Welcome to this week’s edition of the Nerd Review!  Every week the Nerds give you their take on entertainment from the Nerd-o-sphere.  This week, Patrick and Dave continue their review of the Star Wars Disney+ miniseries The Book of Boba Fett!

• The Show:  The Book of Boba Fett Ch. 4: The Gathering Storm
• What’s it About:  Following the events in season two of The Mandalorian, Boba Fett had laid claim to Jabba the Hutt’s former criminal empire.  His rise to prominence is not met with open arms and Fett must navigate the Galaxy’s criminal underground in Tatooine.
• IMDB Score: 7.8/10

The Nerds’ Take on Book of Boba Fett – Chapter 4:

Patrick:  This is the episode I have been waiting for out of the Book of Boba Fett.  Here, at the halfway point of the series I feel like we finally found some compelling storytelling in an episode the squarely focuses on how Fennec Shand fell in with Boba Fett as Boba’s number 2.  The Gathering Storm spends the majority of its time examining Boba Fett’s past in contrast to the previous episode that focused on moving the present story forward. The episode fills some of those final gaps between Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian and should put the focus of the series’ final three episode on Boba Fett’s coming war with the Pyke syndicate.

So many questions were answered in this episode.  The episode begins with Fett back in the Bacta tank slipping into another flashback.  This time the audience follows Boba as he attempts to reclaim his lost ship from Jabba the Hutt’s Palace.  While biding his time, he sees a body left for dead in the desert.  It turns out to be a mortally wounded Fennec Shand. Fett recognizes her and takes her to a cyber modification parlor where Shand is saved Darth Vader style. In return for saving her life Shand agrees to help Boba recover his ship from the heavily guarded palace now run by Bib Fortuna. The infiltration of the palace is a fun bit stealth highlighted by a surprising nod to General Grievous in the form of a knife-wielding kitchen droid.

After liberating his ship in a fun little shootout, Boba, accompanied by Shand, begins to settles some scores.  First, he wipes out the speeder gang that destroyed the Tuskans. Then Fett and Shand make their way back to the Sarlaac and attempt to recover Boba’s armor.  This results in the death of the Sarlaac. Once dead, Fett begins searching for his armor in the carcass, resulting in serious injuries due to the still potent digestive acids in the creature, thus explaining the Bacta tank we have seen all series. Once Boba moves on from searching the Sarlaac, he awakens in the present and the droid tending him declares that Boba Fett has finally fully recovered from his ordeal.

The remainder of the episode sees Boba Fett move forward with preparations for war with the Pyke syndicate. First, he recruits and gains the services of Krrsantan, who is not dealing with unemployment well and needs minimal convincing. Then, we a treated to Boba Fett calling a meeting of the leaders of the Jabba’s former territories to discuss the threat of the Pykes. The other territories are not interested in an alliance, but they do pledge not to participate in the coming war.  Fett naturally does not trust the crime lords and the episode ends with Boba Fett directing Shand to “gather muscle” for the coming conflict.

I have to admit, this is the first time watching The Book of Boba Fett where I wasn’t begging for the episode to end. In fact, I quite enjoyed this episode. Now, that the silliness with the Tuskan Raiders has been resolved, I final felt like the story was going somewhere interesting. Temuera Morrison and Ming Na Wen get to flex their acting chops in this episode and the audience finally gets to see how their characters’ camaraderie is developed. While the story is hastily told in the span of about 40 minutes, the actors do well with the time we have.  Speaking of hasty, the second half of the episode progresses a little too quickly for me to totally buy it. Boba Fett has had very few dealings with theses territory leaders, so one board meeting of the families just doesn’t really feel earned.  In my opinions a lot of the Tuskan Raider backstory should have been minimized so that more time could be dedicated to better developing Boba’s progress in the present. Ultimately, I can’t help but wonder if I would feel better about the series overall at this point had the flashbacks been more tightly wound together with less Dances with Wolves stuff and more Boba and Fennec time.  The Gathering Strom has finally gained my attention though and I finally feel the show is on some solid footing.  I am no longer dreading what comes next.

Patrick’s Rating:  3.81/5.0

Dave Pretty much from the beginning of The Book of Boba Fett premiering, many of us were patiently waiting for the show to tie in to The Mandalorian. It was in The Mandalorian, after all, that we first saw Fennec Shand and got reintroduced to Boba Fett for the first time since Return of the Jedi. In this regard, Episode 4 was the Episode we had all been waiting for and, yet, we might have only begun to scratch the surface. Whatever the case, this was easily the best Episode of the series so far and got Star Wars fans the world over very excited.

