Comrades In Misery - How A Stormtrooper Got Into The Sarlacc Pit

When Did He Fall In?

By Culture SlatePublished 2 years ago • 5 min read

Chapter 1 of The Book of Boba Fett finally answered a question that fans have been wondering either since 1983 or at least since October 30, 2020, when Boba Fett first appeared in The Mandalorian. How did the bounty hunter Fett escape the Sarlacc? The old Expanded Universe had answered this question already back in January of 1996 when Bantam Spectra’s anthology book Tales from Jabba’s Palace included a story called “A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett.” In this story, Fett made telepathic contact with a being named Susejo, who had fallen into the Great Pit of Carkoon several thousand years ago. While his body was digested, his consciousness slowly merged with that of the Sarlacc. Fett made Susejo/the Sarlacc to contract around his jetpack, causing it to explode. He then used some concussion grenades to free himself from the creature, leaving it badly wounded but still alive, much like himself. The Book of Boba Fett’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” now delivers the official cannon version of how the bounty hunter escaped the slimy innards of the creature. It is not too different from the Legends version. He uses his flamethrower and the oxygen of a deceased Imperial stormtrooper who had also fallen into the pit during the Battle of Carkoon!

But wait...

There were no Imperial troops involved when Luke, Leia, and Han fought Jabba’s thugs and goons, right? At least seven of Jabba’s enforcers fell into the pit and were swallowed by the greedy beak of the Sarlacc, but surely none of them wore white armor. So, where did that stormtrooper come from whose death was at least worth saving the life of Boba Fett?

From a storytelling point of view the poor guy was just a plot device. It was not really clear how long Fett had been inside the Sarlacc, but it must have been hours rather than days. Either the oxygen supply of Fett’s armor was damaged by his fall, or he had been unconscious for long enough that the air tank was simply depleted. Thus, he needed someone or something to provide him with oxygen, which of course neither the corpse of a Nikto nor a Klatooinian would have been able to do but a stormtrooper in armor could. Fett was lucky that the trooper must have died shortly after or even before he had fallen into the pit, otherwise his oxygen tanks would have been empty as well as he slowly suffocated.

Still, this does not answer the question how the trooper got into the Sarlacc. The Empire, like the Republic before it, had contracts with Jabba, allowing it to use the hyperspace routes through Hutt space while turning a blind eye on the shady business of the Hutts. Despite these contracts, both sides despised each other and someone as sadistic as Jabba would not have hesitated to feed a stormtrooper to the Sarlacc just for his pleasure, knowing that neither Vader nor the Empire would come after him for doing so. Stormtroopers died or were killed probably by the hundreds each day throughout the galaxy, so no one would mind if one or a few went missing on a remote planet like Tatooine.

Issue 4 of Marvel’s 2015 iteration of the Star Wars comic line had Darth Vader and a bunch of stormtroopers travel aboard Jabba’s sail barge through the Dune Sea. While his thugs killed banthas for the amusement of their boss, the Hutt and the Sith Lord discussed finding the man who had just blown up the Death Star. When Jabba got tired of seeing banthas die, he took Vader to the Sarlacc. Although not depicted in the comic, it could be possible that one of the stormtroopers got kicked into the pit, with Vader even providing one of his troops just for the good grace of the Hutt.

Another occasion where the trooper could have met his end was in 2019 comic Age of Rebellion – Jabba the Hutt where Boba Fett killed a bunch of stormtroopers on Tatooine as a job for Jabba. Tusken Raiders later brought the dead troopers to Jabba, who could have thrown them into the Sarlacc to feed his pet. Wouldn’t it be ironic if one of the troopers killed by Fett would later save Boba’s life?

Of course, it is possible that the trooper was inside the Sarlacc for a much longer period of time. He could have fallen in there way before the Battle of Yavin while searching for C-3PO and R2-D2, although this is doubtful. According to the official map of Tatooine, the landing point of the droids’ escape pod as well as the site where the stormtroopers intercept the Jawas’ sandcrawler were rather far away from the Great Pit of Carkoon.

The Empire would have sent troops to Tatooine in the nearly two decades between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and one of these stormtroopers could have gotten into a fight with Tusken Raiders or even a bunch of Jawas and ended in the Sarlacc. Maybe the poor guy had just had a bad day, stumbled, and fell into the pit, As Luke Skywalker said in A New Hope, “I can’t see a thing in this helmet.”

Written By Gerald Petschk

Source(s): Screen Rant, StarWars.com

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