Whenever there is a new Star Wars show, you can expect lots of mindless clickbait articles of pure speculation, usually based one factoid, rumor, or nothing at all. Most of these turn out, of course, to be wrong, as is the case with most such fan theories.
But occasionally, there are multiple data points that converge as something substantially more than speculation, and this is the case when it comes to considering the possibility of notorious bounty hunter Aurra Sing making a cameo in the new Star Wars show The Book of Boba Fett.
Who is Aurra Sing?
Aurra Sing made her first canon appearance in Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, looking quite the imposing spectator in a quick shot during Anakin Skywalker’s big podrace on Tatooine, with a massive sniper rifle slung over her back.
That was all we saw of her in canon until the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series.
There, we saw her (literally) explosive debut in the final episode of season 1 of Clone Wars, as one of master bounty hunter Cad Bane’s allies in his breakout of Ziro the Hutt from a high-security Republic prison on Coruscant, an episode in which he daringly (yet nonchalantly, hence, the badassery of Bane) assaulted the Republic Senate and took senators, including Padmé Amidala (and also even a disarmed Anakin Skywalker) hostage in order to secure the Hutt’s release. In just one sequence, Sing snipes dead a surprisingly large number of Senate Guards (I counted seven), proving her badassery while also mercilessly taking out a survivor of an attack against a Guard shift change, proving her icy coldness (this all actually takes place chronologically after her other appearances on the show, detailed below, as some occasional Clone Wars episodes aired in non-chronological order).
The next time we see her, she has young Boba Fett under her wing. As I have detailed before for this very site, this was a part of a plot, led by Aurra (even assisted by Bossk), to help Boba get revenge on Mace Windu for killing Boba’s father, Jango Fett—then working for Count Dooku and the donor template for the all the Republic’s clones—in the Geonosian arena battle at the end of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones. In the first episode of this three-part Boba/Aurra arc, Boba even impressively manages to singlehandedly bring down and entire Republic Venator cruiser.
Sing’s motives seemed mixed. She seems to genuinely care for Boba, even to back him up, but she’s also clearly in it for the money. And here we see situations where she is clearly pushing Boba to be dishonorable, to torture and murder hostages, even young clone cadets that look just like him; Boba even later sees Aurra kill one of their partners, the cowardly Castas, who is blabbing about their plot and about to sell them out. Boba feels uneasy and/or pushes back in each of these situations, but is, as a child, in no position to really stand up the adult, expert bounty Hunter Aurra Sing.
This moral conflict is key, for in Clone Wars Boba, we see the establishment of that streak of honor and decency we never saw in Boba in the Original Trilogy (in which he was only on screen for a few minutes) but seems to be at the core of his character in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
While Boba may hesitate to murder and torture, may be filled with regret, Aurra Sing obviously does not have any of the moral conflict Boba does. And in the absence of any family, the much harsher Sing has become something of a mother-figure to Boba—even tries to stop him from drinking underage, if there is such a thing on Florrum, where she brings Boba as they try to regroup after the first attempt to kill Jedi Master Windu fails.
She chooses Florrum because she is the ex-girlfriend of Clone Wars semi-regular pirate captain Hondo Ohnaka (Florrum being home to his main base) and is hoping she can get some help from her ex-lover. When Hondo meets Boba here for the first time, he reveals he was friends with Jango, offering Boba his condolences for the untimely death of his father and telling him that Jango was “an honorable man.”
Instead of the hostages drawing out Windu to Florrum, Jedi Master Plo Koon and Padawan Ashoka Tano—Padawan to Anakin Skywalker, who is injured from Boba’s first attempt on Windu, as is Windu himself—arrive to treat with Aurra Sing instead. What ensues is an epic confrontation between Master Plo and Padawan Tano on one side and Aurra Sing and Boba Fett on the other—again, elaborated upon in my related article for Dork Side—in which Sing abandons an emotionally crushed Boba (desperately calling out to her as she flees) who is taken by the Jedi Master while the Padawan goes after Sing, eventually defeating her by downing Jango’s Slave I ship that Aurra, Boba, and their gang have been using, the ship falling in a crash in which Sing is presumed dead.
And yet, in season 3, Ahsoka is having dreams—premonitions, really—of Sing attacking her friend and (other-than-Anakin) mentor, Senator Padmé Amidala, at a conference for refugees. In an excellent episode and rematch between the two characters, Ahsoka just manages to foil the quick-shooting Sing’s two impressive attempts to assassinate Padmé, the second time barely with a key knockout-stun shot from the senator herself.
