This post contains spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett Chapter 5: “Return of the Mandalorian.”
Even though most of the Star Wars fandom assumed The Book of Boba Fett would be about — you guessed it, Boba Fett — the show took a brief detour in Chapter.5 to focus its attention on a beskar-wearing warrior named Din Djarin.
One of the episode’s most comical moments involved Din attempting to board a commercial transport to Tatooine. He is stopped by the Star Wars equivalent of TSA and essentially to transfer all of his weapons to checked luggage. He unloads weapon after weapon into the case. Blasters. Grenades. The darksaber.
The scene is directed to be humorous — Mandalorians don’t mess around. And if you viewed the moment with a smile on your face, you’re absolutely not alone. But there’s a much darker undertone to the moment when you stop to consider one of The Mandalorian’s early lines in Season 1: “Weapons are my religion.” He reminds us again in “Return of the Mandalorian.”
But this scene comes right after The Armorer all but tears away Din’s right to call himself a Mandalorian — the only group he has ever truly belonged to. Someone with a heavily religious upbringing who loses that foundation is bound to stumble, to wander. To grieve. When an identity is built on one single thing and that thing dissolves, what then?
Din is so deeply woven into his religion that he’s likely unable to fathom who he is, who he could be, without it. Who is Din Djarin if you strip away the armor, the weapons, his status as a member of the Mandalorian creed? Presumably, without all that, he has no ties, nothing substantial to live for. Except, perhaps, one small asset.
We quite literally watch Din Djarin unload all of his baggage into a crate and pick it up again once he arrives on Tatooine. His weapons aren’t just heavy in physicality, they’re also symbolically weighing him down.
Of the many things this episode brought to light, perhaps the most heartbreaking of all is that Din Djarin is about to discover he has no idea who he is. Or whom he could become.
But what better way to tease the next season of a show than leave us with that to think about?
The Book of Boba Fett is streaming now exclusively on Disney+.