How Are You I'm Fine Thanks

WHO IS BOBA FETT? WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE PREQUELS
a very important essay about a very important thing

Boba Fett is mostly remembered for two things:

• looking cool as hell (this is true)
  
• being a badass (this is completely unfounded, like people who remember Han Solo as a suave ladykiller)
  

And I’m not judging! Latching onto bit characters simply because they look cool is literally my favorite thing to do in the world. Boba Fett has appreciated a life far beyond what his role actually yielded based strictly on how cool his armor was. You can buy Boba Fett hoodies at Hot Topic. This is amazing for a character whose major contribution was getting Darth Vader to do his job for him and then falling in a hole. I completely support it.

Then the prequels happened and everyone was disappointed to find that…I dunno, Boba was also a shitty kid in addition to being a shitty bounty hunter? It’s fine! I get it. Seeing under the mask and getting a tragic backstory for your favorite mysterious masked asshole ruins the mystique. Well, I come bearing good news: the prequels can be regarded as full canon in a way that not only preserves the mystery of Boba Fett’s identity, but also adds to it in a deeply interesting way.

Now that I’ve framed this essay  around Boba Fett as a way to trick people into reading it, let’s start at the beginning and the actual interesting part: JANGO FETT and ZAM WESELL, dad and unofficial uninvited mom to Boba Fett, respectively.

[I’m going to be pulling from a few alternate sources to prove this point: the video game Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, the graphic novels Jango Fett and Zam Wesell published by Dark Horse, and to a lesser extent, the choose-your-own-adventure book The Shapeshifter Strikes and the young Boba Fett-centric book Boba Fett: The Fight to Survive.]

You probably remember Jango Fett as the guy from the prequels who looks like Boba Fett, but you probably don’t remember Zam Wesell, statistically speaking. I say this because I am always asking people if they remember Zam Wesell and I get a lot of blank looks. Let me see if I can refresh your memories.

Jesus. Ok. Hold on.

There we go.

Zam Wesell appears entirely within the first 10 minutes of Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the uncontested worst Star Wars movie and also the one that I’ve seen like 50 times because I love it. Much like Boba Fett, Zam proceeds to look cool as hell and then be really bad at her job. Zam Wesell is a shapeshifting Clawdite assassin who forgets she can shapeshift at a crucial moment and then gets shot in the face by Jango Fett, her boss and a shitty bounty hunter in his own right, and then apparently dies but not before turning into a lizard. Look, it’s fine. This didn’t traumatize me as a kid before leading to some very strange attractions. it’s fine. It’s fine. We’re all fine here.

Now, one could be forgiven for assuming that Jango and Zam did not know each other very well just from watching Episode 2. She’s a hired mook, there to take the attention off of Jango (who still, inexplicably, shows up at the scene of the crime, kind of defeating the purpose). Jango is a stone-cold badass who doesn’t feel any qualms about murdering underlings to protect his own identity, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Every tie-in story that features both Zam and Jango establish that not only have they worked together before, but they’ve been working together FOR A WHILE (a little more than ten years, since Zam met Jango just before his clone army deal with Dooku) and Zam has actually met and knows Jango’s clone son Boba.

So what does this mean? Okay, well, let’s talk about Jango for a second.

Jango does not have a lot of friends. Jango does not trust people and he does not like them. A strong case can be made for aromantic/asexual Jango Fett, as the guy would literally rather volunteer to be the template for a clone army in order to have a son instead of entering into any kind of relationship with another person (even as a surrogate). 

Boba Fett is the person that Jango cares about most in the world…and he’s literally a smaller version of himself. But Jango always seems to have just one actual friend at any given time (who isn’t a copy of himself). When we meet Jango in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, he has exactly one friend: a Toydarian named Roz. 

Roz is his ground support and his tech support, the voice in his ear when he’s on a mission, and we see him display genuine affection for her. Spoilers: Roz does not survive the game.

Another notable thing about Bounty Hunter: this is where Jango meets Zam.

Zam is a rookie on her first job when Jango crosses paths with her. Right off the bat, she steals Jango’s bounty, starts a prison riot, calls down security on the both of them, and then gets his ship blown up, forcing Jango to steal a new one (the Slave I). For some reason, Jango lets her hang around, actually recruiting her for the next leg of his mission, instead of tossing her out right then and there.

Why? What reason would Jango have for complicating his business with a rookie bounty hunter who already lost him his ship? 

Because Roz says she likes Zam. And Jango listens to Roz.

This isn’t the last time Zam screws up Jango’s mission. She does it A LOT. She gets captured and rats Jango out, getting him thrown in a pit with a Krayt dragon. She follows him on his missions and lets him do the hard work just to steal his bounty. 

But Jango always gives her another chance. And when it comes down to it and Zam is in trouble, Jango always comes back for her. He cares about this fucker, one way or another.

Let’s talk about the fact that Zam actually knows where Jango lives. In the Zam Wesell graphic novel, she shows up uninvited on Kamino (a secret planet) and meets Boba. 