Sing is apprehended, and that is the last we see of her in Clone Wars. As she never appears in the Original Trilogy, it is unknown if she is freed from or still in prison, or even if she survives*, up through the timeline of The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian, which pick up after the end of the Original Trilogy (Bossk made it at least until Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, so why not Sing?).
*The author admits to forgetting a throwaway dialogue between Tobias Beckett and Lando Calrissian in Solo in which it seems to be revealed that Beckett killed Sing at some point before the movie by pushing her and having her fall, but she was presumed dead before when she was not (as noted herein) and a fall or apparent death repeatedly(!) hasn’t meant death when it was thought it had in Star Wars; either way, it is also quite possible she may return in a flashback…
The woman behind the bounty hunter
Given this history, we already have compelling reasons to see Sing make an appearance, flashback or otherwise, in Boba’s new show. She is voiced superbly in Clone Wars by actress and model Jaime King, who bears a physical resemblance to the bounty hunter and was in enough with Dave Filoni to also voice not only Aurra Sing and a few side characters in Clone Wars, but the Force Priestesses who are key to Lucas’s Force mythology and featured in the epic Yoda arc that closed out season six of Clone Wars (and, for some time, we thought the whole Clone Wars series until 2020’s season 7 finally amply rewarded us for our patience and persistence).
Yet here is where it gets really interesting: King has also played the twins Goldie and Wendy in the two Sin City movies, both of which saw heavy involvement by Robert Rodriguez: he was the top-billed director, cinematographer, film editor, a producer, did the screenplay and the top credit for the music for 2005’s Sin City; for 2014’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, he was again the top-billed director, the cinematographer, film editor, a producer, and the top credit for the music. In other words, he was deeply involved with most aspects of the film and would have worked closely with King. And King was also an important supporting role—the nurse Betty—in Disney’s 2001 Pearl Harbor, showing she has experience with Disney, too.
We have already seen how Robert Rodriguez did not hesitate to bring into the Boba Fett show an actor with whom he shares a deep, long history of collaboration: Danny Trejo, who just appeared in episode 3 of the series. Trejo had worked with Rodriguez on a full twelve film and television projects before he just appeared in the Boba series. So he may very well bring in Jaime King.
Other promising connections
It should also be noted that both Sin City films featured Rosario Dawson, our current Ahsoka Tano. Interestingly, Rodriguez partnered with Quentin Tarantino (who also worked with him on the first Sin City) to create 2007’s Grindhouse, which combined two sub-films, the second of which—“Death Proof”—featured Dawson; Rodriguez was more heavily involved in the first—“Planet Terror”—but was a producer for both. So whether here or in another series—the Ahsoka series?—perhaps a Boba Fett-Ashoka Tano rematch (or team up?) is in the works, too… Or maybe Sing may make her appearance in the Ashoka series for a third meeting between her and Ashoka? Or a reunion of all three?? In any of these cases, we should be so lucky! And here, history gives us hope that would not be merely speculative.
Heck, we may even see a surprise in directing come to the Boba Fett series or another Star Wars project: besides Sin City and Grindhouse, Rodriguez has also worked with Tarantino on From Dusk Till Dawn (both the movies and the series), Desperado, Kill Bill: Volume 2, and Four Rooms. We can dream, we can always dream, of Tarantino directing some Star Wars…
And given recent developments in Book of Boba Fett, with the connections of Crimson Dawn and the Pyke Syndicate to Solo’s Qi’ra (played by Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones/Daenerys Targaryen fame), maybe we will even see her in the Boba series, too…
Keep the hope alive
But of all these scenarios, I think the most likely one for The Book of Boba Fett (apart from Clarke’s Qi’ra appearing) is Jaime King appearing as Aurra Sing, maybe even with her old partner Cad Bane (who, it should be mentioned, was supposed to face off in an epic gunslinging duel against Boba, his onetime protégé, in an unfinished scene from a never-finished episode of Clone Wars; and do not forget that Fennec Shand, Boba’s lieutenant in his titular show, fought Bane in Clone Wars’s successor, Bad Batch, over none other than Boba’s sister, setting up another possible rematch with deep meaning for Boba). With Sing’s ties to both Filoni and Rodriguez, and both of their deep involvement in the Boba Fett series (they are each executive producers for all seven episodes, along with fulfilling other roles), I submit that this scenario is more than just mere speculation.