The bounty hunter-turned-crime lord Boba Fett travels to Mos Espa in the pilot episode of The Book of Boba Fett, and the port city appears quite different from its debut in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. While Mos Eisley is perhaps the best-known Tatooine spaceport among viewers, Mos Espa was a key location in The Phantom Menace, as it was the home of a young Anakin Skywalker before he was freed from slavery and began his new life as a Jedi. Mos Espa is the setting for a large portion of The Phantom Menace’s plot, yet it has a markedly different appearance in The Book of Boba Fett.

Mos Espa’s history is shown in detail in the Star Wars franchise’s Legends continuity. The spaceport was famous for its podracing events, as shown in The Phantom Menace and other Legends-era material, but in the Imperial era, podracing was outlawed, which proved detrimental to the port city. With Jabba the Hutt’s criminal empire leaving Mos Espa shortly afterward, the spaceport became a has-been location until it eventually built a reputation as one of the few corruption-free locales on Tatooine.

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Several establishing views of Mos Espa in The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, depict it as a large settlement in the middle of the Tatooine desert (the Dune Sea). The Book of Boba Fett pictures Mos Espa as a significantly larger city than either of the prequels, with portions of the settlement situated within a massive rock canyon. There are several potential in-universe reasons for this discrepancy and a fairly simple real-world rationale.

Mos Espa in The Book of Boba Fett.

The canon timeline’s Mos Espa does not appear to share its Legends-era history, with the spaceport remaining steeped in Tatooine’s rampant corruption. Podracing was never outlawed by the Empire in canon (though the New Republic would eventually do so at some point during the sequel trilogy era), which might have kept Mos Espa profitable for crime lords like Jabba and his successor, Boba Fett. In the years since The Phantom Menace Mos Espa may have significantly expanded its territory, resulting in the larger city seen in The Book of Boba Fett.

It's also possible that Mos Espa may have always been the size and scale seen in The Book of Boba Fett. The Star Wars prequels, remaining focused on the origin of Anakin Skywalker and later his search for Shmi, could have only shown a portion of the massive spaceport city, retroactively making the establishing shots seen in the films line up with The Book of Boba Fett. Considering the size of Mos Espa in the pilot episode, any portion of the city outside of the rock canyon could have been where the Star Wars prequels set their scenes.

The real-world explanation for Mos Espa’s new look in The Book of Boba Fett is rather simple. The Disney+ series uses more sophisticated CGI effects to depict the city, creating a far more grandiose iteration of Mos Espa. Given the time difference between Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and The Book of Boba Fett and the limited portion of the spaceport shown in the prequels, either of the in-universe explanations for Mos Espa’s new appearance is possible as well.

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