Warning: SPOILERS for The Book of Boba Fett episode “In The Name of Honor” are ahead!
Well, folks, another chapter in the Star Wars saga has come to a close. The Book of Boba Fett’s finale, titled “In The Name of Honor,” saw the eponymous protagonist, Fennec Shand, Din Djarin and their allies battling the Pyke syndicate in Mos Espa. It was a close call, but with some last-minute saves (including a rampaging rancor), the heroes emerged victorious. Boba Fett is now the undisputed daimyo of Mos Espa, and Din, who reunited with Grogu, flew off to parts unknown in their modified Naboo starfighter.
Din Djarin and Grogu will return whenever The Mandalorian Season 3 (which The Book of Boba Fett laid a lot of groundwork for) premieres on Disney+, and while there hasn’t been any word about The Book of Boba Fett getting a second season, it’s a good bet we’ll see more of Boba Fett and Fennec Shand in live-action down the line. But coming out of this finale, there are two other characters who we need to see way more of in the Star Wars franchise going forward. Let’s start off with the character who already had plenty of fans before he was brought into The Book of Boba Fett.
Cad Bane
After Boba Fett and Din Djarin, Cad Bane is arguably the most popular bounty hunter in Star Wars lore. The badass male Duros shined in a handful of Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes during Seasons 1-4, and he returned last year for a few episodes of Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 1. But for the viewers who don’t follow Star Wars animation, The Book of Boba Fett was their introduction to Bane, although they didn’t get to spend that much time with him.
Cad Bane emerged in “From the Desert Comes a Stranger” as a hired gun for the Pyke syndicate who came to Mos Pelgo… sorry, Freetown, to convince Cobb Vanth not to aid Boba Fett. The marshal refused, which earned him a shot to the shoulder and his deputy being gunned down. Bane then turned his attention to making Boba Fett’s hell in “In The Name of Honor,” and the two eventually face off with one another in a gun duel. While Bane was the quicker shot, Boba won the fight when he impaled his adversary with his Tusken gaffi stick.
So now we know how Cad Bane’s story ends, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn back to earlier chapters of his life, whether that’s pre-Clone Wars or sometime in the two+ decades between his appearances in The Bad Batch Season 1 and The Book of Boba Fett. I specifically hope we get an adaptation of an unused Clone Wars arc that depicted Bane mentoring young Boba, only for the boy to grow dissatisfied with how the Duros was treating him. This arc concluded with Boba and Bane drawing blasters on each other; Bane was gunned down by his protégé and presumably died, but he managed to get a shot off at Boba’s helmet, thus showing the origin of that distinctive dent.
Obviously this ending has been retconned given Cad Bane’s presence in The Bad Batch Season 1, but Boba Fett made it clear during “In The Name of Honor” that he and Bane go way back, so there’s no reason why elements of this relationship couldn’t be adapted in another setting. The best way to accomplish this would be in a future Bad Batch season, but I’d also welcome a novel or comic book series starring these two. It would also be cool to see Bane appear in one of the Empire era-set live-action series like Obi-Wan Kenobi (which premieres May 25) or Andor.
Cobb Vanth
A lot of Star Wars fans were introduced to Cobb Vanth in The Mandalorian Season 2, but he actually first popped up in the Aftermath novels written by Chuck Wendig. Nevertheless, Timothy Olyphant’s performance as the Freetown marshal earned a lot of praise in 2020, as we saw him and Din Djarin strike a bargain in “The Marshal,” with the former agreeing to give the latter what we know as Boba Fett’s armor in exchange for helping him kill the krayt dragon threatening his people and the nearby Tusken tribes.
Cobb Vanth resurfaced in “From the Desert Comes a Stranger” when Din Djarin came back to Freetown to enlist the citizens’ help against the coming battle with the Pyke syndicate. Cobb was initially unwilling to get involved, but he changed his mind right before Cad Bane came to town. As noted earlier, Cobb was shot by the bounty hunter, and during “In The Name of Honor,” the Weequay bartender named Taanti made it sound like he’d died, just like the deputy. Fortunately, The Book of Boba Fett finale’s mid-credits scene revealed this wasn’t the case, as Cobb was seen inside Boba Fett’s bacta tank as the Thundercat-played mod artist who outfitted Fennec Shand with her cybernetics was getting ready to do the same to the marshal.
Now obviously there’s nothing to stop Cobb Vanth from appearing in more books chronicling his life pre-Aftermath and The Mandalorian. However, now that he’s being turned into a cyborg, The Book of Boba Fett can’t be the last we see of his “present-day” self. While nothing has been officially announced yet, I have a good feeling we’ll see Cobb again in The Mandalorian Season 3, and going a step further, I’m sure you could find enough Star Wars fans would be eager for a Cobb Vanth limited series, akin to The Book of Boba Fett. Either way, between Cobb now getting some cybernetic upgrades and all the people who like when Timothy Olyphant appears in the Star Wars universe, it’d be a mistake not to feature the character more often.
Should it be revealed that we’ll be seeing more of Cad Bane and/or Cobb Vanth in one of the Star Wars shows, we here at CinemaBlend will pass that information along. Until then, keep checking back here for all the biggest news items concerning the blockbuster franchise set in a galaxy far, far away.
