Jon Favreau has never hidden the fact that The Mandalorian was inspired by classic Westerns, and that influence was very clear in the season 2 premiere. A mysterious gunslinger rolled into a dusty backwater town looking to claim a bounty, only to find himself forging an uneasy alliance with the locals to overcome a shared threat that ultimately benefits the protagonist in the long run.
It was great for fans to get a chance to further explore the various locations, cultures and species of Tatooine, a planet that’s always been integral to the Star Wars mythology but has never really been explored. However, there’s one mystery from season 1 that unfolded on there that The Mandalorian didn’t pick up, which is most likely a deliberate move.
The fifth episode of the first run introduced Ming Na-Wen’s Fennec Shand, an elite mercenary who’s double crossed by Jake Cannavale’s rookie bounty hunter Toro Calican and left for dead. The audience was led to believe that Shand had been killed, but the final moments of the episode hinted that she may have survived, as we saw a mysterious figure approaching the prone body.
That dangling plot thread was never picked up again, even after Mando and Baby Yoda returned to Tatooine, but Boba Fett’s return looks like it could pay off the unresolved storyline. The mystery person who found Fennec is widely expected to be revealed as Boba, after all, especially when the character’s signature spurs were heard in the background.
Now that we know Boba Fett is alive and on the hunt to get his armor back, it could set up either Shand’s return or fill in the gaps about his escape from the Sarlacc pit, or possibly both. Either way, it looks like The Mandalorian has unfinished business on Tatooine.
