UPDATE: Alright listen - I made a mistake in a previous version of this article. I had a whole slide dedicated to the Mandalorian’s supposedly disfigured fingers, when in actuality he’s just wearing two-tone gloves. In my defense, it can sometimes be hard to tell in Star Wars whether something is an article of clothing or an actual physical feature. (Garindan, for example. Is that his fucking face? I legitimately do not know.) But, that was an error, and I apologize for my oafish excitement.

Ok, so I watched the season premiere of The Mandalorian (click here for the full review) in the late hours of Monday night, just like everyone else eagerly awaiting the release of Disney Plus. I seriously restarted my Playstation 4 over and over again until the service popped up for download. I’m not proud of it, I’m just recording it here in the interest of history. Gerald Ford didn’t want everyone remembering he fell down all the time, but here we are.

Anyway, I was finally able to watch the series premiere of The Mandalorian, and it was freaking awesome. I’m not going to review it here, because we’ve already done so elsewhere on this website, but it’s absolutely the Star Wars film I’ve been waiting for since 2005. It’s the first live-action Star Wars property that does not have anything to do with the Skywalkers or the Force, and it rules. And I’m pretty sure the main character is Boba Fett.

Hear me out. Pedro Pascal plays the titular Mandalorian, a bounty hunter in piecemeal armor working his way through job to job under the Empire’s rule. Nobody ever refers to him by name, and he never removes his helmet, not even when he’s trying to score points with Carl Weathers. It’s been rumored that Pascal’s character might be Boba Fett, and even though series creator/MCU architect Jon Favreau shot those rumors down, it could be another case of “Benedict Cumberbatch absolutely isn’t playing Khan.” Because there are several details that seem to suggest Pascal is in fact the famous Star Wars bounty hunter.

He Freezes Dudes in Carbonite

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Image via Disney+

In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader freezes Han Solo in carbonite to test whether he’ll be able to do the same thing to Luke without killing him. Boba Fett objects, because he can’t collect Han’s bounty if the smuggler dies. Plus, the general vibe of the room is that this is some seriously twisted shit, and nobody has any idea whether or not it will work. That suggests that, up to that point, carbon freezing is not something that is done to living things.

Flash forward to The Mandalorian, and we see that the titular character locks his bounties in carbonite slabs by practice. And when he offloads his cargo, nobody bats an eye. Live people trapped in levitating blocks of space ice is just business as usual. Now, the show takes place a handful of years after Return of the Jedi, so it could mean that word got around that carbonite freezing is a great way to transport unruly bounties. But Luke killed every last person at Jabba’s palace, even Max Reebo. So there weren’t exactly any witnesses, unless the people in Lando’s carbon freezing chamber spilled the beans at some grimy cantina. So it’s also possible that the Mandalorian knew carbon freezing would work, because he saw it work, because he’s Boba Fett. And so he started using it on his bounties, and everyone saw him doing it, and after a few years it just became a regular thing for bounty hunters to do.

He Hates Droids

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Image via Lucasfilm

It becomes clear in the first few episodes that the Mandalorian does not care for droids. As the template for the Clone Army (and a clone himself), Boba Fett saw thousands (maybe millions) of dudes who looked exactly like him and his father get murdered by the Separatist’s droid army during the Clone Wars. You’d understandably come out of that situation with an extreme mistrust of robots at the very least, if not a paralyzing fear of anything that goes “beep boop” and pretends like that’s a language people understand.

It could also just be that the Mandalorian resents droids, because he comes from a race of proud warriors who don’t much like the idea of being replaced by robots. Either way, he totally shoots IG-11 right in his electronic brain pan. Take that, ya freakin' beep-boop.

