[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett Season 1 Episode 2, “The Tribes of Tatooine.”]
Well, it wasn’t the mayor who sent the assassins.
On this week’s episode of The Book of Boba Fett, we do learn who they are and where they came from—and, as it turns out, Boba’s (Temuera Morrison) going to have quite a challenge to his rule from a rather unexpected source. Plus, in flashbacks, he and the Tuskens go after a group of baddies called the Pyke Syndicate… and if you were itching for more Boba fighting after last week, this episode is the way.
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Present-Day: Meet the Twins
Fennec (Ming-Na Wen) brings the lone surviving assassin back to Jabba’s palace, where she and Boba interrogate him. Being a member of the highly-regarded Order of the Night Wind, he’s not inclined to talk even with his life at stake. (“They’re overpriced,” Fennec, an elite assassin herself, scoffs at the Night Wind title. “You’re paying for the name.”) But what does get the guy to talk is being dropped in a rancor pit. He thinks it’s inhabited; Boba and Fennec know it’s empty. Terrified of the beast, the assassin reveals the mayor sent him.
As it turns out, when Boba and Fennec barge their way into the mayor’s chambers, they discover that was a lie. The mayor kills the assassin in short order, saying his group is not allowed to operate outside of Hutt space. He gives Boba a sack of coins, but his real “tribute” is a piece of advice: “Running a family is more complicated than bounty hunting.” But if he didn’t send the assassins, who did?
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Boba finds that out within minutes of leaving the mayor’s place. He goes to see Garsa Fwip (Jennifer Beals), who, as it turns out, was not behind the attack as many had theorized. Instead, she reveals to Boba what’s actually happened: the Twins, a brother-sister duo of Hutts and cousins of Jabba’s, are back—and they want Boba’s territory. A drumbeat in the streets alerts of their arrival, and Boba emerges from Fwip’s establishment to see them being carried on a litter. The sister Hutt wants him dead, but the brother keeps him alive because “bloodshed is bad for business,” and says they settle the matter later. This scene also gives us fearsome Wookie bounty hunter Black Krrsantan, who is working for the Hutts and seems destined to have a showdown with Boba at some point.
So, Boba’s going to war. Not great, in his first days as crime lord—but as the flashbacks show, he’s likely to have some fierce allies on his side.
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Flashbacks: Stop the Train!
The action-packed flashback scenes center around Boba helping the Tuskens stop a deadly train run by the Pyke Syndicate. Each time it passes through, it kills some of their group; with Boba around and now fully accepted into the tribe, he vows he’ll put that to an end.
The first step? Getting speeders. And Boba makes that look easy. He makes a quick trip to Tosche Station, where he dispatches the group of thugs seen ransacking a homestead in the first episode. (In a true Star Wars deep cut, we see Luke’s [Mark Hamill] childhood pals Camie and Fixer at the station. Boba saves them.) After taking out the baddies in utter badass fashion—no need for bacta after the battle, either—he snatches their speeders and brings them back to the Tuskens.
What follows is a humorous sequence of Boba teaching the tribe how to ride—one poor Tusken jumps on the speeder, turns the throttle, and jets backward; another tries to jump from one speeder to Boba’s and can’t stick the landing—and, eventually, they learn. From there, they can put their plan into action.
When the train speeds past, Boba and a group of Tuskens are able to climb aboard and start taking out the Pykes. Not everything goes as planned, though, and the train malfunctions, speeding faster and faster, but Boba does manage to bring it to a halt as promised. He allows the remaining Pykes to live, asserting that they travel through Tusken territory and that from then on, each time they do, they must pay tribute.
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After, the Tuskens honor Boba by giving him a lizard “to guide [him].” At first, Boba thinks it’s a pet. Then it crawls up his nose. Turns out, that little guy is meant to guide him by giving him some pretty intense hallucinations, which result in Boba wandering the desert, finding a tree that ensnares him, having flashbacks to the Sarlaac pit and Kamino, and watching his father leave on his ship, and breaking off a branch of that tree to break free.
When he returns to the tribe, he’s asked for the branch. He’s given black robes, and the branch is fashioned into a gaffi stick—the very same he used to utterly obliterate all those Stormtroopers in “The Tragedy.” The tribe performs a ceremonial dance to end the episode, and Boba joins them.
The Book of Boba Fett, Wednesdays, Disney+
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