Cad Bane Shows How Bad Boba Fett's Tusken Raiders Flashbacks Were
Warning! SPOILERS for The Book of Boba Fett episode 6.
Cad Bane’s appearance at the end of The Book of Boba Fett episode 6 serves as convincing evidence of how bad the Tusken Raider flashbacks were. With how involved Cad Bane was in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in addition to the connection he should have with Boba Fett, he’s bound to play a large part in the upcoming finale. Unfortunately, doing so only further highlights how much time the show wasted in its early episodes.
The biggest criticism people have had of The Book of Boba Fett is how slow-paced and meandering the plot feels. The first four episodes don’t do a great job of establishing neither what Boba Fett is doing by taking over Jabba the Hutt’s operation nor what sort of stakes are involved in the show's plot. Multiple antagonists, such as the mayor of Mos Espa and Jabba’s cousins, are teased before the show ultimately makes the Pykes the antagonists. Not to mention that Fett’s life as the new Daimyo is hardly explored, as the show instead invests multiple episodes in showing flashbacks of Fett being taken by Tusken Raiders after he escaped the sarlaac pit. The flashbacks do a good job of filling in the blanks of Fett’s history between Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian, but they took focus away from the main story and contributed to the show feeling unfocused and undercooked.
Cad Bane appearing at the end of The Book of Boba Fett episode 6 further emphasizes how bad the flashbacks were for the show. With only one episode left in the show, introducing another major character means that the season finale will either spend too much time developing Bane and leave other parts of the story underdeveloped or, inversely, leave Bane underdeveloped and have his appearance amount to mere fanservice. Whichever one ends up happening is almost guaranteed to result in some aspect of the show being wasted to some extent, not only because of how introducing a key character so late into a season's narrative naturally disrupts the story's pacing but because of what Bane particularly means to Fett.
Bane, like Ahsoka and Bo-Katan, is another character from Star Wars: The Clone Wars to make the transition from animation to live-action. That fact, alone, means that many people are going to be lost on why he’s important, but there’s also the fact that prior to The Clone Wars’ original cancellation, there was a scrapped storyline where Bane would take Fett under his wing, with Fett eventually beating Bane in a duel. It was implied that that still happened in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, but whether or not it gets fully detailed is still a problem for the show. If it isn’t fully explained, then Bane’s appearance only makes sense if you both watched The Clone Wars and know about the unused story involving Bane and Boba Fett. Conversely, if it is fully explained, then that just means more time is being used on Bane that should be used on other parts of the story that have been underdeveloped.
Time management has been one of the biggest things keeping The Book of Boba Fett down, and Bane’s appearance only further adds to that. If the show hadn’t spent so much time on the Tusken Raiders flashbacks that, while entertaining, have yet to significantly factor into the main story, then there could have been time to fully utilize Bane. Because of the flashbacks, the show is now left scrambling to give everything a satisfying conclusion in its final episode, which is no small task for The Book of Boba Fett to successfully pull off at this point.
The Book of Boba Fett releases new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.