When The Book of Boba Fett was still in production, creator Jon Favreau jokingly dubbed the spinoff series "The Mandalorian season 2.5." It turns out he wasn't really joking. I mean, we knew The Book of Boba Fett would take place in the same timeline. I just didn't expect that, four episodes into a seven-episode season, the focus would abruptly shift away from Temuera Morrison's iconic titular character—i.e., the supposed star of the series—and the next two episodes would be spent mostly catching up with our favorite characters from The Mandalorian.
It was (ahem) an interesting creative choice that generated considerable Internet discussion (and more than a few mocking memes). The good news is that, on the whole, The Book of Boba Fett is still a hella entertaining Star Wars adventure. And Book closed its season with a crowd-pleasing, hour-long action sequence in which Boba and his various allies took on the nefarious Pyke Syndicate in a climactic battle—with a squee-worthy, heartfelt reunion for good measure.
The bad news is that Book never really figures out whose story it wanted to tell. The series essentially squanders the promise of the first four episodes by failing to develop its supposedly main character in any meaningful way.
(Spoilers below, but we will give you a heads-up before we get to the major reveals.)
As I've written previously, a spinoff film featuring Boba Fett had been in development at Disney as far back as 2013, but then 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story proved to be a box office disappointment for the studio. Disney's strategy shifted to spinoff series for its streaming platform, Disney+, beginning with The Mandalorian. That series was a commercial and critical success, winning over audiences with the relationship between Pedro Pascal's Mandalorian and the Child (aka Grogu, although some still think of him as Baby Yoda).
Morrison's Boba Fett appeared briefly on The Mandalorian in the S1 episode "The Gunslinger." Ming-Na Wen's Fennec Shand also appeared in that episode and returned in S2 for a much larger role. In the finale, Boba Fett played a pivotal role in rescuing Grogu from Moff Gideon by tricking the Imperials into allowing his cohorts to land in a cruiser's fighter launch tube.