When The Book of Boba Fett showed Boba’s escape from the Sarlacc, one detail stuck with me—there was already a stormtrooper inside. And it wasn’t just a random corpse. That trooper’s oxygen supply gave Boba the extra time he needed to survive and claw his way out.
Every time I rewatch that scene, my curiosity kicks in. Who was this unlucky stormtrooper? How did he end up in the Sarlacc before Boba? Now, I need to find out.
Without further ado…
Who Is This Stormtrooper?
So far, Star Wars lore hasn’t given us any official confirmation about the identity of the stormtrooper inside the Sarlacc. But with a bit of logical deduction and some clues from the films, we can make an educated guess.
We know Boba Fett fell into the Sarlacc during Return of the Jedi, but if we look back at those scenes, there’s something interesting—we don’t see a single stormtrooper anywhere on Tatooine. When Luke enters Jabba’s palace and even during the battle at the Sarlacc pit, stormtroopers are completely absent.
The last time we actually saw stormtroopers on Tatooine was in A New Hope, when the Empire sent a squad to locate two missing droids carrying the Death Star plans. But that raises another question—if the Death Star plans were so important, why didn’t the Empire send more troops to recover them faster?
As it turns out, the mission to retrieve the Death Star plans was classified. Only a limited number of stormtroopers were deployed, and even they had no idea what the mission was truly about. Their only orders were to find the droids. This detail is confirmed in the short story Born in the Storm from From a Certain Point of View. According to Star Wars fandom:
“The sandtroopers themselves were not told much about the mission, only knowing that the droids they needed to recover apparently had some kind of secret plans.”
With what we know about the secret mission to Tatooine, it’s not impossible to assume that while the sandtroopers were out searching for the two droids, some of them may have wandered too close to the Sarlacc Pit and fallen in. If that’s the case, then the unlucky stormtrooper inside the Sarlacc may have been there long before Boba Fett—just another forgotten casualty of the Empire’s secrecy.
If we look at the group of sandtroopers assigned to this mission, it was Foot Patrol 7. Members of this unit included Sergeant TD-787, TD-7556, Crag, and Tintop. While we don’t have confirmation, it’s entirely possible that one of them was the unlucky trooper we saw inside the Sarlacc.
It Could Be Just a Normal Stormtrooper
The comic Star Wars: Obi-Wan gives us another clue that supports this theory.
In issue #5, we learn that the Empire already had a base on Tatooine, but their supplies were frequently stolen by Tusken Raiders. This detail gives us a clearer picture of what Imperial stormtroopers were doing on the planet.
The comic also shows that the number of stormtroopers stationed on Tatooine wasn’t small, meaning Imperial patrols were a common sight. Given this, it’s entirely possible that during one of these missions, a trooper got too close to the Sarlacc Pit and fell in—making him yet another unlucky victim lost in the sands of Tatooine.
One detail I really want to point out is this: if you look at a map of Tatooine, the territory of the Tusken Raiders is actually quite close to the Sarlacc Pit.
That gives us a fun connection—maybe one of the troopers we saw in the Sarlacc’s stomach during The Book of Boba Fett was actually one of the Imperials from the Ben Kenobi comic. It would make sense, too, since after Boba Fett escaped the pit, the Tusken Raiders captured him at the very beginning of the series. So yeah, there’s a good chance a stormtrooper on patrol just got a little too unlucky in the wrong part of the desert.