Book of Boba Fett makes the bounty hunter’s Sarlacc pit-escape canon

We’ve known that Boba Fett survived his brush with Tatooine’s Sarlacc pit for more than a year now, but we didn’t learn exactly how he escaped until The Book of Boba Fett’s first episode. The new episode, which premiered on Disney Plus on Wednesday, showed that the galaxy’s most famous bounty hunter actually made quick work of the beast, but also that there was more dangers waiting for him in the deserts of Tatooine.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett episode 1.]

Boba Fett’s survival of this particular Sarlacc, which is said to devour its prey for 1000 years, was originally made canon in the Star Wars books and short stories that were published after Return of the Jedi’s 1983 release. But when Disney took over the series it purged all those stories from the official canon — they’re now called “Legends” — throwing the character’s survival into question. For the most part fans assumed the bounty hunter was still alive, but it wasn’t confirmed until he was revealed in an episode of The Mandalorian. Even with the Boba’s survival — and general badass streak — confirmed, fans still wanted to know how exactly he managed to escape.

In the 1996 short story “A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett” by J.D. Montgomery, the bounty hunter uses telepathy to convince one of the Sarlacc’s earlier, but still living, victims to — also telepathically — make the Sarlacc grab onto Boba’s jetpack, causing it to explode. (Gee, I wonder why this version isn’t canon anymore). The explosion frees him from the creature’s grasp long enough to blow a hole in its side and escape.

In The Book of Boba Fett, we see a few similarities but the escape is a little more grounded, which definitely fits the show’s vibe better than telepathic connections. While Boba’s making his way through the absolutely disgusting inside of the monster, he realizes he can punch a hole through the walls of the Sarlacc’s throat. Once he does that, all it takes is a bit of fire from Boba’s wrist-mounted flamethrower to free him from the creature’s grasp.

Of course, as the show revealed shortly after, things didn’t get much better for Boba Fett after the Sarlacc, with Jawas stealing his armor, and Tusken Raiders holding him captive. But at least we know for sure how survived Tatooine’s most infamous monster.

The first episode of The Book of Boba Fett is now streaming on Disney Plus.