Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Book of Boba Fett episode 6.
The Book of Boba Fett finally rescued George Lucas' original vision for Boba Fett in Star Wars, albeit with the wrong characters. When Boba Fett was introduced in The Empire Strikes Back—his first actual appearance being in the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special—he was a lone, taciturn bounty hunter who never removed his helmet. Jeremy Bulloch, the actor who played Boba Fett before Daniel Logan and Temuera Morrison, confirmed that the character was Lucas' idea of a Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood), from his mannerisms to his green-on-white armor that matches the Man's poncho color scheme. Lucas' vision seemed to falter in The Book of Boba Fett, but episode 6 just brought it back.
Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy (which was itself inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo) was a milestone for spaghetti westerns and an inspiration for a myriad of movies, including George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy. Tatooine is just as desolate a wasteland as Leone's desert, and both are lawless places where people ruthlessly follow the money. The bandits don't speak much and the oppressive desert heat adds further incentive to act quickly. But it's not just Boba Fett who pays tribute to The Man With No Name in the Star Wars universe.
Even though young Boba Fett wears a Man With No Name poncho on Kamino, the more Star Wars developed Boba's character, the more they shifted away from Lucas' original vision. By The Book of Boba Fett, he is no longer a bounty hunter, and he is welcomed into a Tusken Raider family—something that Clint Eastwood's character would never accept. However, while Boba Fett distances himself from the Man With No Name type, The Book of Boba Fett episode 6 makes it clear Star Wars is still a space western through Cobb Vanth (Timothy Olyphant) and of course, Cad Bane (Corey Burton), who pays a clear homage to Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes.
George Lucas' Original Vision For Boba Fett Explained
The quiet old west gunslinger was a popular character type in spaghetti westerns throughout the 1960s and 1970s. George Lucas' A New Hope came out in 1977, just as the spaghetti western wave was dying out. Boba Fett didn't make his debut until The Empire Strikes Back (although Lucas added Boba Fett into the special edition of A New Hope), but Charles Champlin enthusiastically called A New Hope a "space western" (via Tor): "The sidekicks are salty squatty robots instead of leathery old cowpokes... and the gunfighters square off with laser swords instead of Colt revolvers. But it is all and gloriously one, the mythic and simple world of the good guys vs. the bad guys." George Lucas turned the clean-cut sci-fi future into a gritty faraway land with dusty robots and cool cowboy-like antiheroes such as Han Solo (Harrison Ford).
In Star Wars: Episode V, Lucas introduced viewers to a character who completed the space western theme: Boba Fett. He was a lone gunslinger who responded to the highest bidder and had no problem delivering his victims dead or alive. Clint Eastwood's lone cowboy had a wide range of aliases, including "the bounty killer." Lucas' Dollars Trilogy reference was obvious and fitting with the other types of characters shown in the original Star Wars trilogy. In fact, the design for Fett derived from initial concepts for Darth Vader, who was originally created as a rogue bounty hunter. Vader was turned from a mercenary into a dark knight, but the bounty hunter concept stayed and Boba became "an equally villainous" but "less conspicuous" character (via Star Wars Archive).
How Book of Boba Fett Shifts The Character Away From Lucas' Vision
The Book of Boba Fett turned Boba from a villain into an antihero, and the character development shifted Boba away from the Man With No Name type. Perhaps above all, Boba Fett's backstory shows a complex person with a complicated past, which in many ways goes against the quiet, straightforward old west gunslinger. After Boba escaped the Great Pit of Carkoon, he was taken in by the Tusken Raiders. Before long, Boba became a Tusken, making it his mission to protect the Sand People and claim back the Dune Sea for them. This shows great development for Boba; not only has he lost his armor (and mystery), but he has developed a soft, empathetic side, which seems to replace his criminal past.
In the present timeline, Boba gets his bounty hunter armor back and returns to the Tatooine criminal underworld as he tries to secure his position as Daimyo after Jabba's death. But he is not the same character George Lucas envisioned in the late 1970s: he is at the very least a "humanized" version of the original Boba. He rescues Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), pets a baby rancor, and announces he "intends to rule with respect" instead of fear. Boba Fett might have started like The Man With No Name in a galaxy far, far away, but by the events of The Book of Boba Fett, he is no longer the type.
Cad Bane Is More Like George Lucas' Original Vision For Boba Fett
Boba Fett might have strayed away from Lucas' original vision, but The Book of Boba Fett episode 6 proved the Man With No Name and the space western aesthetic are still strong sources of inspiration for the Star Wars universe. When Cad Bane appears in Mos Pelgo—now known as Freetown—he is coming straight from the horizon where the desert heat can be seen. He is wearing dark clothes and a wide-brimmed hat that looks all too much like The Man With No Name's costume. Indeed, he is the ruthless bounty hunter introduced in The Clone Wars, where he already mirrored Lee Van Cleef’s mercenary killer Angel Eyes.
Both Cad Bane and Angel Eyes disguise themselves as enemy forces (Bane as a clone trooper, Angel Eyes as a Union Soldier), and they both speak with an arrogance that comes from being equal parts intelligent and lethal. Bane's live-action debut in The Book of Boba Fett shows a true western villain who might just be Boba Fett's match. Cad once mentored Boba, but the two eventually had a falling out that ended in a duel that gave Boba Fett the famous helmet dent. Bane's standoff with Cobb Vanth in episode 6 is a good old-fashioned ode to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. When Cad guns down the sheriff and his deputy and tells the Freetown people that "Tatooine belongs to the Syndicate," he becomes exactly the feared bandit from Sergio Leone's trilogy.
Cobb Vanth Shows What A "Hero" Boba Fett Could & Should've Been
If Cad Bane is Angel Eyes, then Cobb Vanth is The Man With No Name. He is most certainly a lone desert gunslinger who was once wandering through the Dune Sea when he got his hands on Boba's old bounty hunter armor and used it to his advantage, securing his position as the Mos Pelgo mayor. Moreover, if Boba is an antihero, Cobb can be seen as an outright hero. He began his life as a slave—wearing the star-shaped scar on his back—then worked his way to town sheriff. After Jabba's death, the Red Key Raiders (Lorgan Movellan's crime syndicate) began to claim power on Tatooine, eventually overtaking Mos Pelgo and forcing Cobb to flee. But Cobb returned, having exchanged a camtono of silicax oxalate crystals for Boba's armor, fought the Red Key Raiders, and saved his town, earning the double position of mayor and sheriff.
Cobb retains his hero status, protecting his town no matter the consequences against Cad Bane and the new Pyke Syndicate threat in The Book of Boba Fett episode 6. This is precisely the type of hero that Boba Fett could (and perhaps should) have been as a free man, following a near-death experience and the fall of the Empire. While Boba Fett became a different character from the one originally designed by George Lucas (and arguably, a supporting character in his own show), Cobb Vanth and Cad Bane fulfill Lucas' "Man With No Name in space" vision, in an epic scene worthy of Champlin's "space western" praise.
The Book of Boba Fett episode 7 releases Wednesday, February 9th, 2022, on Disney+.