Following last week’s Mandalorian-centric episode, The Book of Boba Fett returned with a penultimate episode focused on the much larger universe, rather than the more intimate Tatooine-based story that the premiere sold audiences. With Dave Filoni writing and directing “From the Desert Comes a Stranger,” it was inevitable that it would be a real who’s who of fan-favorite characters. Was it fan service? Maybe. But this fan thanks them for their service.

The episode opens out on the flats of Mos Pelgo, where Cobb Vanth (Timothy Olyphant) encounters a few members of the Pyke Syndicate smuggling spice through his corner of Tatooine. He dispatches most of the Pykes, but leaves one of them alive to presumably send back word that he doesn’t want spice pushed through his town. (Which is, unfortunately, a decision that comes back to haunt him in the final act of the episode.)

Following the cold open, things pick up where they left off last week with Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal/Brendan Wayne) as he makes his trek across the galaxy to whatever unnamed planet that Luke Skywalker has chosen to establish the Jedi Temple of Luke Skywalker on. When he arrives, he’s greeted by a familiar droid—R2-D2—who is still just as helpful as he’s always been. The astromech unit escorts him to the construction site of the Jedi Temple, where ant droids are busily hauling building materials to erect the first structure on the site, and promptly shuts himself off — much to Din’s frustration.

Since the finale of The Mandalorian, Grogu has been under the tutelage of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill/Max Lloyd-Jones) and if fans have been wondering how that has been going, Filoni delivered. A decent chunk of “From the Desert Comes a Stranger” was solely focused on Grogu’s training as a Jedi. Luke guided him through meditation lessons, which involved terrorizing the local frog population, and he even ran him through a training scenario that was reminiscent of the one that Yoda put Luke through on Dagobah. During their training, Luke also helped Grogu retrieve long-forgotten memories, which forced all of us to relive the horrors of Order 66.

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Image via Lucasfilm

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Back at the construction site where Din Djarin was left to wait, Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) arrives—surprising not only Din, but audiences too. Most fans assumed that her appearance in the Filoni-directed episode of The Mandalorian would be the last time Dawson donned the montrails before the premiere of the live-action Ahsoka series. For fans who may not be as well-versed in The Clone Wars animated series, Ahsoka Tano was at one time Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan and one of his closest friends. To hear her call herself a friend of the family and later stand beside Luke Skywalker was a pretty big moment for a lot of fans.

Ahsoka doesn’t seem surprised that Din has come to see Grogu, but she does carefully prod him to reveal what fueled his motivation. While Ahsoka may have walked away from the Jedi Order, she still very clearly understands the risk of attachments and doesn’t want Din to make a mistake that jeopardizes Grogu’s potential. (One could easily argue that by finding Luke and rekindling that connection to the Skywalkers, she’s also indulging in her own self-interests.) Din ultimately relents and leaves the beskar gift behind for her to give to Grogu. At least he didn’t commit the ultimate parental sin of letting his kid see him while at daycare—Grogu never would have listened to Luke if he had.

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Image via Lucasfilm

Din sets off back to Tatooine, where Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) and Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) are plotting how to take on the Pykes with Krrsantan and the Mod Squad. Despite the fact that the series is called The Book of Boba Fett, Boba Fett doesn’t have a single line in his only scene across two episodes. Fennec Shand takes the lead on the plotting before Din leaves to rally foot soldiers in Mos Pelgo—or rather, Freetown. (Fans of Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars: Aftermath series will be delighted by that name change.)

Despite his run-in with the Pykes at the top of the episode, Cobb Vanth is hesitant to offer his people to Din. The people of Freetown are pretty far removed from the dealings of the city and understandably, they don’t want to get involved. In the end, Cobb seems willing to consider lending them support, if only because Din had helped them with the Krayt Dragon.

After Din leaves for the palace, the episode’s title comes to fruition. As Cobb stands out in the streets of Freetown, he spots a stranger on the horizon. Even before the figure comes into focus, the slow menacing swagger of his approach is a dead giveaway for Clone Wars fans: Cad Bane. In a stand-off pulled straight from the scenes of any beloved Western, the deadly bounty hunter warns Cobb Vanth about getting involved in the war with the Pyke syndicate. The over-eager trigger finger of Vanth’s deputy causes the stand-off to fall apart, leading to Cad Bane killing the deputy and seriously injuring Cobb Vanth.

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Image via Lucasfilm

While some may say that Cad Bane’s arrival doesn’t entirely make sense, I would argue that following The Bad Batch arc that saw Fennec Shand and Cad Bane at odds with each other, and the precedent set with Boba Fett and Cad Bane’s interactions in The Clone Wars, it all makes narrative sense that he would side with the Pykes to undermine their machinations of power. It does feel like an introduction that would have been better served earlier in the series, but hopefully, the pay-off is satisfying in the finale.

In the final moments of “From the Desert Comes a Stranger,” we return to the Jedi Temple of Luke Skywalker, where Luke finally reveals what is in the parcel left behind by Mando. Like the Jedi who came before him, Luke operates on a binary, which we know will ultimately be his undoing. He presents Grogu with a choice: accept Din’s gift and reunite with him, or accept Yoda’s lightsaber, remain a Jedi, and never see Din again. The episode ended on a cliffhanger, and it’s unclear if we’ll learn Grogu’s decision in the finale or if we will have to wait until The Mandalorian returns.

Star Wars has always featured isolated, yet inherently connected storytelling by delivering trilogies that were tied to each other, but separate enough that they still focused on the core cast of characters from that era. In The Mandalorian era, it seems that things are a little bit more fluid, with returning characters shifting the focus away from the titular character, in favor of making those somewhat gratuitous connections. In the end, it all works, and quite well, because we know that all of these Mando-adjacent stories are eventually leading to an interconnected event. While The Mandalorian had a lot of really solid moments of character growth and introspection, The Book of Boba Fett relies too heavily on its audience to assume what's going on between scenes.

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Image via Lucasfilm

“From the Desert Comes a Stranger” was 41 minutes of some of the most beautiful, fun, and thematically exhilarating Star Wars storytelling, but it does, unfortunately, feel like The Book of Boba Fett is no longer focused on its main character. The first four episodes delivered a lot of important development for Boba Fett, but his arc was by no means at a place where sidestepping his story almost entirely feels natural or right. I can’t help but wonder why anyone thought The Book of Boba Fett was an appropriate series title when the series has essentially abandoned Boba Fett in the back half.

Rating: A

The first six episodes of The Book of Boba Fett are available to stream at Disney+.