The final issue of the Jango Fett comic miniseries wraps up its story somewhat neatly in its final issue — the conspiracy surrounding the Hope of Glee Anselm, Nakano Lash’s origin and Jango’s bounty hunter rivalries are all dealt with pretty cleanly if not always in a satisfying manner — and has some interesting ties to his role in the prequel trilogy, but we don’t really learn much more about him as a character.
In fairness, there’s a lot to wrap up before the story ends so I won’t judge it too harshly, but this series was never particularly interested in digging much into what makes Jango Fett tick — its modus operandi was seemingly to merely give us an insight into what he was like as a bounty hunter and give us some cool action.
We continue to see Jango kicking ass and taking names in the final issue, with plenty of quips thrown in for good measure. Some of them are cringe-inducing, but they can mostly be played off for laughs. I was a bit disappointed in the direction it took the sub-plot of the bounty placed on Jango and Aurra Sing, but I guess there’s only so much that could be done in a single issue. Jango’s rivalry with Vigor Struk is the most disappointing of the sub-plots to be wrapped up, done as a throwaway fight and in a way that undermines their entire conflict in the first place, but everything else was satisfying enough.
At the very least, this series was a fun look at a bounty hunter we don’t know much about in current canon. I hope we continue to get more Jango Fett stories in future, but I hope those stories will be a bit more insightful than this one.
Spoilers ahead…
The issue got off to a fine start with Jango Fett and Aurra Sing breaking into a HoloNet news relay substation on Ord Mantell, intimidating the station manager into handing over the security footage from the robbery in the first issue. The whole scene was very entertaining, even if it did include one of the cringiest quips in the entire series. I hope writer Ethan Sacks was trying to play that for laughs, but it seems Jango thinks he’s being a badass when he makes his “breaking and entering news” joke, but man that is a bad pun.
With a testimony from Nakano Lash recorded and footage of the robbery, Jango decides he has enough evidence to accuse the man who actually did steal the Hope of Glee Anselm — Nautolan Ambassador Fiarok — and bets that the Republic will be happy enough to accept it, knowing that a court of law would consider it circ*mstantial at best.
As they leave Ord Mantell, Nakano Lash laments that she has nothing to do and nowhere to go, with her friends and family all dead. It’s here that we learn that Jango unintentionally plants the seed in her end to become a bounty hunter, in a remarkably on-the-nose reveal that literally leaves the character mumbling “Bounty hunter… hmmm” that must have been intended as a wink and a nod, but is nowhere near as subtle as Sacks think it is.
That’s followed up with a conversation between Fett and Sing, who suggests that he should have children as he seems to be good at handling them. Jango claims that he’s not interested in that life right now, but he leaves the door open. That makes sense, considering this series is set 11 years before Attack of the Clones. That’s the closest we get to character development in this issue; it’s not remotely enough, but oh well.
The bounty hunter sub-plot is the next to be wrapped up, as Jango and Aurra are greeted by a small army of bounty hunters on Jaloria. There’s a fun cameo here with Cradossk, who some fans might recognize as Bossk’s father. It seems there’s bad blood between the eventual fathers of Boba and Bossk, with Cradossk accusing Jango of always thinking he was better than him. It certainly seems that he is, as the Trandoshan is taken out of action pretty quickly after that.
There’s a lot going on in this fight sequence and Fett isn’t quite as showy as in the last issue, but the action is entertaining for the most part. The disappointing bit is when Vigor Struk is the last one standing. A blast from Jango Fett’s rocket reveals that Struk is a cyborg, a reveal which hugely undermines the theme of their rivalry.
Vigor’s whole argument was that he was the better bounty hunter because Jango relied too much on technology, but here we learn that his whole body is cybernetically enhanced! So what’s the lesson here? Struk turns out to be a hypocrite and Jango ends up killing him with one of his gadgets. This sub-plot was the closest we had gotten to getting some insight and character development in Jango Fett, but in the end it all meant nothing.
The main story is wrapped up a little neater. Jango presents his evidence — while Aurra Sing heads off and steals the jewels from the real Hope of Glee Anselm — and Ambassador Fiarok is arrested. He does let the Republic official know that he knows Fiarok wasn’t really responsible, and that the conspiracy went further up than that, but happily takes his credits and walks off into the sunset.
That intelligence and discretion gets him the attention of the man who was really behind the conspiracy — Count Dooku! It turns out I was pretty close to the mark with my guess in the last review that Darth Sidious would be behind this; it was Dooku doing Palpatine’s work on his behalf.
But while I suspected Jango would end up restoring peace to Glee Anselm and buying Chancellor Valorum some time, instead he ended up piling more pressure on him as the Anselmi declared they could never trust the Nautolans after such deception from the ambassador.
In the issue’s final scene, Count Dooku takes note of Fett’s name and is impressed by the bounty hunter — a clear tie to Jango’s origins and how he came to be hired by Darth Tyranus before the events of Attack of the Clones. It’s a fun reveal that definitely makes the adventure feel more grand. It was a smart move by Sacks to make this part of Jango Fett’s Attack of the Clones origin story.
The series stumbles a little at the end, but ultimately it lands the plane. Hopefully we get to see more of Jango Fett in future, but if we do then I hope we learn more about him next time.
Rating: 7/10
Josh Atkins
+ posts
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
