As Star Wars continues to expound upon every unexplored corner of its endless galaxy, characters, settings and entire species take on new dimensions. This has good outcomes and bad ones, but one beneficiary of the expansion and refinement are the nomadic species known as the Tusken Raiders.
The Book of Boba Fett is all about dramatizing great parts of the timeline that the fans have yet to see in detail. Delving into the eponymous former bounty hunter's later life allowed the series to follow in the path of The Mandalorian and give this unfairly demonized species new layers of depth.
Tusken Raiders were introduced in 1977, designed by Ralph McQuarrie like a huge percentage of the original trilogy. The Tuskens were originally conceived as a group of red-eyed spies, deployed by the Empire to find something on Tatooine. By the third draft of the script, Tusken Raiders found their proper location in the plot, making them a fixture from the franchise's earliest moments. The Tusken Raiders are the native people of the deserts of Tatooine. Their extremely harsh homeworld was later colonized by other species, who needed to build infrastructure to survive the climate.
The Tuskens are often hostile to those settlements, fighting to keep control of the vanishingly limited supply of water on the planet. Their unique appearances are caused by the intricate gear they must wear to survive the desert. Any depictions of their unmasked face, at least to date, has been declared non-canon, so their real appearance is unknown. The Tusken Raiders continued to appear throughout the series, though only in one major context until recently.
Before The Mandalorian the only canonical thing fans saw Tusken Raiders do is hurt people. In the original trilogy, they harass Luke and seem to threaten his life. Obi-Wan Kenobi is able to scare them off by making a loud noise, painting them as fairly primitive and easily deceived. The prequels went on to offer a weird justification for their actions, an apparent genetic hatred of the young Skywalker. The Tusken Raiders kidnapped and tortured Anakin's mother Shmi after assaulting their family's moisture farm. Anakin responded by slaughtering every Tusken he could find, regardless of age or gender, a major step in his turn towards the dark side. Violence and primal savagery were all the species were known for. They served as villains in several video games and almost never did anything on-screen but kill or be killed. So when The Mandalorian portrayed them in a much kinder light, it was a big change.
In Chapter 5 of The Mandalorian, entitled The Gunslinger, is the first appearance of the Tusken's after the fall of the Empire. The eponymous Mandalorian explains their claim to the land to an unwanted hanger-on. When Din Djarin meets with the iconic sand people, it's tense. It feels for a moment like blasters will be drawn, like every other encounter with the Tuskens. Instead, Djarin communicates with the party of Tusken Raiders and manages to negotiate safe passage with trade. This is a radical change in portrayal, acknowledging the Tuskens' perspective as valid while also engaging in reasonable dialogue with the group would have been unthinkable in earlier films. The group is portrayed more like people here, a luxury that had never been afforded to the natives of Star Wars' most consistently recurring planet. The Mandalorian took this concept much farther in its second season.
Chapter 9, entitled The Marshal, focuses heavily on the interplay between the people of Mos Pelgo and Tatooine's native population of Tuskens. The story centers around Djarin joining a local lawman in defeating a giant monster who lives just outside of Mos Pelgo. The Marshall, Cobb Vanth, explains that he is charged with defending his charges from the natives, but is blown away when Djarin manages to communicate again.
Djarin learns that the Tusken Raiders also want to destroy the monster, leaving Vanth to overcome his hatred of the sand people and convince his people to do the same. It's difficult, but through a stirring speech, Vanth talks the townsfolk into fighting alongside the Tusken Raiders and the two groups defeat the monster together. This experience brokers peace between the people of Mos Pelgo and the Tuskens in a dramatic and moving show of how far the franchise has come with this species.
The Book of Boba Fett has run with this storytelling choice in a big way. When Fett re-emerged in The Mandalorian, he does so armed with their weaponry and clearly forever tied to their culture. The first episodes of the new series revealed that it was they who rescued Fett from his apparent death and have gone on to explore his relationship with the tribe. Fett's flashback sequences are the most extensive view into the Tusken culture that the franchise has provided yet. As Book of Boba Fett continues to divide its time between past and present, fans will get to learn more about the Tusken Raiders. Answering every question in the Star Wars galaxy might be a fool's errand, but adding depth where there once were only tropes is always a positive development.