His Ship

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Image via Disney

The Mandalorian flies an old, beat-up Clone Wars dropship. When Boba Fett was orphaned on Geonosis by Mace Windu’s Purple Rain lightsaber, the first battle of the Clone Wars broke out. So it stands to reason that Boba would’ve escaped Geonosis by hijacking one of the Republic’s dropships. Obviously, he still has Slave 1 in the original trilogy, and Jango Fett would’ve flown Slave 1 to Geonosis, and Boba at the very least knows how to operate the weapons on Slave 1. So maybe he came back for it? Or maybe he escaped Geonosis on Slave 1 and stole a dropship at a later point during the Clone Wars. I don’t know, I don’t keep track of Boba’s garage.

The point is, the ship is a clear reference to Episode 2, when Boba Fett makes his first official appearance in the Star Wars timeline. Whether he boosted it right on Geonosis, later on during the Clone Wars, or after climbing out of the Sarlacc pit because Slave 1 had been stripped down for parts by Tatooinian street gangs is immaterial. That’s what he drives now, and it’s a firm nod to a specific period of Star Wars history.

No Disintegrations

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Image via Disney

Darth Vader famously tells Boba Fett “no disintegrations” when hiring him and the other bounty hunters to track down Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. As we see in the first two episodes, the Mandalorian is wielding a disintegration rifle, which he uses to hilarious effect on some Jawas.

Now, this simply could be a common weapon used by Mandalorians, but like the Clone Wars ship, it’s a subtle nod to the character that could be a clue (or it could just be a fun reference).

His Helmet

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Image via Disney

The Mandalorian’s helmet is almost completely stripped of paint, and is missing the antenna that normally juts out from the left temple. It could be a style choice - not every Mandalorian has that specific piece of equipment, which, according to the PS2 game Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, is a device that helped you scan for active bounties. But there are a few shots where you can see that the underlying paint of the Mandalorian’s visor looks dark red, which is the color on Boba Fett’s helmet. His helmet could’ve been stripped of paint by the acid in the Sarlacc’s stomach. And the antenna could’ve fallen off in a similar way.

There could be an additional reason for hiding his identity that we don’t yet know. Maybe there’s a bounty on Boba Fett for failing to contain Luke Skywalker or Han Solo (nobody should be held accountable for failing to beat Luke, that man is unstoppable by the time Return of the Jedi starts). If you hold true to the extended universe, plenty of people impersonated Boba Fett in the years after Return of the Jedi, so maybe he’s trying to avoid that sort of attention while he’s doing his jobs. Also, his face would presumably be terribly scarred after years in the Sarlacc pit, so perhaps he’s keeping his helmet on to keep from horrifying people, and to preserve some sense of dignity. But it also looks super cool, so who knows.

His Gun

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Image via Lucasfilm

The Mandalorian wields a pistol that looks remarkably similar to Jango Fett’s pistols. They’re not exact matches, but they’re enough alike to make you think of the gunslinging elder Fett. He also carries a rifle slung over his back, and Boba Fett favored a short stock rifle. Boba also wore a cape like the Mandalorian, but plenty of people wear capes in Star Wars, so that’s almost like claiming two people are the same dude because they both wear pants.

His Armor

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Image via Disney

The Mandalorian’s armor is motley, cobbled together from various disparate sets. Several of the pieces, like his chest plate and shoulder pad, look as if they were stripped of paint. Again, that could be the digestive work of the Sarlacc, or it could mean that the digestive work of the Sarlacc forced him to cobble together a new suit from whatever he could buy or scavenge. That would also explain why his underlying coveralls are several different colors. He’s been forced to scrape together his entire outfit, which would make sense for Boba Fett, who would’ve had to start all over after crawling out of the Sarlacc like a vomited chunk of potato.

His Look

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Image via Disney

We haven’t actually seen the Mandalorian yet, but we know what Pedro Pascal looks like. And he looks kind of similar to Temuera Morrison, who played Jango Fett, of whom Boba is a clone. Plus, Pascal is in his 40s, which puts him at the same age Boba would be during this period of the Empire’s rule. If he isn’t Boba Fett, he’s someone who was also a child during the Clone Wars, which would be a massive coincidence in any other universe than Star Wars, a world in which every person even remotely adjacent to a Skywalker ends up getting murdered by some iteration of Space Nazis