Thundercat's Cameo in The Book of Boba Fett has Exciting Implications

Thundercat’s appearance as the underground surgeon who repaired Fennec Shand seemed like a one-off cameo giving the show’s leading demographics something fun to fill their eyes with stars. That is, until he showed up again for the series’ after-credits scene.

Thundercat is a musician known for his geek chic and the fast-rising popularity of his funky tunes. Dragonball Durag is really quite the stunner. And he’s opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their 2022 world tour. But he made his acting debut recently in Chapter 4 of The Book of Boba Fett as some kind of cyberpunk mob doctor who apparently modifies injured (or perhaps uninjured) organic life-forms with weaponized prosthetics akin to something straight out of Ghost in the Shell.

When the Mods were introduced in Boba Fett, I was excited to be introduced to the complex moral dilemmas they would bring to series. Hopefully starting with the classist introduction that they had: “what should a necessary resource cost for those that don’t control the means of production?” And hopefully growing into: “What does it mean to be human when you can replace your organic parts with machine ones?” I was so excited to see the argument pop off between them and the moisture farmer that hired Boba. But was sadly disappointed when Fett made his ethical decision as if his mind was already made up by the writers. Which, who can blame them, this was a good pretense to use in order to deus ex machina the crew into the series. And like a lot of us, we hoped that they would have a large role in the series from there.

We saw the Mods run a train on the escaping mayor’s aide with wrist-implanted acetylene torches and customized eyeballs. On their mopeds? Those are cool rides. There’s a large space for them to fill in the next season. I think their rather small narrative contribution to the story so far creates a wide opening for character development. Although at the moment their primary role in the series might have been just to introduce the concept of body modification and provide a little fashion sense to Boba Fett’s grimy, more mature crew. Still, the question remains, where could they have gotten upgrades like that if not from the Funky Doctor Thundercat?

At first glance it seems like a cheeky little cameo for a cool nerd music star; like putting Tom Waits in a Paul Thomas Anderson film. I thought his role was to repair Fennec Shand and have cool hair. And if it’s true that the Mods had such a tiny role and nothing else, then maybe that could be true. But Thundercat also makes an appearance in the after-credits scene at the end of the series. He’s about to start work on the occupant of the bacta tank who appears to be Cobb Vanth, although it’s hard to tell for certain if that’s him. Regardless of who is sleeping in the goo, this short scene seems to imply that Thundercat is now a full member of the team. And will continue to be their medic in the future.

Although I doubt an artist like Thundercat would be a featured actor in a big Disney series, his music does betray a passion for the Star Wars universe and places beyond. And if John Favreau has plans to add these types of Neuromancer style prosthetics into his story, then the story is going to need a medical practitioner with questionable morals to make that possible. If there’s one conclusion I can draw from these little points along the line, it’s that we can all look forward to a lot more humans with robotic upgrades in the next season.