Boba Fett

Boba Fett (/ˌboʊbə ˈfɛt, ˌbɒ-/ BO(H)B-ə FET) is a character in the Star Wars franchise. First appearing in the Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), where he was voiced by Don Francks, he is an armored bounty hunter featured in both the original and prequel film trilogies. In the original trilogy, the character is a supporting antagonist and was mainly portrayed by Jeremy Bulloch and voiced by Jason Wingreen. Notable for his taciturn demeanor and for never removing his helmet, Fett appears in both The Empire Strikes Back (1980), employed by the Galactic Empire, and Return of the Jedi (1983), serving the crime lord Jabba the Hutt. While seemingly killed in Return of the Jedi after falling into a sarlacc, he has since appeared in Star Wars media set after the film, confirming his survival within the new canon, portrayed by Temuera Morrison. Daniel Logan plays a preteen Boba in the prequel film Attack of the Clones (2002), which reveals the character's origins as the genetic clone and adoptive son of Jango Fett, also a famous bounty hunter. Morrison appeared first in Star Wars media playing Jango. The animated series The Bad Batch further reveals Boba to have been born Alpha, and to have a biological sister, Omega. The series also reveals that he has another sister named Emerie Karr.

Boba Fett also appears in many forms of Star Wars media outside of the films, such as books, comics, television series, and video games, many of which depict him as an antihero rather than a villain, and explore his background, motivations, and morality. Daniel Logan reprised his role as the younger version of Fett in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, while Temuera Morrison, who also portrayed Jango in Attack of the Clones, has portrayed an adult Boba in most of his Star Wars appearances since that film, most prominently in the live-action Disney+ series The Mandalorian and its spin-off series The Book of Boba Fett, in which he assumes control over Tatooine with his partner Fennec Shand as the planet's new daimyo.

During the development of The Empire Strikes Back, Fett was originally conceived as a member of a group of white-armored Imperial "supercommandos" before the idea was scrapped in favor of a solitary bounty hunter. This concept later evolved into the Mandalorians, a cultural group with strong warrior traditions, who sport armor and helmets similar to Fett's. In several Star Wars works, Fett himself is portrayed as a Mandalorian or at least connected to the Mandalorian culture through his armor, with his father Jango confirmed to have been a Mandalorian foundling and war veteran in The Mandalorian.

The character of Boba Fett quickly became a fan favorite despite his limited presence in the original Star Wars trilogy and is now a widely recognized figure in popular culture. His popularity within the Star Wars fanbase has earned him a cult following.

Star Wars creator George Lucas created Boba Fett in his April 1978 screenplay draft of The Empire Strikes Back, basing the character on Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) from the Dollar Trilogy. The character needed to be designed quickly, as Lucas had agreed for him to be featured in the Star Wars Holiday Special later that year. The character's design stemmed from initial concepts for Darth Vader, who was originally conceived as a rogue bounty hunter. While Vader became less of a mercenary and more of a dark knight, the bounty hunter concept remained, and Fett became "an equally villainous" but "less conspicuous" character. Concept artist Ralph McQuarrie influenced Fett's design, which was finalized by and is credited to Joe Johnston.

Norman Reynolds and the film's art department built the costume. Fett's armor was originally designed for "super troopers", and was adapted for Fett as the script developed. Screen-tested in all-white, Fett's armor eventually garnered a subdued color scheme intended to visually place him between white-armored "rank-and-file" Imperial stormtroopers and Vader, who wears black. This color scheme had the bonus of conveying the "gray morality" of his character. The character's armor was designed to appear to have been scavenged from multiple sources, and it is adorned with trophies. A description of Fett's armor in the mid-1979 Bantha Tracks newsletter catalyzed "rampant speculation" about his origins. By 1979, Fett's backstory included having served in an army of Imperial shock troops which had battled the clone troopers of the Galactic Republic during the Clone Wars.

Despite two years of widespread publicity about Fett's appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, script rewrites significantly reduced the character's presence in the film. Fett's musical theme, composed by John Williams, is "not music, exactly" but "more of a gurgly, viola-and-bassoon thing aurally cross-pollinated with some obscure static sounds." Sound editor Ben Burtt added the sound of jangling spurs, created and performed by the Foley artist team of Robert Rutledge and Edward Steidele, to Fett's appearance in Cloud City, intending to make the character menacing and the scene reminiscent of similar gunfighter appearances in Western films. At one point in Return of the Jedi's development, Fett was conceived as being a main villain, but he was finally replaced with the Emperor when Lucas decided to not make a third trilogy of Star Wars. Lucas also considered having Fett fight Lando Calrissian during the sarlacc sequence.

An official reference book states that Fett charges "famously expensive" fees, and that he undertakes only those missions which meet "his harsh sense of justice". Daniel Keys Moran, who wrote a few stories featuring Boba Fett, cited Westerns as an influence on his development of the character. Moran said: