Star Wars Holiday Special: Boba Fett’s animated debut hitting Disney+

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Most believe that Boba Fett made his debut in The Empire Strikes Back, but in fact, the infamous bounty hunter actually made his first appearance in the Star Wars Holiday Special, a bizarre made-for-TV movie that came out a little over a year after the release of the first film. The special involved much of the original cast, including Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher, helping Chewbacca get back to his home planet in order to celebrate Life Day. There were also song and dance segments, comedy skits, and an animated cartoon called The Story of the Faithful Wookie which introduced Boba Fett.

Although the entire Star Wars Holiday Special has never officially been made available, The Story of the Faithful Wookie is slated to be released on Disney+ next month, so if you've never seen it, this will be your chance. This won't be the only piece of Star Wars content that will join the streaming service in April, as Genndy Tartakovsky's Star Wars: Clone Wars – Volume I & II, both seasons of Star Wars: Ewoks, as well as the live-action Ewok TV movies, Caravan of Courage and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, will debut as well.

Getting back to The Story of the Faithful Wookie, the short was produced by Nelvana Ltd. and animated by John Celestri. While speaking with StarWars.com, Celestri said that they didn't have a whole lot to work with, but George Lucas had specifically requested that they design the show in the style of French artist Jean Moebius Giraud. "So for Boba Fett specifically, we had Moebius’s designs along with a black-and-white home movie of the prototype Boba Fett armor to work from, and that was it!" said Celestri. "We began with Moebius’s color approach, with lighter pastels. So for Boba, blue was the base color. Costumes have to read against the background. Boba was mostly set against the darker range of the spectrum. That means the character needs to be lighter. And the whole reason behind this was that at the time many families still had black-and-white televisions! We had to make sure that it read on the screen. The biggest TV screen in 1978 was 22 inches, diagonally."