[Editorial] Serious Geeking

Guest author: Perry Thompson

Orig­i­nally pub­lished: 1998

I sup­pose it’s nat­ural for peo­ple to spec­u­late about some­one whose past
and ori­gin is as mys­te­ri­ous as that of Boba Fett. As we speak, there’s
some­one out there argu­ing that he’s Han’s mom’s uncle’s estranged
brother. There have got to be at least 20 sites ded­i­cated to dis­cussing
whether he wears box­ers or briefs. (Inter­est­ing ques­tion… Note to self:
Next article—Boba Fett: Box­ers or briefs?) There was one par­tic­u­lar
site that has some very legit­i­mate points; it’s Joe Carlson’s The Boba Fett Inter­net Archive. One area of the site, Seri­ous Geek­ing, is ded­i­cated to fans, such as myself that enjoy fre­quently asked ques­tions. Some of the ideas I’ve come across lately are
absolutely absurd.

BOBA FETT IS HAN SOLO’S BROTHER. Boba Fett was first noticed on a planet called
Con­cord Dawn. Gen­eral Han Solo is a Corel­lian. That should be enough to
end this dis­cus­sion, right? Nope. ‘Cause right now there’s some­one
read­ing this say­ing: “Yeah, but Luke and Leia are from dif­fer­ent plan­ets
too!” And that’s absolutely right. Prob­a­bly the best evi­dence is that
George Lucas isn’t Jerry Springer, and hav­ing Han and Boba Fett as
broth­ers wouldn’t really serve any other pur­pose than sen­sa­tion­al­ism.
All we know is that Boba was accused of being a stormtrooper and Han was for­merly an
Impe­r­ial offi­cer who stood up for what he believed in. This prob­a­bly
caused a lot of respect in Fett’s eyes but, from then till the time when the bounty was put on Solo’s head, he had changed that. In addi­tion, in the Hol­i­day Spe­cial, where Fett was “help­ing” Luke, Solo,
and the rest, he was actu­ally try­ing to cap­ture them for the bounty
from Jabba. R2-D2 and C-3P0 thwarted his plan.

BOBA FETT IS REALLY WEDGE ANTILLES. All right, it’s con­fes­sion time. I don’t
know that much about Wedge. So it was to the books I went. They told
me a lot about him, but not really any­thing that could prove or dis­prove
this one. I believe that all of these rumors will end up like this,
because of Fett’s total lack of a past. So, it all comes down to logic
again. If Fett was Wedge, he had a lot bet­ter chances to cap­ture Solo
and his friends that would prove a lot less dan­ger­ous to Fett.

BOBA FETT IS A THIRD SKYWALKER. First, there are those who would say,
“Vader or Luke would have felt his pres­ence.” But, didn’t Vader almost
destroy Luke’s X Wing? And all he had to say was “The force is strong
with this one.” If I found out that I had a kid who was destroy­ing the
empire’s great­est weapon, I think I might have a bit more of a reac­tion.
And Luke spent god knows how long with Leia, and he needed Ben and Yoda
to tell him. Leia says, “Some­how I’ve always known.” is that why you
were mak­ing out with him in the infir­mary? But Yoda and Ben would have
known. And the Emperor would have known. They’re the strongest with
the force in the Star Wars Uni­verse, and when it comes down to it, it’s
my opin­ion that the Emperor is the strongest. He would have exploited
that for his own purposes.

Now, I’ve had peo­ple come to me and I am, by no means, an expert on
Fett. But they’ve asked some very inter­est­ing ques­tions. The best one,
or at least the most inter­est­ing to me is the idea that Fett is the last
sur­viv­ing mem­ber of an Impe­r­ial cloning exper­i­ment, sim­i­lar to the Nazi’s
Uber­men. The idea came from William Kivlen, and his argu­ment was this:
The pos­si­bil­ity of Boba Fett being a clone? After all isn’t he a vet­eran
of the clone wars? Could Boba Fett be the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of an
Impe­r­ial cloning exper­i­ment, some­thing sim­i­lar to the Nazi’s Uber­men?
Seems to me that would explain the Jedis being nearly extinct from that
war (from pos­si­bly almost meet­ing their match). Also that would explain
his seem­ingly age­less­ness (sic), the mea­sure of respect that he receives
from Vader, his close work­ings with the Hutts, known Jedi killers, and to
me per­son­ally, what would a specif­i­cally trained spe­cial forces sol­dier
do after the war is over? The hunt must go on.

This is totally pos­si­ble. Again, from what I’ve read, it can’t be
proved, or disproved.