fett and Fennec Shand navigate the galaxy’s underworld when they return to Tatooine to stake the claim once ruled by Jabba the Hutt and his crime syndicate. The new series set in the timeline of The Mandalorian premieres December 29 on Disney+.

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