Exactly. There was a lot of “Expanded Universe” stuff about the Fetts, particularly in the 1990s, which postulated various stories about who Boba Fett really was, including that his real name was Jaster Mereel, and that he was not a Mandalorian at all.
However, later continuity about the Fetts (particularly stemming from the Prequel Trilogy and the Clone Wars animated series) changed that, and the Mereel name was instead used for Jango’s mentor. Current canon is that Jango was a foundling who was adopted into the Mandalorians, but it does not look like Boba (Jango’s clone, who was raised by Jango as his son) ever formally joined the Mandalorians.
I just spent some time reading though Boba’s extensive article on Wikipedia (focusing on the “Canon” tab), and unless I missed something, I see no mention that he was ever actually a Mandalorian. He inherited his father’s armor, and later worked with Din Djarin, but no formal mention of him being Mandalorian.
When we first see Boba as a child, he’s living in a fancy apartment on Kamino with his dad. Then Jango dies, and he becomes an orphaned teenager with a revenge complex against Jedi.
OK, when it came up in the TV show, what I picked up was that Boba wasn’t a Mandalorian, so Din initially wanted to take the armor, but that Boba inherited the armor from Jango, and that Jango had received it honorably from a Mandalorian, so Din eventually decided to let him keep it. I missed the part about how Jango received it honorably by virtue of being Mandalorian himself.
Well he is a genetic clone of his dad. I guess technically he would have been “born” in Kamino, where the clones were created, but I don’t see why he wouldn’t count as a Mandalorian. It would be weird not to consider him a Mandalorian unless Jango also wasn’t one.
Yeah, he never really got a chance to become a Mandalorian. I don’t know if Jango ever intended to try to get Boba brought in as one. He’d left that life behind after the Civil War. Boba probably grew up with stories about Mandalorians, so decided to dress himself up as one because he thought it was cool, and it probably helped his reputation for people to think he was one, but it was pretty much stolen valor.
Mandalore is a planet, and there were people (humans) born on that planet called Mandalorians, so it was an ethnicity. But it was also a way of life, and people not born on Mandalore (and in Grogu’s case, someone not even human) can be adopted and raised into that culture and raised as one.
Jango was not one ethnically, and Boba was not raised in a Mandalorian tribe or clan or whatever. So Boba could not legitimately claim it by blood or by being brought up in the culture. It was appropriation. None of the clone troopers (also clones of Jango) were Mandalorian either because of that.
It appears that it’s not entirely clear-cut. Generally, there’s been no real depiction that Boba considers himself to be Mandalorian: he wasn’t raised in the culture (he had no contact with Mandalorians other than his father), and he follows his own code, rather than any version of the Mandalorian Code.
Yeah; it’s like wearing your dad’s military service uniform and going off to join a paramilitary group without ever having served in the real military. (That’s the best analogy I can think of.)
I kind of love that George Lucas made up a word in 1979 or so that never even appeared on screen (the first place I remember seeing what Boba Fett was wearing referred to as Mandalorian Armor was on one of the ESB trading cards) and here we are having discussions about their history and culture.
I would say based on what we’ve seen in the show, there’s no purely hereditary component to being a Mandalorian: Either you’re brought up in the Way, or you’re not (even allowing for the fact that different sects of Mandalorians follow different Ways). Jango might have been brought up in the Way, but he doesn’t seem to have brought up Boba in it for whatever reason (for instance, the Way might require some level of contact with other Mandalorians, which Boba didn’t have), so Boba is not a Mandalorian.
It’s kind of a weak analogy, though, because while armor can be considered a uniform, it’s also, well, armor. If you’re in a violent profession like bounty hunting, there are completely practical reasons to want to wear armor, even aside from any symbolism it might have in belonging to a specific group.
I note that Din’s armor is mostly kept in its natural bare-metal color, with what symbolic decorations it has all being in bare-metal shapes on top of it, while the Fetts’ armor has a distinctive paint job. Was the Fett paint job something shared by the whole group that trained Jango (like the blue worn by Bo Katan’s group), or was it custom work just by Jango? Depending on which way that went, it could be either a deliberate effort to stay in “uniform”, or a deliberate effort to not be in “uniform”.
He also had the Mythosaur logo prominently displayed on it. Even his dad didn’t do that. If Boba was just wearing good armor and wasn’t trying to make people think he was a Mandalorian, he wouldn’t be wearing a symbol that literally declared his identity as one.
If you want a better analogy, it’s like taking your dad’s police body armor, wearing it, choosing to put “POLICE” on the front of it (that your dad didn’t do as an ex-cop), and then running around as a bounty hunter.
Oh, right, I’d forgotten that Din had other armor in the first episode. So it’s canon that Mandalorians also use armors of more mundane metals, when needed, and so Boba’s armor might not have been all beskar.
Apparently, though as noted, this is probably something which has been retconned over time. According to the canon sections of their Wikipedia articles: