"That's Boba Fett! He's from that other movie!"
This may just be the algorithm talking, but pick a show, any show, then go online and scroll through the hashtag, or the subreddit, or the Facebook group, or the YouTube search results, the official Discord server, pick your poison. My utterly unscientific analysis is that the posts you'll find tend to fall into one of about four categories:
1. Attempts to stir up controversy for clout
2. "What everybody gets wrong about... "
3. "... ending explained."
4. "Hidden Easter eggs in... "
Actual reviews by critics tend to get drowned out in the online forums that are our modern-day intellectual Boston Molasses Disaster. Instead you get numbers 2 through 4, and the tenuous thread I'm going to try to establish here is that all three are about the minutiae rather than the gestalt. Obsessing over tiny details rather than questions such as "What bits of it are good or enjoyable, which less so, and why?" All trees, no forest.
"That's Luke Skywalker! He's from that other movie!"
Now, God and Coles Notes knows hand-holding people through the plot is nothing new, but what's interesting to me here is how much of #4 there seems to be. People with nothing to say about story or mechanics or drama or tension or humor or any of the things that make a story work will instead focus on the sports stats of every minor character briefly visible in the background of scene 3, or the provenance of the thing held by the protagonist in scene 5.
The Book of Boba Fett was a show made for such people. It is a show uniquely geared to generate the maximum neutral, opinion- and insight-free online chatter without actually telling a coherent narrative.
"That's the Mandalorian! He's from that other show!"
Nothing, not one single thing in the entire show stands on its own. Boba Fett is only the protagonist because he became a fan favorite 40 years ago for having a cool helmet. He's on Tatooine because RotJ was on Tatooine. He lives in a RotJ palace, with RotJ pig guards and has a RotJ pet rancor. He's friends with the guy from the other show. Who gets a ship from the prequel movies. And then goes to visit, you guessed it, RotJ Deep Fake Luke Skywalker. And a lady from the Clone Wars show. Boba is also pals with a Wookie from the comics, but enemies with some blue dude from the Clone Wars show. Mando recruits another crossover guy. But then they're attacked by prequel concept art droids.
You know what I mean? Nothing original here, just a stream of actor and object cameos for people to compile lists about.
"That's Cobb Vanth! He's from that other show!"
And here's the thing: The online fans love it. Oh, they grouch about the fact that the plot is completely nonsensical and the putative protagonist disappears for 1/3 of his own show, but they forgive all when given a stream of things to identify and recognize from elsewhere.
It's just baffling for even mildly casual fans. I mean, I'm a moderate Star Wars nerd, but the final showdown between Boba Fett and Some Guy He Knows Apparently lacks any weight or tension because Some Guy appeared in all of one scene before the finale so we've had zero in-show buildup to this. I've got to go back and watch seven seasons of the Clone Wars just for even the remotest hope of understanding what this moment is supposed to mean to the two characters.
But okay, this show is for the fanatics, not the fans. It appears to exist as trivia list fodder, a string of facts to be recited to show how big a fan you are.
"That's Cad Bane! He's from that other show!"
The episode itself was rubbish, but does that even matter? It's essentially an hour-long gun fight directed by a man with absolutely zero flair for directing action. Two soldiers with jetpacks stand in the middle of a street and sportingly let their opponents shoot at them. Combatants take shelter behind a combustible hover-car, instead of the fairly incombustible stone building two meters behind them. Someone gets shot half a dozen times, limps to safety, and then is up and running around the next scene. People run away from invincible giant robots by fleeing down a street in a single group, rather than splitting up or taking cover or doing anything really. In order to fight against droids with shields impenetrable to lasers, our heroes decide to do lasers at them FROM SLIGHTLY HIGHER UP.
All ends well though, when One Guy from That Other Movie kills Some Guy From That Other Show.
A fitting end to a show about other shows.
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