Boba Fett: A Diaspora Story — what we lose when the Fetts aren’t Mandalorian
From A Certain Point of View, the anthology of short stories making up the newest member of the Star Wars canon, hits release October 2, but with its offer of a Boba Fett narrated story comes one of my greatest fears as a Mandalorian fan: it’ll finally say in no uncertain terms that the Fetts aren’t Mandalorian.
This dread is one I’ve become well-acquainted with.
It’s been a long time since the canonicity of Jango and Boba’s Mandalorian heritage were thrown into question. It started with a short exchange in “The Mandalore Plot”, an episode of The Clone Wars and the reintroduction of Mandalorians to the franchise. The cultural majority on Mandalore became the New Mandalorians, a pacifist sect that abandoned and denounces the old traditions of the Mandalorian warrior people, and they had this to say:
Prime Minister Almec: Master Kenobi, Mandalore’s violent past is behind us. All of our warriors were exiled to our moon, Concordia. They died out years ago.
Obi-Wan: Are you certain? I recently encountered a man who wore Mandalorian armor, Jango Fett.
Prime Minister Almec: Jango Fett was a common bounty hunter. How he acquired that armor is beyond me.
Since then, the armored Mandalorian warrior people fans loved rose again to prominence in Star Wars Rebels, and familiar parts of the Mandalorian culture became again canon.
Except for the Fetts.
They’ve become simply wearers of Mandalorian armor, not Mandalorian people. There is some consolation to be had in that nothing firmly says they’re not; The Wookiee Gunner does a good job of outlining how vague the new canon is about it. But Pablo Hidalgo—of the former Lucasfilm Story Group, creative executive, clarifier of canonical things—has a Twitter.
The entire body of Mandalorian lore, both Legends and canon, springs out of the imposing figure Boba Fett cut in his battle-scarred armor way back in 1980. Boba and Jango together comprise the qualities all other Mandalorian characters, even those who prefix New to their identity, are written to share: resourcefulness, adaptability, ruthlessness, pragmatism even when near all others would consider it the morally unacceptable choice. Removing them from the Mandalorian narrative is like removing a block from the bottom corner of a Jenga tower. Sure, the tower will probably hold up, but it’s a questionable choice at best and a destabilizing one over time at worst.
But it isn’t change that I dread. Most critically, we would lose Boba Fett as a diaspora analogue.
Fett resigned himself to existing in no-man’s-land — too Mando for the outsider but not Mando enough for some of the clans….
— Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice by Karen Traviss
Boba was at his most compelling when written as someone who feels disconnected from his cultural heritage, is able to maintain only superficial ties with it, and as a result, struggles to regain that lost connection and feel that he earned the right to count himself a member of his own people.
This is an experience uniquely lived by members of diaspora. It’s an experience lived by many children of immigrants in the United States, like myself.
The Legacy of the Force series, for all its flaws and despite my issues with the Star Wars work of one of its authors Karen Traviss, wrote to this unique space that Boba Fett occupies. When he is called to lead Mandalore as its chief leader, the Mand’alor, being home among the Mandalorian people sharply highlights how disconnected from his cultural heritage Boba is.
Losing Jango so young also robbed Boba of figure who handed down the traditions and prevented from developing strong ties with his culture. As an adult, Boba can maintain only the most superficial ties with his heritage; he wears the armor but doesn’t relate to the culture in any impactful way, and he doesn’t even speak the language. As a result, he struggles to regain that lost connection and feel that he earned the right to count himself a member of his own people.
This belonging but not belonging is one that diasporic people think to themselves often. They are almost doomed to always feel like the outsider, in their host country, in their homeland. Boba literally expresses these statements as he tries to navigate his place within his culture: too much for one, not enough for the other.
There were snickers of laughter and comments in Mando’a this time. Fett made a mental note to program his helmet translator to deal with it, and that felt like the ultimate admission of defeat for a leader: he couldn’t speak the language of his own people.
— Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice by Karen Traviss
Mand’alor Boba Fett isn’t something I’d ask to be re-canonized. I’m rooting for Mand’alor Sabine Wren, and I wouldn’t ask for anyone — not even Boba Fett — to take that title from her. However, the thematic notes that came out of Mand’alor Boba Fett are ones that are easily reincorporated into the new canon. There is a place for the diasporic Boba Fett.
The Mandalorian warrior people, in every depiction, are written as a diasporic people. They are a people forced to leave their homeland and scatter across the galaxy because of cultural genocide, mass exile, and involuntary resettlement in their most diasporic depiction to date: the canonical one. It is a perfect context in which to return to Boba the most compelling arc ever written for him.
The story of someone so deeply affected by the diaspora of their people is one that speaks to the emotionally charged personal experience of millions, one the likes of which the new Star Wars canon lacks.
That’s what I fear in the end.
I don’t fear character details I loved becoming non-canon; Legends still exists, and I can always go back to read about Mand’alor Boba Fett. I fear that From A Certain Point of View, despite its grand title and grand vision of giving voice to the lesser heard characters, will demolish one certain point of view this franchise sorely needed.
And if From A Certain Point of View continues to dance around this question? I’ll fear it of the next new addition to canon, and the next, and the next—until something finally gives it back to us in no uncertain terms: the Fetts are Mandalorian, and Boba Fett is a diaspora story.