Right off the bat, we get the tie-in to The Mandalorian. The main focus of this entire Episode is the relationship between Boba and Fennec and how that comes to fruition. Boba comes across Fennec after she was shot by bounty hunter Toro Calican during Episode 5 of the first season of The Mandalorian. We already knew that Boba Fett was the shadowy figure that we saw at the end of that Episode but here things come full circle as we find out that Boba rescued Fennec by taking her to a location where an interesting man is giving people cybernetic modifications to their bodies. In Fennec’s case, she required such a modification in order to survive. Boba fronts the cost of this. Fennec then agrees to help Boba on a dangerous mission in order to pay him back. That mission involves freeing Boba’s spaceship, Slave I, from where it is being held, namely Jabba the Hut’s palace. Fennec and Boba take out a mess of guards and Fennec is instrumental in making sure the escape is a success. Fennec, apparently, sees something in Boba and she decides to stay with him just in time for Boba to use Slave I to annihilate the speeder gang that massacred his Tusken friends and then try and use Slave I to retrieve his beskar armor from the Sarlac pit he had been trapped in for quite some time. In an absolutely awesome scene, Boba has Slave I hover over the opening to the Pit as he scans the inside of the Sarlac looking for his armor. This, of course, agitates the sand creature and kudos to the show runners here for bringing back the Sarlac creature from Jedi, with its pod like head and immensely powerful tentacles. Boba and Fennec barely escape quite possibly the most iconic scene of the series, at least so far.

When we move to the present day, we find that Boba has completely healed himself in his Bacta tank. Predictably, he enlists the services of Black Krrsantan, but not before the Wookie can dismember some poor fool who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nevertheless, with Fennec, Black Krrsantan, and the Cyborg Teen Titans all on the team, Boba seems more than capable of defending his budding dominion over Mos Espa from the Pyke Syndicate. Fennec however knows they need more “muscle” and she knows exactly where to get it from. Cue the pan pipes, a few notes of the very familiar theme song from The Mandalorian are played, and Star Wars fans everywhere lost their collective minds. There is indeed a storm gathering…. but it also appears that Boba will be getting some rather powerful allies to assist in the fight.

I absolutely loved this Episode. Now things have gotten very interesting. The story of how Fennec and Boba became tight allies and, possibly, friends was done really well. Their infiltration of Jabba’s palace to rescue Slave I felt very much like Star Wars. When Boba guns down those bastard bikers with Slave I, you couldn’t help but cheer. Sure, you knew Black Krrsantan was going to join the team but it was still very cool to see it happen. And the confrontation with the Sarlac Pit was one of those sequences that sticks with you for a long-time. It is rare that you can watch a scene and realize it has the potential to be iconic as it is happening. That was such a scene. The camera work in that scene, especially when Slave I blocks any light going into the pit by hovering over, and eventually sealing, the opening is eerie and awesome at the same time.

And all that is fine and great but let’s be real here. The prospect of Din Djarin showing up to, in some respect, return the favor for Boba’s help near the end of Season 2 of The Mandalorian, is enough to get any Star Wars fan absolutely giddy with excitement. But it is bigger than that. Who else might show up with Din once he does make his presence felt? Fennec made the statement that a speeder bike gang could not have taken out an entire Tusken tribe. If they did not do it, then who did? Crimson Dawn and Lady Qi’ra are still very much in play. Will Ahsoka show up in some form or fashion? Will Disney use the final three Episodes of The Book of Boba Fett to set the stage for Mandalorian Season 3, Ahsoka, something different…. or none of the above? It certainly seems all the backstory has been told and we are full steam ahead into telling the story of how this conflict between Boba Fett and The Pyke Syndicate gets resolved.

It took a bit longer to get here than most of us wanted but Episode 4 definitely connected the dots, crossed some ts, dotted some Is, what have you. This was just a fantastic Episode in every way. The story was great, the action was even better, the reasons for the conflict between Boba and The Pyke Syndicate became better defined….and a massive tease of the return of one of the most beloved Star Wars characters of the last decade made this Episode the perfect installment to erase a sluggish start to the series. Episode 5 can’t get here fast enough.

Dave’s Rating:  5.00/5.0

Overall Nerds’ Rating for Book of Boba Fett – Chapter 4: 4.40/5.0