Warning: Spoilers for season 2, episode 1 of The Mandalorian, “The Marshal”
The season 2 premiere of The Mandalorian offers a big hint to how Boba Fett escaped from the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi. In the Disney era of Star Wars, The Mandalorian has proven to be one of its most acclaimed chapters, so the news that Boba Fett would be appearing in season 2 wasn’t especially surprising. Though Fett’s role in the first episode of season 2 is just a quick cameo at the very end by Temuera Morrison, the episode ties back to his earlier life in a subtle way.
The episode sees Mando join forces with Marshal Cobb Vanth and a band of Tusken Raiders to destroy a massive krayt dragon terrorizing a small town on Tatooine. The dragon is ultimately defeated after Mando allows himself and his bantha to be swallowed, after which Mando uses his jet pack to fly out of it and then detonates the bombs now inside of the dragon. While it might not seem to have much to do with Boba Fett at a glance, it could actually be showing how he managed to survive his own seemingly deadly encounter with a huge sand creature.
In Return of the Jedi, as Luke is on the verge of being sacrificed to the Sarlacc by the henchmen of Jabba the Hutt, he fights back against his captors. In the ensuing battle, Boba Fett falls into the waiting jaws of the Sarlacc. Obviously, Fett’s return in The Mandalorian, set after Return of the Jedi, demonstrates that he survived, but Mando’s escape from the krayt dragon could indicate that Fett managed to escape the same way.
In the now non-canon Star Wars Legends (formerly Star Wars: The Expanded Universe), the story A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett even shows Fett managing to get the Sarlacc’s consciousness Susejo to contract its muscles around his jet pack, causing it to ignite and allowing him to get free. With Mando using his jet pack to blast out of the krayt dragon, this offers a major hint that this aspect of Legends has seemingly been retrofitted into Boba Fett’s history within the canonized Star Wars movies and shows. The presence of Cobb Vanth himself also offers evidence of Fett using his jet pack to escape in wearing Fett’s old armor.
Though the armor is visibly damaged from being inside of the digestive tract of the Sarlacc, Fett’s old jet pack is still shown to be fully functional, with both Vanth and Mando flying during the final battle with the krayt dragon. With Boba Fett’s jet pack still operational after all these years, it was clearly able to make it out of the Sarlacc with only relatively minor damage. This means that it’s perfectly plausible that he was able to use the jet pack to escape the Sarlacc in a manner similar to Mando’s method of getting free.
Boba Fett was already known to be appearing in season 2 along with Ahsoka Tano, and with his armorless cameo at the end of the episode, there’s good reason to think that he and Mando will cross paths before too much longer. When that happens, Boba Fett himself might shed some light on what will essentially be the canonized explanation of his escape from the Sarlacc. However, the premiere episode of season 2 of The Mandalorian may have offered a major clue as to how he pulled it off.
Originally from https://screenrant.com/mandalorian-season-2-boba-fett-sarlacc-escape-jetpack-hint/