The Mandalorian's Marshal & Boba Fett Armor Explained (Canon Backstory)
Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Mandalorian season 2, episode 1, "Chapter 9 - The Marshal".
The Mandalorian season 2 features Timothy Olyphant as Marshal Cobb Vanth, a character who wears Boba Fett's armor and was previously established in Star Wars novels. In 1977, George Lucas introduced viewers to the desert planet of Tatooine. "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from," Luke Skywalker complained as he wistfully longed for a life in the stars. For all Luke's words, though, Tatooine has become a recurring location in Star Wars, revisited with surprising frequency.
Din Djarin first visited Tatooine in The Mandalorian season 1, when he took on the mercenary and assassin Fennec Shand. He returned in The Mandalorian season 2, episode 1, "Chapter 9 - The Marshal", as part of his quest to discover fellow Mandalorians. Unfortunately it turned out to be a dead end, because Din Djarin had stumbled upon an ordinary man who'd acquired Mandalorian armor from a bunch of Jawas. The armor was instantly recognizable, of course; it actually belonged to Boba Fett, who was revealed to still be alive on Tatooine in a final scene.
But the Marshal is in fact an established character in Star Wars lore. He was first introduced in Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy, a series of books that released from 2015 through to 2017 - and essentially set up his role in The Mandalorian season 2. So here's everything you need to know about Cobb Vanth, lawman of Tatooine.
Lucasfilm has cast to type with the Marshal, as Timothy Olyphant takes on the role of Cobb Vanth. A Hawaiian actor who was raised in California, Olyphant's career has frequently seen him play the part of conflicted lawmen and even US Marshals; he's best known for playing Sheriff Seth Bullock in HBO's Deadwood and Kentucky Marshal Raylan Givens in FX's drama Justified. Interviewers note he essentially plays this character in real life as well, treating conversations as sparring matches, consistently demonstrating an ironic deadpan sense of humor. He's even taken to walking around wearing a cowboy hat. Little wonder Olyphant was willing to become another Marshal, this time in a galaxy far, far away.
The Mandalorian season 2 may see Cobb Vanth make his live-action debut, but he was introduced in Lucasfilm's Star Wars books. When Lucasfilm started planning out the Star Wars sequels, they hired Chuck Wendig to write a series of novels set immediately after Return of the Jedi, explaining how the galaxy reacted to the death of Emperor Palpatine. Wendig's Aftermath trilogy charted the collapse of the Empire, the Battle of Jakku, and even the birth of Leia's son, Ben. A series of interludes broke away from the main story, revealing what was happening on other worlds. Several of these were set on Tatooine, where a man in Mandalorian armor cut a swathe through slavers who attempted to run the planet after Jabba's fall.
The story matches up broadly with the one told in The Mandalorian season 2. Cobb Vanth was a former slave who celebrated the fall of the Empire, and then was shaken to realize the galaxy wasn't just going to default to stability. Groups like the Mining Guild saw an opportunity in the chaos, and encroached on Hutt territory in order to take over Tatooine. "Tatooine has its resources," one representative of the Mining Guild explained in a conversation. "Dilarium oil. Silicax oxalate. But its so-called people are the most vital resource of them all. Some of the galaxy's legacy breeding stock is here, and we wouldn't want to diminish those slave bloodlines." Vanth escaped being enslaved again by the Mining Guild, and fled into the desert.
The Mandalorian season 2 doesn't explain how Cobb Vanth acquired Boba Fett's Mandalorian armor, but that tale is told in the Aftermath trilogy. Although Boba Fett was swallowed by the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi, it seems the creature died soon after, critically injured by the explosion of Jabba's sail barge. Industrious Jawas flocked to the corpse, scavenging for all they could find, and among their prizes they discovered a suit of Mandalorian armor. Although readers understandably assumed this was Boba Fett's armor, the books themselves were ambiguous, because there's no way of knowing how long a suit of beskar could survive inside the Sarlacc's stomach; it could potentially have been from another Mandalorian who was fed to the Sarlacc thousands of years ago. That ambiguity is resolved in The Mandalorian season 2, with viewers immediately able to recognize the armor.
The Mandalorian season 2 simplifies the story of how Cobb Vanth acquired the Mandalorian armor from the Jawas, but frankly there's no reason he would tell Mando every detail of his life, so there's no continuity problem there. Still, the end result was the same; Vanth decided to declare himself Tatooine's first Marshal, and he used the armor to dramatic effect, freeing the town of Mos Pelgo. To the Marshal, Mos Pelgo is "Freetown," a place where no slaves are held. Presumably he gained a reputation among slavers, who objected to their trade being disrupted but found themselves unable to defeat him - and, ultimately, word of the Marshal is passed to Din Djarin.
The Mandalorian season 2 kicks off with a fun episode that takes a lot of twists. At first it appears to be setting up a showdown between Din Djarin and the Marshal, but it soon turns into a team-up, with the two working together to take down a Krayt dragon. The Marshal proves to be a man of his word; once the dragon is dead, he gives his armor to the Mandalorian, accepting he never really had a right to it anyway. No doubt Cobb Vanth's career has just become a lot more hazardous, but he won't particularly mind that. In the Aftermath trilogy he openly admitted he doesn't expect to live a long life, simply because he's made too many enemies. The Marshal is just happy to do some good before he meets his end. Assuming The Mandalorian season 2 returns to Tatooine again, however, it remains possible that Olyphant's Marshal could appear to help out Din.
But The Mandalorian season 2, episode 1 ends with another twist, revealing Boba Fett is still living on Tatooine. As the Mandalorian leaves with the Marshal's armor, a mysterious figure is seen watching him depart, swiftly confirmed to be Boba. It's reasonable to assume Boba managed to drag himself out of the Sarlacc pit, and it's possible he was badly injured by its digestive juices and thus forced to leave his armor behind. In the years since, he appears to have become a hermit, and interestingly he now carries the same weapons as the Tuskens.
No doubt The Mandalorian season 2 will return to Tatooine, and reveal Boba Fett's story. For now, though, it's important to note Boba must have known the Marshal was using his armor, and consciously chose not to try and get it back; that suggests the experience with the Sarlacc may have changed Fett for the better, and he's been living a very different kind of life as a hermit in the Tatooine desert. The Mandalorian season 1 may have already begun to drag him back into galactic affairs, however, given Boba Fett was teased in the Mandalorian's first visit to Tatooine. In season 1, episode 5, the unconscious Fennec Shand was approached by a mysterious figure whose boots made a clinking sound as he walked. Star Wars has traditionally associated those kind of spurs with Boba Fett.