Where Did Boba Fett Get His Ship?

It's one of the coolest ships in the "Star Wars" galaxy – maybe even the coolest of all. Sure, Han Solo's "bucket of bolts," the Millennium Falcon, is a classic, as is the Rebel Alliance's sturdy X-wing fighter series. Those dark and foreboding Imperial TIE fighters have their fans, as does Queen Amidala's elegant Naboo Royal Starship and her planet's equally stylish fleet of yellow N-1 starfighters. But when it comes to a combination of powerhouse performance, sleek design, and battle-hardened history, it's hard to surpass Boba Fett's Slave I, whose classic name remains, despite a social media controversy when the name was taken off LEGO packaging.

The iconic ship made its debut back in 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back," the fifth chapter in the Skywalker saga but only the second "Star Wars" film to be released. It first came to view as fans saw the legendary bounty hunter (also making his screen debut, unless you count the cameo that was added to "Episode IV" 17 years later) loading a frozen-in-carbonite Han Solo into the ship's cargo hold on Cloud City. Fans viewed a bit of the ship's backstory in 2002's "Episode II: Attack of the Clones," and then bore witness to Slave I's triumphant comeback in multiple episodes during Season 2 of "The Mandalorian."

But just how does one come into possession of such a glorious starship? How, exactly, did rogue bounty hunter Boba Fett get Slave I in the first place?

In some ways, the answer is simple: Boba Fett inherited Slave I. "Star Wars" fans know all too well that Boba is a clone of his father, bounty hunter Jango Fett. In "Attack of the Clones," Jango (played by Temuera Morrison) meets the business end of Mace Windu's lightsaber, and his brutal death is witnessed by Boba, then just a boy played by actor Daniel Logan. So Boba ended up with the ship, and while it was briefly acquired by the nefarious Hondo Ohnaka (as seen during Season 5 of "Clone Wars"), Boba got it back toward the end of the Clone Wars, according to the novel "Dark Disciple." By the time we see the ship again in Episode V (when Boba is played by Jeremy Bulloch) and then later in "The Mandalorian" (when Jango actor Temuera Morrison took over the role), he's had it for a long time.

But that simple explanation begs the question: where did Jango Fett get Slave I? That answer, too, is simple: he stole it. Originally, Slave I was just one of several Firespray-class interceptors used as patrol vessels on Oovo IV, a prison moon. But when his previous ship, called Jaster's Legacy, was destroyed on a mission to bust a smuggler out of Oovo, Jango Fett absconded with one of the guard ships, retrofitted it with awesome weaponry and features, and named it Slave I. Jaster's Legacy may be gone, but Jango's legacy lives on as Boba Fett's ship, and fans can only expect more daring missions and death-defying maneuvers when Slave I inevitably returns in the upcoming Disney+ series "The Book of Boba Fett" in December.