Warning! Spoilers ahead for The Book of Boba Fett episode 1
While The Book of Boba Fett finally reveals how the titular bounty hunter survived his encounter with the Sarlacc Pit in Return of the Jedi, actor and comedian Patton Oswalt almost perfectly predicted his return eight years ago. Featured during his role on NBC's Parks and Recreation, Oswalt's character provided a hilariously detailed (and improvised) pitch for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, beginning with his idea for Fett's return to the Star Wars galaxy. Ironically, he wasn't that far off from the actual truth almost a decade later in The Book of Boba Fett's first episode.
Featured in Parks and Rec's fifth season, "Article Two" saw Patton Oswalt playing Garth Blundin, a character who attempts to prevent the changing of Pawnee's town charter. As such, Garth chooses the filibuster the town hall meeting until it's too late for the charter to be amended. Airing in 2013, the content of the filibuster was Oswalt's personal and improvised fantasies for what he'd like to see in the upcoming 2015 release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, beginning with the return of Boba Fett himself (and ending with a comically massive Star Wars/MCU crossover).
Patton Oswalt's Blundin begins his filibuster by pitching the usual Star Wars logo and opening crawl before his version opens on Boba Fett and the deserts of Tatooine, riffing, "We pan down from the twin suns of Tatooine. We are now close on the mouth of the Sarlacc pit. After a beat, the gloved Mandalorian armor gauntlet of Boba Fett grabs onto the sand outside the Sarlacc pit, and the feared bounty hunter pulls himself from the maw of the sand beast." Remarkably, this is almost exactly what happens as seen in the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett. Featured in a flashback, Boba Fett claws his way out of the sarlacc pit before his gauntleted hand bursts out and, indeed grabs onto the sand outside the pit, escaping the sarlacc before Jawas steal his armor and Tusken Raiders take him hostage.
Hilariously, fans of Parks and Rec and Star Wars immediately began making the connection to Blundin's filibuster, and Oswalt himself even tweeted the Boba Fett scene from the first episode, humorously telling fans "YOU'RE WELCOME." Furthermore, given the similarities to this new canonical scene and Oswalt's pitch eight years ago, one has to wonder if it's intentional on Lucasfilm's part, serving as a secret homage to what was one of Parks and Rec's best scenes, so much so that Oswalt's entire unedited filibuster was posted online going beyond what made it into the actual episode.
In any case, it's an incredibly funny connection between two projects that are nearly a decade apart, and it just goes to show how beloved Boba Fett is as a character. Despite only having had a few minutes of screen time in the live-action films, calls for his survival from the sarlacc were as old as the Return of the Jedi, and it's incredibly exciting to see how he finally survived the maw of the sarlacc in The Book of Boba Fett – even if it was predicted by Oswalt years beforehand with his hilarious filibuster.
The Book of Boba Fett releases new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.