There is evidence that she goes on to hang out there regularly. Boba even considers Zam a mother figure, from what we’ve seen from his point of view in Boba Fett: The Fight to Survive. Now, Jango is incredibly protective of his son — obviously, because if anyone found out that Jango had a son, it would expose his heart and could be used against him. But somehow, Jango doesn’t kill Zam the second she sets foot on Kamino. He lets her hang out with his son. I cannot overemphasize what that says about how Jango thinks of Zam. He’s got no reason to trust her — it’s pretty obvious she’d rat him out immediately to save her own skin (in fact one time she calls guards down on him just because she’s mad at him). Jango doesn’t like people, and Zam’s whole THING is being untrustworthy. She’s a shapeshifter, for christ’s sake — her real form is reptilian alien but she presents as a beautiful woman. She’s literally two-faced. So why does Jango keep her around?

Because Jango only has one friend at any given time. And Roz said she likes Zam.

So why the hell, after all this, does Jango shoot his only friend in the face in Attack of the Clones?

Well, let’s think about this. Of course Jango would want to protect his identity, and of course Zam would give him up if put on the spot. He’s always known that. He uses a traceable projectile to kill her instead of other, perhaps messier, but less distinct ways to kill her.

And Zam is a reptilian shapeshifter. Reptiles happen to have a certain ability, being cold-blooded and all, where during hostile conditions they can slow their vital functions so much as to be almost undetectable. Respiration and heart rate can, for all intents and purposes, almost totally stop…perhaps so much so that not even a Jedi would be able to discern the difference between a dead Clawdite and one in a state of torpor.

Here’s my theory: Jango didn’t kill Zam at all. In fact, they’ve probably done this exact trick before. He chose a toxic dart for the task because it contains a specific toxin that will cause Zam to fall into a torpor, appearing to be dead for all intents and purposes, but won’t actually kill her. It’s a very useful tactic for keeping your loudmouth coworker alive just a little bit longer in stressful situations.

(Incidentally, some reptiles can also regrow severed extremities, but in a world of broadly available mechanical prosthetic limbs that point is less important in this case. Still.)

So let’s say this is true, and Jango helped Zam fake her death to escape the Jedi and keep Jango’s identity a secret. Obi-Wan does eventually track down Jango and Boba, and not only is there no sign of Zam, but Jango ends up minus one head by the end of the movie. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT, NOELLE?!

Easily. Jango has a veritable stronghold of body doubles for both himself and Boba ready to go at the slightest sign of trouble. Not only that, but we’ve established that a certain amount of mind-tampering is possible with clones. Boba is the only clone to be completely unaltered. What if Jango and Boba never went to Geonosis at all? What if Jango had prepared clone doubles for himself and his son that would go as far as to believe that they actually are the real Jango and Boba?

Jango would’ve known he could be tracked to Geonosis. It makes no sense that he’d hide out in plain view at Dooku’s side, putting a clear target on himself. I posit that the real Jango, Boba, and Zam were halfway across the galaxy perhaps before Obi-Wan even showed up on Kamino. Zam could’ve become anyone with a snap of her fingers. Jango and Boba are protected by the fact that they have flooded the galaxy’s gene pool with hundreds of thousands of identical replicas of themselves. They could be anywhere.

Fast-forward to the original trilogy, where we meet Boba Fett as we know him. Who is he? Is he the real Boba Fett, the one perfect clone of Jango Fett? Is he the clone of the clone who only thinks he’s the one perfect clone of Jango Fett? Or is he someone else entirely? Jango’s Mandalorian armor could have fallen into the hands of anyone at any time. Even the name “Boba Fett” could be easily adopted as soon as the previous Boba Fett was dead, his armor up for grabs. A Dread Pirate Roberts of space, perhaps. We just don’t know!

My own personal headcanon? Well, consider Boba’s preference for showiness at the expense of substance in the original trilogy (contrast with Jango’s expressed desire for subtlety, which would certainly be shared by his genetic copy) and his weakness for taking shortcuts to get the job done with the least possible effort, usually by hitching a ride on someone else’s coattails. Not to mention his ultimate clumsiness and the underwhelming nature of his final showing. I think there’s maybe a familiar face under that helmet that may not be that familiar anymore. A face that could have changed hundreds of times over the years. And we don’t know what the lifespan of Clawdite changelings is, after all. 

Yep that’s why I wrote this whole thing ZAM WESELL IS BOBA FETT AND ALSO A LESBIAN

(picture source)

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME

** EDITED TO ADD: **

Zam likes putting shit all over her armor, including a set of Mardi Gras beads that serve no clear function (perfect for stealthily stalking your bounty, amiright).

Jango, on the other hand, does not care much for ornamentation. 

And this is how Boba Fett dresses in the original trilogy:

What’s the best part: the cape? The braided Wookiee pelts displayed on the shoulder that serve no clear purpose? Boba Fett clearly displays an aesthetic sense MUCH MORE along the lines of Zam Wesell than Jango Fett. That’s right, everyone, Zam Wesell is Boba Fett, and she absolutely ruined Jango’s armor.

Boba Fett

Jango Fett

Zam Wesell

Star Wars

I did it