The Book of Boba Fett features one final battle between Boba Fett and Cad Bane, but the show missed the perfect opportunity for him to have a rematch with Fennec Shand. While Cad Bane made his debut in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Fennec Shand first appeared in The Mandalorian, where she quickly proved to be one of the galaxy’s most skilled mercenaries. Shand and Bane met and clashed in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, yet The Book of Boba Fett missed its chance to acknowledge their rivalry.
The Clone Wars proved time and again that Cad Bane lived up to his fearsome reputation, showing the bounty hunter facing off against Jedi Masters, killing numerous Clone Troopers, and being tasked with some of Darth Sidious’ most important missions. Fennec Shand was similarly noted by Din Djarin as being one of the underworld’s top assassins, having been hired by the Hutt Clan to eliminate their enemies and intimidating even Djarin. Shand became one of the protagonists of The Book of Boba Fett, working alongside Boba Fett and helping him run his fledgling criminal empire, which led her to reacquaint herself with her old enemy, Cad Bane.
Shand made her animated debut in The Bad Batch, as a novice bounty hunter hired by Nala Se to capture the Jango Fett clone known as Omega. This put her on a collision course with Cad Bane, who was also hired to capture Omega, on Lama Su’s behalf. Despite her lack of experience, Fennec Shand proved to be more than a match for Cad Bane, and their clash resulted in both bounty hunters failing their respective missions. It’s unknown if the two met between the events of The Bad Batch and The Book of Boba Fett, but their brief scene together in Mos Espa makes no mention of their history nor does it allow them to settle their feud, with Bane being killed by Boba Fett at the end of the season finale. Therefore, by choosing to focus more on the conflict between Boba Fett and Bane, the show inadvertently missed a prime opportunity for Fennec Shand and Cad Bane to showdown for a final time.
The Book of Boba Fett’s season finale focuses on Boba Fett’s history with Cad Bane, acknowledging their history in an unaired story arc of The Clone Wars, in which Cad Bane trained a young Fett as a bounty hunter. While appropriate, the show’s omission of any mention of Bane and Shand’s rivalry is odd, considering that it was shown in The Bad Batch, unlike Bane and Fett’s The Clone Wars arc, which was never finished. Shand might not have had as much reason to hate Cad Bane as Boba Fett did, but her rivalry with him should have been mentioned at the very least.
Bane was a veteran bounty hunter by the events of The Bad Batch, so he likely wouldn’t have taken kindly to nearly being bested by a novice mercenary. Bane taunted Fett, trying to keep him off-balance and cause him to make a mistake in their confrontations, and their first meeting in the season finale provided Bane with the perfect opportunity to similarly taunt Shand, referring to the events of The Bad Batch. Similarly, Shand could have fired back by highlighting her ascension in the criminal underworld while Bane remained in the same position he’d been in since the Clone Wars.
Ideally, Fennec Shand would have assisted Boba Fett in defeating Cad Bane in order to bring this arc to a close. Bane might have had a longer history with Boba Fett, but a rematch between him and Shand would have been just as satisfying. Cad Bane was one of the biggest threats to the criminal empire that Fennec Shand co-led, and given her clash with him in The Bad Batch, it’s unfortunate that The Book of Boba Fett wasted its opportunity for the two to fight each other again.