Let's start with some important background: I never understood why Boba Fett was so popular. He had maybe five lines in the original Star Wars trilogy, then is unceremoniously defeated by someone who never even saw he was there. He basically walks into someone's fist and gets killed. My husband has tried explaining to me, repeatedly, that the cool comes from the costume, that he had a jet pack and that was enough to make him the best action figure in the collection. I still don't get it; we see that jet pack work twice, and the second time it's to catapult him into a toothy sphincter.
Everything that Boba Fett was supposedly good at, The Mandalorian (show and character) is better at. We already had a Star Wars show centered on a principled man of few words who wears a cool costume, wields awesome weapons, and kicks ass. He had a better theme song, ominous and percussive and relentless instead of slow and dirge-like. We didn't need the same show again, repackaged around a guy who's determined to become the crime lord of the Armpit of the Universe that the protagonist of Star Wars told us was a horrible place he never wanted to go back to. (Pointedly, given the opportunity to go back to it again in this season of The Book of Boba Fett, he does not. He calls Grogu an R2-ber.)
As if The Mandalorian wasn't already "the better Boba Fett," Boba Fett's show itself is loaded with more "better Boba Fetts." Fennic Shand is a much more stoic and brooding character, more interesting, and played by the more capable Ming-Na Wen, a stronger actor and in an entirely different class when it comes to delivering exciting fight choreography. Different episodes gave us guest star appearances by Timothy Olyphant (one of the most dynamic brooding tough guys on television in the last two decades), and Danny Trejo (the guy you call to play a tactiturn badass). Add to that the fact that, true to what we saw in the original trilogy, Boba Fett got the snot beat out of him in pretty much every fight he engaged in throughout the season, and yeah... he was getting upstaged on his show in every single episode.
And that's not even considering that the back half of the season was really just The Mandalorian season 2.5. Everyone has pointed this out already, of course, but it really bears repeating because it's really a strange decision. When Angel spun off of Buffy, sure you'd get a cross-over episode every now and then, but you wouldn't just have Buffy show up for the last half of the season to resolve plot threads that were introduced on her show. When Loki got his own show in the MCU, it didn't suddenly become Thor's show in the last half.
Maybe that's because they simply didn't know what story they wanted to tell with Boba Fett. Was this supposed to be a redemptive arc, taking a villainous character and turning him into an upstanding man of the people? Was it supposed to be The Godfather, where becoming embroiled in a criminal enterprise threatens to peel away parts of his soul? Nah, seems like it was just the story of him accumulating cooler lackies than he himself. (I, like most, wasn't keen on the Power Rangers bikers that looked like they'd been sorted into Harry Potter houses, but we all liked seeing a Wookiee actually be a badass fighter, right?) When the protagonist of this show was already the least interesting thing about it, of course the further adventures of Mando and Grogu, and cameos by Ahsoka and Luke and Cad Bane, are going to be more exciting than the aimlessness.
It ended alright. Ish. The action of the final episode was fun. But notably, the character moments that truly mattered all had to do with elements ported in from The Mandalorian. Boba Fett's showdown with Cad Bane was underwhelming to a degree that made the latter's return feel like a waste. (But I take that blinking light on Bane's chest at the end to mean we shouldn't actually count him for dead yet? I mean, not when the whole show started with a dead man coming back to life.)
The Book of Boba Fett really was two shows. The show that was episodes 1 through 4, and some of 7? I'd give that show a C- at best. The show that was episodes 5 through 7? That was probably a B+ for me. Factor in the proportions we got of each show, and I think I'd call The Book of Boba Fett a C overall. It would be completely inessential Star Wars if you didn't have to watch it between seasons two and three of The Mandalorian.
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