Ruthless, blaster-slinging, and full of grit, bounty hunters in the Star Wars galaxy have always been some of the most intriguing side characters, backgrounds, and recently, main characters in the franchise. From the dented and scuffed helmet of Boba Fett staring up at Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, to the sharp-toothed grimace from beneath Cad Bane's brimmed hat in The Book of Boba Fett, these characters ooze intensity and hint at a world much darker beneath the genre-balanced adventures of the Skywalker Saga.

For many years, Star Wars fans have read expanded universe books and comics that have delved into the darker lives and adventures of the infamous bounty hunters. Shows like The Clone Wars went further by adding fascinating newer additions to the galaxy's gunslingers. Until Rogue One, Solo, and Andor, the franchise had always teased the live-action potential of darker and more adult stories in the universe, but always opted to continue the connective tissue with the Jedi and Skywalkers. The revival of the videogame Star Wars: Bounty Hunter was a great example of a deep dive into the underworld preceding the world of the prequel trilogy. Canceled projects like Star Wars: 1313 were mourned by fans excited by the potential of venturing into Coruscant's lower levels as a smuggler or bounty hunter. With hours of television, movies, and games already made for the Skywalkers, two major warring factions, and Jedi, it's about time Star Wars built a noir-themed anthology, with bounty hunters.

Bounty Hunters Are On The Pulse of Star Wars' Underground

• Jango and Boba Fett are the most recognizable bounty hunters in the Star Wars universe.
• There are easily over 40 bounty hunters featured in the current Star Wars Canon.
• Jim Cummings, the voice of Hondo Ohnaka, won a daytime Emmy in 2013 for his performance of Hondo Ohnaka in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Aside from scoundrel smugglers like Han Solo and clever pirates like Hondo Ohnaka, the bounty hunters of the Star Wars galaxy have a constant finger on the pulse of the criminal underground that spreads throughout the galaxy. Their livelihood relied on knowing who the galaxy's most wanted were, and when money was a little tighter, they'd settle for a bounty on a petty thief or death stick dealer who messed with the wrong noble or senator. Ripe with moral ambiguity and shifting alliances wherever the next stack of credits is sourced, they are the most dynamic class of people among Star Wars' "scum and villainy".

Although movies and shows like Solo and The Book of Boba Fett took audiences to some familiar, fabled, and exotically new locales within the criminal underground, their stories were eventually re-routed to the main continuity of the leading plots of The Mandalorian or the formation of the Rebel Alliance. With shows like Star Wars: Visions delving into the openness of creative license in animation styles and playfulness within the storytelling, an anthology about bounty hunters is a natural choice for making a live-action worldbuilding piece adjacent but not connected to any of the current stories.

Following the Underworld Can Lead to a Neo Noir Star Wars

• Neo-noir is the revival of the film noir genre, a type of film that thrived roughly from 1940-1960.
• Films like Blade Runner applied the genre to futuristic settings to tell darker, morally ambiguous stories with anti-heroes.

Audiences of fantasy and science fiction are already programmed from decades of films with aesthetics like Blade Runner to videogames like Cyberpunk 2077 to lean into and enjoy the darkness of the film noir genre when thrust into a space setting. With Star Wars being so fast and loose with its tech and logic, writers could easily build intense stories with singular episodes following a single mission of a single (or pairing) of bounty hunters. The beauty of the current Star Wars canon is that there is a huge variety of bounty hunters to choose from. From the samurai-inspired Embo, and the entangling Latts Razzi, to the odd-couple duo of Zuckuss and 4-LOM, the creativity and dynamic range of stories that could be told about their smaller missions and personal characters is endless and would take the audience to near corners of the galaxy.

Anthologies allow a broader range of fan discussion about a show, their favorite featured bounty hunters, interesting corners of familiar or new planets never seen before, or the nature of the bounties they pursue. Some stories can be more personal, whereas others can take the complete perspective of the targeted individual. Other episodes could easily follow a hunter getting into unsolicited mischief while they spend their credits on downtime, or are ripped off by an engineer commissioned to upgrade their ship or weapons. Bounty hunters are a force of nature in the outskirts and dense metropolis of Star Wars and can give us characters we love to hate.

Bounty Hunters Have Different Codes and Limits

• Bounty Hunter Asajj Ventress turned on Boba Fett during The Clone Wars series when she discovered their bounty involved trafficking a young noble forced to marry against her will. She freed the young bride and locked Boba in the chest instead.
• In The Mandalorian, Din Djarin went against the entire Bounty Hunting Guild after he re-captured baby Grogu from his employer, an Imperial loyalist working for Moff Gideon.

The vast variety of bounty hunters already known in the Star Wars galaxy has shown how fickle or how stubborn their creeds or "ethics" are. Some bounty hunters draw the line at particular bounties, like hunting for children or stealing from specific cartels to keep their profile low, but others are only limited by the confidence in their abilities or the number of credits they'll rake in. Seeing these swings in their ethics and personal codes as circumstances around them shift creates unexpected and interesting arcs in stories that would otherwise run a more conventional hero's journey route. An anthology of bounty hunter stories would show some of these villainous or surprisingly virtuous qualities throughout the show, maybe with episodes that are a major turning point or the reason they now have a limit.

It's become clear that darker shows such as Andor have been received incredibly well and the potential of future stories like this has excited the fandom in a huge way for future projects that grow with their older audiences. The beauty of this range also allows the show to not be subscribed to a certain period. Stories can jump between any period already featured in Star Wars live-action or animation and could display particular limits certain bounty hunters had when taking jobs from the likes of the CIS, Republic, Empire, Rebels, First Order, and Resistance, not to mention all the other criminal cartels and syndicates along the way. With so much worldbuilding on bounty hunters already structured and ready to be used for this series, it's surprising that a series isn't already in development.