Image Credit: Lucasfilm
Star Wars has plans for Cobb Vanth, the Timothy Olyphant character who was introduced in The Mandalorian and has been brought back in The Boba Fett Book. The post-credits of the bounty hunter limited series point to the incursion of the Marshal of Mos Pelgo, I mean Free City, as a new fixed character in this universe.
The post-credits scene of the final episode of The Book of Boba Fett, like the post-credits of season 2 of The Mandalorian with Fett’s character, shows that Disney and Star Wars have plans for Cobb Vanth, the character Timothy brings to life. Olyphant. Basically, Cobb Vanth becomes the natural substitute for the character of Cara Dune (Gina Carano) in the future grid of the Star Wars Universe.
After Disney fired Carano for some controversial statements and the New Republic Rangers series was canceled, a new fiction that was outlined in the final episode of season 2 of The Mandalorian, Cobb Vanth now offers Lucasfilm a new opportunity to explore that world of rangers and marshals of the New Republic after the fall of the Empire and before the arrival of the First Order. It had become clear to us that he had not died, so the post-credits have direction and magnitude.
The original New Republic Rangers series was to bring back and reinvent characters that were born outside of the official Star Wars canon in various novels and comics. Clearly, all the narrative weight was going to be carried by the character of Gina Carano: the last episode of the adventures of Mando and Grogu had a lot of intention. So just as they were willing to dump the series weight on Cara Dune in that new series, these Rangers can now sign Cobb Vanth.
Although it doesn’t have to be the same story (it can’t be, especially if they replace a female character with a male one) and the plot can now perfectly mix the hard-charging sheriffs of the galaxy with rangers. The Rangers [that’s their official name] were basically an interplanetary agency under the New Republic dedicated to hunting down criminals deemed too dangerous for the local authorities.
Vanth, now turned into a cyborg, fits the profile of a candidate for this agency, don’t you think? And don’t forget Mayfield (Bill Burr), another textbook candidate. Whatever the story they had initially thought of, it has had to be modified or will be modified. But Star Wars, basically Jon Favreau and David Filoni, architects of this new phase of the universe, have been leaving clues.
Starting with Emperor Palpatine’s Contingency plan if the Empire fell following Operation Cinder that we were dropped in The Mandalorian in Season 2. Now let’s get to it. Cobb Vanth would fit right in there. Especially since everything we knew about him, in theory, has already passed and about his future from now on has not been previously written in the Star Wars Universe.
You already know, but just to recap. Who is Cobb Vanth? He is a character born in the Consequences trilogy of novels: he is a slave (although it is not made clear whose, it seems that one of the great crime families and that he was a slave during the Galactic Civil War) who manages to free himself just when the sun falls. Empire. He arrives in Mos Pelgo where he meets one of the most despicable crime syndicates, the Red Key Raiders.
As The Boba Fett Book has tangentially portrayed, when Jabba dies there was a power war between all the criminal families (what we have actually seen, more than wars, has been the total and absolute submission of the families to the Pyke syndicate, which in the end it has proven to be weak and easy to dismantle, which leaves the rest of the unions at the level of bitumen).
However, out of fear of the New Republic, they tried to whitewash their activities. In the case of the Red Keys, they tried to pass themselves off as a mining union. Vanth takes on the Red Key Raiders the same way he’s taken on the Pyke in Fett’s series, but instead of getting on bad with the desert dwellers, as hinted at in The Mandalorian (yes, there’s been a whitewash of the Tuskens with Boba), they reach a protection agreement in exchange for water.
The most important thing about the novels is that Vanth, as The Boba Fett book has made clear, is a man of his word, a nobleman like few others (although the Mos Pelgo bartender is not far behind… another Rangers candidate if forgets to be an entrepreneur).
And we already entered the contingency plan and Operation Ceniza. The Emperor had a plan if he died or if he disappeared under “strange circumstances” so that his Imperial admirals would know what to do. It was Operation Cinder. And Operation Cinder was followed by a Contingency plan, which was this-message-will-self-destruct-in-fifteen-seconds.
The entire Empire was put into self-destruct mode to fall back, and they all fled jointly to the Unknown Regions to recreate a new, less imperfect Empire. Fans were never sold on this plan. So the big question now is: Is there any part of Operation: Cinder that hasn’t been revealed yet that would make sense of the Emperor’s plan?
The version of the new Star Wars of Rangers of the New Republic or whatever the name of the new series in which Vanth is going to fit in can fit in there: they will investigate the vestiges of the Empire while hunting criminals. Because that series has to learn from the great lesson of The Book of Boba Fett: the more it resembles The Mandalorian (go from small mission to small mission, no flashbacks), the better.
