The Marvelization of Star Wars has Arrived
Spoilers for The Book of Boba and Hawkeye:
The Book of Boba wrapped up with a flat finale. We never learned why Boba Fett did anything. He constantly said “my city” or “my people” but we never learned about the people of Mos Espa. Hell, we never learned why he even considered it “his” city. Even worse, a perfect foil was presented with Cad Bane. However, he was criminally underutilized as a villain. TBoB paled in comparison to The Mandalorian. Instead, TBoB was similar to another Disney show; Hawkeye.
The early episodes of Hawkeye showed promise. This was Disney’s chance to add depth to Clint Barton. Throughout all of the Marvel Movies he had zero character besides, “family man, kind of”. Kate Bishop has always been a great foil to Clint in the comics. Both are resistant to asking for help. Clint is an asshole about it and shoves people away while Kate puts on an overconfident performance. Instead of focusing on the toxic dynamic between the two, the show sped through characters and plot beats. Kate was never fully hurt by Clint because Clint never went for the throat. It wanted to reference the Matt Fraction run of Hawkeye comics without any of the soul. Lucky the pizza dog was there, the typography from the comics was used, Grills was in the show, but they were only cosmetic. Kingpin was used as a penultimate episode stinger but for those who did not watch the Netflix Marvel shows the reveal fell on its face. Worse, his presence stole screen time from Maya, Kazi, Yelena, and Eleanor, characters who were already established as antagonists in the show. Instead of fixing the villain problem, Marvel threw as many villains as possible. They didn’t create a compelling villain, they just hinted at the possibility one of these many villains might be compelling. TBoB embraces this but makes it worse.
The first antagonist was the Mayor of Mos Espa, Mok Shaiz. He sent an assassin to kill Boba. However, Mok Shaiz was usurped by the Twins. Jabba’s cousins wanted his territory for some reason, the show was never clear why exactly Mos Espa is important. Nor did it explain what Jabba’s role in the galaxy was before his downfall. Then the Twins send an assassin to kill Boba, this also fails. But we learned in the very next episode that the Pykes are actually in control and so the Twins peace out not wanting to start a war, in Star Wars. However, the Pykes themselves are just an abstract villain. Their representative is Cad Bane, who is an eviler Clint Eastwood type. He also deserved to die in a better show goddammit! But this is after The Mandalorian, Din Djarin, deals with three different villains; random gangsters, another Mandalorian, and CGI Luke/Ashoka’s baby blocking. Instead of building tension with an overarching villain escalating their actions against Boba Fett, we got a menagerie of cameos hinting at the future of Star Wars shows.
If TBoB was received well we would be hearing a cavalcade of announcements. A Fennec Shand prequel show would be in development. Maybe a Cad Bane limited series would be in production. In Hawkeye before the show was cold we were given an announcement for an Echo (Maya) show. Fundamentally, Disney is treating these shows as focus groups. They take the reactions of critics and fan reaction on social media to determine what shows to produce. Grogu and Mando show up in TBoB because Disney knows they are popular characters. I know people who watched the damn thing because they heard good characters showed up. This is pop media now.
It was going to happen eventually. The Marvel method was going to infect Star Wars. The signs were there with Rise of Skywalker. When The Mandalorian Season 2 got a Star Wars version of the Marvel startup screen I laughed but missed the omen. Now, TBoB fully embraced the method of storytelling laid out by Marvel. There is no turning back from this point. The Disney Void has engulfed the stars.
