The Book of Boba Fett on Disney+ recently aired its fifth episode this past week, thus marking the halfway point of the show.

It honestly goes without saying that this show, and The Mandalorian, have given us the most Boba Fett in any live action media. This may surprise some people as Boba Fett has remained a popular character since his introduction, if somewhat paradoxically, as Fett never did anything worthwhile in the Original Trilogy and mostly coasted on his cool look. Honestly, Jango Fett had more going for him and more opportunities to display why he was someone to be take seriously.

But (there’s always a but here) Star Wars diehards would probably tell you a different story. For you see, in the “now defunct-until-Disney-says-so” Legends continuity, Boba Fett actually did quite a lot of stuff. Now this might not necessarily explain his mainstream popularity, but let’s take a look at some of the things Boba Fett did in Legends.

For starters, it is worth noting that Boba Fett’s first appearance in anything was the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special during an animated sequence. This version of Boba Fett would receive a toy from Kenner (a company making bank at the time on that Star Wars license) that featured a launching rocket and was a hot item.

As such, when Boba Fett made his appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, he was already a subject of hype amongst the young fans, despite not doing much beyond being a glorified delivery boy to Jabba with the carbonite frozen Han Solo.

Fett would of course get more screen time in Return of the Jedi, put is also little more than a bit part, and is unceremoniously “killed” when he falls into the sarlacc pit.

However, as the fans grew up and became creators for officially licensed canon for the series, they brought Boba Fett back. And Fett would continue to be a big part of the expanded universe with every writer being unable to resist the urge to include the notorious bounty hunter.

So in short, Boba Fett became popular because he looked cool, a cool name, and Vader seemed to think he was alright…and that was about it. But that was probably the appeal. Mystery is a rather alluring thing. Not knowing anything about Boba Fett in a way made him more of this mythic character that you could project whatever your imagination wanted onto him. He was like a science fiction version of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. Where did he come from? What does he look like? Does he like blue milk? There were a lot of questions about this guy.

In a lot of way, that might be the secret behind a lot of the original Star Wars trilogy’s popularity. There was so much about the universe contained in just three films, and yet so many threads up in the air for generations to fill in through fan fiction, role-play games, and playing with their action figures.

In fact, Boba Fett was the inspiration behind the entire look and lore of the Mandalorians in the Star Wars canon. The Mandalorians possess some of the deepest and most intricate history in universe, behind only the Jedi and Sith.

I mentioned about how The Mandalorian was really the first case of Fett doing anything substantive in live action, and they’ve taken a bit of an interesting approach with Fett moving away from the bounty hunter business and into something else more resembling a crime lord (no spoilers of course for The Book of Boba Fett by the way).

I’ll have a full review of the series once it wraps up, but in the meantime, I’m invested in what the showrunners are trying to do with Boba Fett. This is a character that captivated fans of theses movies, without even doing much to warrant it. It will be interesting to see how this series wraps and what part the de-mystifying of Boba Fett to a wider audience does for the casual viewer of the series.

No matter how it ends, I’m certain Boba Fett will remain a popular fixture of the franchise with at least a couple hundred toys, props and other merchandise every year. But this time, maybe there will be something more to this mysterious rogue besides a cool helmet.

And it is a cool helmet.