In The Book of Boba Fett we have been treated to a story involving Boba Fett and the Tusken Raiders, which starts off with Fett being held captive by the Tuskens, but what you may not know is that not only is this not the first encounter Boba has had with the Tuskens, it’s not the first time he’s been held captive by them either.
In an uncompleted arc of The Clone Wars known as the Bounty Hunters arc, we would also see Boba encounter Tusken Raiders and be held captive by them. This was to be a four-episode arc, written by Matt Michnovetz, with original production codes 5.22, 5.23, 5.24 and 5.25. It was originally intended to be included in the sixth season of The Clone Wars, but ultimately season six was cut short and later released as The Lost Missions. Surprisinglyit wasn’t included in season seven, released on Disney Plus in 2020.
At the ‘Animated Origins and Unexpected Fates’ panel at Star Wars Celebration Orlando 2017, Dave Filoni described this arc as “Cad Bane teaches Boba Fett to be a real bounty hunter”. It would be revealed in this arc that Cad would have known Boba’s father Jango and that they were rivals. It was always a dispute between them who was better, which they never got to find out due to Jango’s untimely death. So secretly that is why Cad is training Boba, as he feels if he can train Boba to be as good a Jango, then he’ll finally be able to find out who is better.
The arc would follow a very similar plot to the 1956 movie ‘The Searchers’ of which George Lucas is a fan of. In the course of Cad’s training of Boba it would see them team up to rescue a kidnaped child from a tribe of Tusken Raiders on Tatooine. In an animatic clip shown at several conventions including Star Wars Celebration Europe II in Essen in 2013 and Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in 2015, we see Cad, Boba and Todo 360 making camp for the night in the sands of Tatooine.
Cad senses they are about to be ambushed by the Tuskens and quickly comes up with a plan for Boba to allow himself to be captured. Prideful, Boba initially refuses until Cad explains that the only way they are going to be able to find the Tusken camp is if the Tuskens take Boba alive and drag him back there while he is carrying a tracking device. Cad will then be able to locate the captured Boba and the child they have been hired to rescue. Moments later the Tuskens attack. Boba and Cad put up a show fight until Boba is knocked unconscious and dragged off. The remaining Tuskens retreat and Cad’s plan in put into motion.
In this arc Cad Bane would receive a new character model, as well as a new ship called the Justifier, both of which would eventually be seen in The Bad Batch. At some point Boba would finally don his iconic Mandalorian armour and it’s believed that he may also have retrieved his ship Slave 1 from Hondo Ohnaka, with Aurra Sing who is likely to be involved in this.
Other characters that would have returned in this arc include C-21 Highsinger, Seripas, Sugi, Latts Razzi, Embo, and Bossk.
New characters included a Tusken Shaman who wears a baby Krayt Dragon skull as a mask, a droid named Ruckle, a human character called Stim and a Toong called Lancek Trevoras, who is likely the Toong character that Kyle Newman recorded the voice for.
A second clip from this arc has also been shown at conventions including Star Wars Celebration Orlando in 2017, of a Western style, fast draw, gun slinger duel between Boba and Bane. At the time creators gave hints that only one person walked away from this duel, leading fans to believe it was originally intended for Cad to be killed as Boba had obviously already been featured in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’, set after the events of this arc. We now know Cad also survives, going on to feature in The Bad Batch, complete with a metal plate on his head where Boba’s shot hit in this duel.
Full cast voices were recorded for this arc with Daniel Logan returning as Boba Fett and animatics “pretty close to being locked” before it would have been shipped off to be animated.
Given just how much work has been done on this arc it would be great to see it completed and released as a four-episode special on Disney Plus.
