Darth Vader commands one of the most powerful military forces in the galaxy.
Yet when the Millennium Falcon keeps escaping him, even the Dark Lord of the Sith decides it is time to hire professionals.
Star Wars has released a new official clip from The Empire Strikes Back revisiting one of the most iconic introductions in the franchise: Vader assembling six of the galaxy’s most dangerous bounty hunters aboard the Executor and giving them a simple assignment.
Find the Millennium Falcon.
The scene takes place after the Battle of Hoth, with Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and C-3PO attempting to stay ahead of the Imperial fleet.
The Empire has enormous resources.
Star Destroyers.
TIE fighters.
Probe droids.
Thousands of personnel.
And somehow Han Solo is still making them look increasingly incompetent.
So Vader changes strategy.
Standing on the bridge of his Super Star Destroyer, he brings together a group of mercenaries who operate very differently from Imperial officers.
Boba Fett.
Bossk.
Dengar.
IG-88.
4-LOM.
Zuckuss.
Six bounty hunters.
Six very different methods.
And presumably one extremely large reward.
The scene lasts only a short time, yet its impact on Star Wars history has been enormous.
Several of these characters originally had almost no dialogue and only seconds of screen time.
Nevertheless, their striking designs inspired decades of stories across animation, novels, comics, games and television.
None benefited more than Boba Fett.
Wearing battered Mandalorian armour and standing almost motionless among the other hunters, Fett immediately feels different.
Vader even singles him out.
“No disintegrations.”
It is one of the most famous lines in The Empire Strikes Back despite consisting of only two words directed specifically at Boba.
And the implication is magnificent.
Darth Vader apparently knows Boba Fett well enough to feel that this instruction needs to be stated explicitly.
Whatever Fett has done on previous jobs, his reputation clearly precedes him.
Boba’s response is equally economical.
“As you wish.”
No argument.
No explanation.
Just business.
The moment helped establish a character who would eventually become one of Star Wars’ most recognisable antiheroes despite having relatively little screen time in the original trilogy.
Boba Fett had already developed a reputation as one of the galaxy’s deadliest bounty hunters by the time Vader recruited him.
He was the son and genetic clone of Jango Fett, the bounty hunter whose DNA had been used to create the Republic’s clone army.
After Jango’s death, Boba grew up inside the criminal underworld and eventually built a career of his own.
The other hunters standing beside him are hardly amateurs.
Bossk is a towering Trandoshan whose natural hunting instincts made him one of the galaxy’s most feared trackers.
His history with Boba stretches back years, including jobs during the Clone Wars.
Unlike some bounty hunters motivated by revenge or ideology, Bossk generally keeps his priorities refreshingly uncomplicated.
He wants to get paid.
Vader’s assignment therefore puts two hunters with considerable history directly into competition.
Dengar brings another very different style.
Where Boba Fett is controlled and calculated, Dengar has a reputation for relying on heavy firepower and brute force.
His battered armour and bandaged appearance make him look as though he has already survived several jobs that should probably have killed him.
Then there is IG-88.
A towering assassin droid.
No emotions.
No biological vulnerabilities.
No employer permanently controlling his programming.
Just a heavily armed mechanical bounty hunter choosing its own targets.
In a galaxy where memories of battle droids and the Clone Wars are still relatively recent, something like IG-88 has an immediately disturbing presence.
4-LOM represents another form of droid independence.
Originally built as a protocol droid, programming errors eventually allowed 4-LOM to break away from its intended function and reinvent itself as a bounty hunter.
Instead of translating conversations, it hunts fugitives.
Possibly not the career path its manufacturer intended.
Zuckuss completes the group.
A Gand bounty hunter wearing the distinctive breathing equipment required by his species, Zuckuss also answers Vader’s call and stands among the mercenaries competing to locate the Falcon.
Together, the six characters create one of the strangest lineups ever assembled inside an Imperial vessel.
Even the Imperial officers clearly do not enjoy having them aboard.
Admiral Piett looks towards the group with barely disguised disgust while Vader treats their presence as completely practical.
He does not care whether his officers like bounty hunters.
He cares whether they can accomplish what the Imperial fleet has failed to do.
And one of them can.
After Han Solo executes one of his cleverest escapes, the Millennium Falcon disappears from Imperial sensors.
Han has hidden the ship directly against the hull of a Star Destroyer.
When the Imperial vessel prepares to jump to hyperspace, it releases its garbage.
Han plans to detach at exactly the same moment and drift away with the debris before heading towards Cloud City.
It is a brilliant trick.
It fools the Empire.
It does not fool Boba Fett.
Fett anticipates what Han might do and hides his own ship among the discarded waste.
When the Millennium Falcon leaves, Boba follows.
From that moment, Han’s fate is effectively sealed.
Fett tracks the Falcon to Bespin and reports the destination to Vader.
By the time Han, Leia and Chewbacca arrive at Cloud City believing they have found sanctuary with Lando Calrissian, Darth Vader is already waiting.
That chain of events leads directly to several of The Empire Strikes Back’s most famous moments.
Han being tortured.
The carbon-freezing chamber.
Boba Fett preparing to deliver Solo to Jabba the Hutt.
Luke abandoning his Jedi training to rescue his friends.
And ultimately Luke’s devastating confrontation with Vader.
All of it begins because the Empire could not catch Han Solo.
So Vader hired bounty hunters.
The newly released clip also demonstrates how effectively The Empire Strikes Back builds its world without stopping to explain everything.
The movie never pauses to introduce each hunter.
Nobody gives the audience their biographies.
There is no scene explaining Bossk’s species, IG-88’s programming or Boba Fett’s childhood.
They simply exist.
The audience sees six dangerous-looking individuals standing on an Imperial warship and immediately understands enough.
These are people Darth Vader contacts when ordinary military resources are not producing results.
That mystery helped make the characters irresistible.
Fans wanted to know who they were.
What they had done before this meeting.
How Vader knew them.
And why Boba Fett, specifically, needed to be warned against disintegrating people.
Later Star Wars stories would spend decades filling in those blanks.
Bossk and Boba appeared during The Clone Wars.
Dengar received a much larger history.
Boba Fett eventually survived the Sarlacc and became the centre of The Book of Boba Fett.
But in 1980, audiences received almost none of that information.
They received silhouettes.
Weapons.
Strange armour.
And one memorable warning.
More than four decades later, the scene still works.
Darth Vader needs Han Solo found.
The Imperial Navy has failed.
So he looks across the bridge at six bounty hunters and effectively opens the competition.
Only one of them needs to succeed.
Boba Fett does.
And the galaxy is never quite the same afterwards.
Watch Darth Vader hire the bounty hunters in the official The Empire Strikes Back clip below.
