Star Wars: Marvel Reveals a Forgotten Battle Between Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett

As far as the Star Wars movies would have you believe, Return of the Jedi is the first time Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett faced off in battle. And that obviously didn’t go so well for Boba. But as Marvel expands on the mythology behind Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park, they’re revealing an earlier encounter between the two characters set before the events of Return of the Jedi.

We get a taste of that encounter in a new preview of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge – Echoes of the Empire #1 courtesy of CBR. This series aims to bring Original Trilogy icons to the world of Batuu, justifying Disney’s decision to introduce those characters at the park alongside the Sequel Trilogy crew. This issue is set in between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, a time when Luke is facing a massive Imperial bounty on his head. Boba Fett is only too happy to collect that bounty:

How this Wild West-style standoff plays out, we’ll just have to wait and see when the issue hits stores on April 22. But it does raise the question of whether Marvel is breaking its own Star Wars canon by depicting this as the first encounter between Luke and Boba. According to the 2015 Star Wars series from writer Jason Aaron and artist John Cassaday, the two characters first battled even earlier in the franchise timeline, just after the events of A New Hope.

In that story, Boba is pursuing the mysterious Rebel pilot who blew up the Death Star. He tracks down Luke on Tatooine, as the latter returns to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s remote hut. Boba blinds Luke with a flash grenade, and the two briefly battle it out before Boba walks away with an all-important name – Skywalker.

Is Marvel violating its own continuity here, or could it be argued that Luke was blind and never knew exactly whom he was fighting? Either way, we can safely say that Marvel isn’t bothering to acknowledge the original Luke Skywalker/Boba Fett crossover from the Star Wars Holiday Special. That’s probably for the best.

For more on Galaxy’s Edge, check out IGN’s review of Star Wars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge Enhanced Edition.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.