Boba Fett has gone full circle; first introduced in Star Wars as an ambiguous side character, Boba’s story was extended by The Book of Boba Fett, which, ironically, didn’t take long to demote him back to the sidelines.
Episode 6 of the series is, essentially, another special episode of The Mandalorian, again emphasizing how Din Djarin has completely overshadowed the character he was designed to emulate. The episode also features a second appearance from CGI Luke Skywalker, and introduces another cool character from the animated arm of the franchise, Cad Bane.
Coincidently, these three characters seem to represent three sides to Disney’s Star Wars.
First, Cad Bane, who, like several characters introduced in The Mandalorian, has already been fleshed out by The Clone Wars and Rebels; he’s a formidable bounty hunter, tough enough to hold his own against the Jedi, nursing a grudge against Boba Fett.
The phrase “that’s not Star Wars” is often repeated in the fandom, but I think it would take a particularly stubborn gatekeeper to argue that Cad Bane doesn’t belong in this universe. The character is strong and simple, boasting a comic-book name and a killer aesthetic, an alien sharpshooter in a cowboy hat, a blunt homage to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Like Ahsoka (who hasn't really been given anything interesting to do yet), Cad Bane is an archetypal character with a well-defined personality, whose introduction into live-action is likely to lead to more genre-blending adventuring, the fun, pulpy stuff that defines Star Wars.
Boba Fett, on other hand, seems to represent the overstuffed worldbuilding that plagues a galaxy far, far away - we don’t always need to know what happened to every adversary, ally, and weird background alien that appeared in the original trilogy.
Boba is one of many side characters who have been spread too thin, stretched out across an unnecessary, unremarkable narrative.
CGI Luke Skywalker, on the other hand, represents Star Wars at its most empty and nostalgic; the de-aged character is a remarkable technical accomplishment, and a poor replacement for Mark Hamil.
Out of the two puppets that appear in this episode, Grogu is the more expressive.
Luke’s blank gaze is bad enough, but the character’s lines are even delivered via a speech synthesizer, trained by Hamil’s old audio clips, which imbues Luke with an eerie detachment; he’s like a character from an awkward video game cutscene, voiced by an actor who doesn’t quite understand the context of the conversation.
We never learn anything new about Luke in his digital appearances; he exists only to separate Mando and Baby Yoda, to delay their inevitable reunion. But if these classic characters are going to appear for a significant length of time, beyond stilted cameos, perhaps Lucasfilm should start hiring actors, instead of constructing digital puppets (when it comes to young Luke, Sebastian Stan is right there).
The Star Wars universe is brimming with characters who haven’t yet been introduced to live-action, who have plenty of stories to tell, but the ghosts of Star Wars past seem doomed to haunt the spotlight.
