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The Mandalorian just revealed Fett family secrets that change the Star Wars saga
This week’s episode of The Mandalorian continued this show’s tradition of being insane, along with giving us character interactions and visuals that we never thought we’d see in live-action Star Wars. Among the re-canonizations and tragedy was a firm truth revealed regarding something that many of us have been wondering about for a long time.
Simply put, never trust Prime Minister Almec. We finally know the truth about the Fetts, or at least the broad strokes.
**WARNING: From this point forward, there will be spoilers for The Mandalorian Chapter 14, "The Tragedy." If you haven’t seen it, get outta here Dewey! It’s not habit-forming!**
Where did Jango “just a simple man trying to make his way in the universe” Fett get that Mandalorian armor? In Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, we never find out. All we know is that he was the template for the Clone army, and that part of his payment was an “unaltered” Clone named Boba.
In Season 2 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Mandalorian culture made its way back into Star Wars canon in a big way. Obi-Wan Kenobi took a moment to ask the slippery worm known as Prime Minister Almec about Jango. Almec dismisses him completely, saying that he was not a true Mandalorian and that he had no idea where he got his armor.
Maybe he was ignorant about the truth, or maybe he was lying? It doesn’t matter, because we now know the real truth.
For so many years in the books and stories that are now branded as “Legends," Jango Fett was not just a man in a suit of stolen armor. His roots went deep into Mando culture, and as a result, Boba’s did too. Ever since those stories were wiped from canon, all we’ve had to go on were the words spoken by Almec the liar.
That is no longer true. Boba Fett, played by Temuera Morrison, returned in "The Tragedy" to kick a** and set the record straight. He brought the iconic ship, Slave I, with him. He regains his lost armor as well, and also shows Mando something very personal: his chain code.
As he says in the episode, “my chain code has been encoded in this armor for 25 years. You see this is me, Boba Fett. This is my father, Jango Fett.”
The armor that Boba is now wearing, that Mando had to barter back from Cobb Vanth, is indeed the same armor once worn by Jango. This isn’t the whole of it, either, because Mando puts it all together for us: “Your father was a foundling.”
Boba responds, “Yes. He even fought in the Mandalorian Civil Wars.”
Not only is this huge for Jango and Boba, it’s huge for the overall mythos of the Clone Wars. For one thing, Jango is officially not just a bounty hunter. Since he was a foundling, like our main Mando Din Djarin, we can safely imagine him having deep roots in Mandalorian culture. These roots were certainly passed on to Boba. Prime Minister Almec was either not aware of this, was lying, or had no respect for foundlings.
The real gift is that these Mandalorian traits were ingrained in Jango before he was used to create the Clone army on Kamino. The Clones, arguably the most tragic figures in the entire saga, were not just copies of a bounty hunter— they were copies of a bounty hunter who had a firm Mandalorian heritage. Every Clone had a little Mando in him.
When you look at Order 66 now, you won’t just see an army of Fetts shooting Jedi. You’ll see subverted figures of Mandalorians shooting Jedi. The Jedi enemies of old, the Mandalorians, are suddenly back in the picture — and they didn’t even realize it.
Almost every Mandalorian gadget and trick was created to counter a Jedi. They’ve fought with them countless times in the old history of Star Wars. If you were going to choose a Clone template, one that ultimately would have the task of wiping the Jedi out, then having one with more than a little Mando in them would be a great idea. Darth Tyrannus, aka Count Dooku, almost certainly knew Jango’s true history when he recruited him. Darth Sidious certainly knew as well.
Taking it one step further, Jango stayed on to train the first battalions of Clones on Kamino. Even if he never said it, the ways and methods of their culture surely found their way through to them. Who better to train an army of secret Jedi killers than a Mando foundling, who was also just looking for a way to make his way in the universe?
He made his way alright. This bit of Fett family history will forever change the way we look at the prequels and The Clone Wars. The Clones did attack in the prequels, but from a certain point of view, it was really an army of cloned foundlings who attacked. The Mandalorian way of the foundling has apparently been in plain sight this whole time, we just didn’t know it. We needed Boba to come back and tell us.
This is why some of us got so wrapped up in the lies of Almec and the truth about Jango. The consequences and repercussions of the truth are immense. Jedi and Mandos fought each other for ages, but at least in the prequels, the Mandos won the final round... from a certain point of view.
