Favreau’s tale of an old bounty hunter stepping in and filling the void left by an old crime lord (namely, Jabba the Hutt) avoids the biggest sins of far too many stories set in the new and ever-expanding canon of Disney-era Star Wars in that it doesn’t make the Galaxy Far, Far Away feel like it could all fit within the walls of Pinewood Studios. He seems determined to make this universe feel larger, not smaller.

The first episode, directed by Robert Rodriguez, makes a lot of allusions to existing franchise mythology. But it doesn’t simply pull out Tusken Raiders, for example, and dangle them in front of you as if to say, “Hey, remember these weird donkey-braying mummy Bedouin you loved as a kid? Here’s a quick and cheap dopamine fix to buy us some goodwill for a bit.” The Book of Boba Fett borrows from the past when it needs to (from both established canon and the orphaned Legends series of books and comics) and charts a new path when it’s appropriate, striking exactly the right balance between nostalgia and novelty. 

None of this would work if Favreau didn’t fundamentally understand what makes Star Wars tick. And he proves again and again that he does indeed get it by breaking rules that seem almost sacrosanct and nonetheless getting away with it. That extends at times to even the structure of the story itself, which breaks from linear tradition and is all the better for it. If you’d informed me ahead of time that the bulk of this first episode would be told through a series of flashbacks, I would have replied, “That ain’t Star Wars!” And yet, somehow, magically, it is. 

That’s largely due to Favreau continuing to tinker with the franchise’s east-meets-west formula in interesting ways. He borrows liberally and unapologetically from so many of the classic films and TV shows that inspired the original films but he’s not mining the same veins over and over. Instead of The Man with No Name he pulls more from A Man Called Horse. Instead of Buck Rogers, he leans hard on the work of Ray Harryhausen. Instead of shogun we get . . . space ninjas?  Apparently, that’s a thing now? But again, it just works.

Even though the first episode is something of a narrative and thematic departure from The Mandalorian, there is understandably a lot of aesthetic and stylistic continuity. Like its forebear, The Book of Boba Fett is a pretty underlit show, and it seems to have been plopped into an HDR container mostly just to avoid the artifacts that still occasionally plague SDR streaming. You won’t spot many or any extremes of brightness here, although the expanded dynamic range does allow for a handful of incredibly low-lit scenes without any loss of depth or detail. And I didn’t spot a single instance of banding, moiré, or misplaced textures of the sort you can get when HEVC gets bit-starved.

The Dolby Atmos mix also follows the style of The Mandalorian, giving the environments and music room to breathe without being overbearing. Speaking of the music, Ludwig Göransson returns to deliver some themes and leitmotifs but the bulk of the score seems to have been composed and conducted by Joseph Shirley, who filled in some musical gaps in Season Two of Mando. Shirley’s work isn’t quite as funky or avant-garde as Göransson’s but it does fit the somewhat different mood of this series. 

With only one episode available out of a planned seven, it’s impossible to know if The Book of Boba Fett will live up to its potential once all is said and done. But it’s off to a heck of a good start.