Star Wars has always been a hotbed for theories, and even when one of the films explicitly says something isn't true, that doesn’t stop some fans from theorizing. One instance of this comes from A New Hope when Luke finds Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen dead at their homestead on Tatooine. While Obi-Wan Kenobi specifically says that Imperial Stormtroopers killed them, some fans believe it was Boba Fett who burned them.
While it seems odd to question Obi-Wan’s definitive conclusion, there is actually a lot of evidence that points to the contrary. For starters, although Obi-Wan saw the dead Jawas, he never visited the Lars homestead. For all he knew, the Lars were simply shot and left there. And with that sort of ambiguity, the door is always open for a good old-fashioned Star Wars retcon, and Disney+ has the perfect place for it to happen in the form of The Book of Boba Fett.
To kick this theory off, the way that Owen and Beru and their property were burned seems slightly out of character for Stormtroopers. At no other point in the original trilogy do they kill their targets, burn them and go scorched earth just for the sake of doing it. It’s overkill to a magnitude that seems beyond Stormtroopers that would have had no personal connection to prompt such brutality. For that matter, good stormtroopers follow orders, and even Vader didn’t really rampage and kill for its own sake. He routinely asked for prisoners to be taken alive for whatever they might know. Besides, he wouldn’t have known the Lars' identities beforehand, so anyone harboring the droids could have been a Rebel sympathizer and could have had valuable intel. And with that being the case, he likely would've given his Stormtroopers explicit orders about taking any prisoners alive.
The first piece of evidence that Boba was involved is that he was in the right place at the right time. The 1997 special edition of A New Hope added a scene into the early events of the film where Jabba the Hutt and his cronies confront Han Solo in Moss Eisley. Among Jabba’s henchmen was none other than Boba Fett, meaning, since he was on Tatooine at the time of the Lars’ murder, there's no way to prove he wasn't working overtime with the Empire.
Even though Vader probably wouldn’t have ordered the slaughter of Owen and Beru, he was intent on recovering the droids that escaped from the Tantive IV. The Empire Strikes Back proves that Vader was not above hiring bounty hunters, and retrieving valuable assets would be a perfect opportunity. Since Boba was already on Tatooine, he certainly would've jumped at the chance to make a few credits while getting on Vader’s good side.
On top of that opportunity, overkill is also Boba’s style. When Vader was briefing all of the bounty hunters in The Empire Strikes Back, he made a point of stopping to tell Boba, “No disintegrations.” While this may have originally been an instance of indirect characterization, it could fit perfectly into canon. If Boba had gone too far with the Lars', Vader would remember it, and that could be why the Sith Lord was explicit with his instructions.
While it’s still kind of a long shot, there's no evidence to say the theory is false, other than Obi-Wan claiming it is. And with The Book of Boba Fett finally giving the bounty hunter his own solo outing and taking place on Tatooine, the mystery of Boba's role in A New Hope could finally be solved after all these years.
The Book of Boba Fett stars Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen. The series premieres in December on Disney+.