In Season 2, Episode 7 of the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian, the team had a mission to accomplish, and almost everyone had a reason why they shouldn’t be a part of it. But one of the reasons may not as clear for some viewers.
Warning: Spoilers for Chapter 15 of The Mandalorian ahead. After you watch the episode, make sure to check out all the Easter eggs you may have missed.
The Mandalorian wants to get back The Child, which Gideon Moff abducted in the last episode, so they’ll have to infiltrate an Imperial base to get info on just where Moff’s ship is. To do this, they’ll have to hijack a transport carrying rhydonium for the Empire in order to get inside the base.
Ideally, this should be a two-person team. However, in order to get access to the whereabouts of Moff’s ship, there has to be a facial recognition scan at the Imperial base. Mayfeld has to go because as a former Imperial, he knows all the protocols and clearances. But someone else needs to go with him. Fennec can’t go because she’s wanted by the ISB. Cara Dune is straight up working for the New Republic, so that’s not a good idea.
Then, Boba Fett says he can’t. “Let’s just say they might recognize my face.” Let’s break this down for those who may not be as familiar with Star Wars lore as the rest of us.
While Boba Fett isn’t technically a Mandalorian, he’s “grandfathered in” for all intents and purposes. His father was Jango Fett, a Mandalorian foundling–meaning he was adopted at a young age by other Mandalorians. However, Boba is actually a clone of Jango.
If you remember the movie Attack of the Clones, Jango was the genetic template for the clone army and aside from a healthy payday, Jango requested an unaltered clone of his own, which was Boba Fett. So the entire clone army has the same face as Boba Fett. If you kept up with the fantastic animated series The Clone Wars or Rebels, you’ll see these faces time and time again.
During the original Star Wars trilogy, there were clones in the Republic as Stormtroopers, but there were also people that signed up to become Stormtroopers, as we saw the recruitment process in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
So in the post-Return of the Jedi world–as Mandalorian is set five years after that movie–Boba Fett’s face is probably still in the ranks of the Empire. This is why Boba made that comment.
However, the head-scratching part of this moment is why he made it. Does it really matter if his face is recognizable since his face is essentially the “face of the Empire?” He’s the only clone that wasn’t raised by the Empire–and there were hardly any defectors–so the chances of someone knowing, without interrogation, that Boba was working against the Empire are almost impossible.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter because we got to see Boba use Slave 1 to blow up some TIE Fighters and Mando took his mask off again.
