Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, and Third Sister play mind games
Some enjoyable cat-and-mouse maneuvers set the stage for next week's season-finale showdown
TV Reviews Vader
There is a neatness to “Part V” of Obi-Wan Kenobi that eventually won me over. There has been—rightfully, I’d suggest—reason to complain that the show has mostly served as a way to rehash old Star Wars tropes and storylines and characters in the service of keeping this ever-growing galaxy far, far away afloat, all while keeping it (ironically!) needlessly small. Why, after all, if you have such a vast universe do we constantly just keep following the same old characters (and planets) over and over again? (Don’t answer that; we all know that’s a rhetorical question). This means that the moments you’re blown away by rarely come from novelty but from an ingenious way of being forced to look at the old stuff anew.
Take, for instance, a practice fight between a still hopeful Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his brooding-if-still young Padawan, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). The scene, which yanks us back to the prequels, is a simple one. It illustrates the two men’s contrasting if not complimentary ways of fighting: Obi-Wan, bleeding heart Jedi that he is, puts defense at the center of his skillset. Meanwhile, Anakin’s fiery personality leads him toward aggression as his main and perhaps only mode of approaching a conflict. “Your need for victory; it blinds you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan warns the young Jedi-in-training. His relentlessness is not, in fact, an asset. It opens him up, instead, to being defeated—or, at the very least, to costing him the sweet victory he so craves. Using this moment between the two as a way to structure our penultimate episode is a particularly simple gamble: Not only does it spell and flesh out the conflict that’s been at the root of why Obi-Wan and Anakin could never reconcile their conflicting sensibilities, but it helps us anticipate just how their current confrontation will pan out now that they have both become hollowed out versions of who they once were.
Every time we flashed back to that brightly-lit (how novel!) scene between the two, I snapped to attention. Every line felt weighted with the full force of what we’re supposed to be taking away from their respective character arcs: “Mercy doesn’t defeat the enemy, Master,” Anakin tells Obi-Wan, and you could very well stitch that unto Vader’s outfit as his own personal motto. Indeed, images of him later all but destroying a transporter with his bare hands (aka the Force) not to mention the flashes of memories we get of the night Order 66 went into effect, show us a man who has no use for mercy.
If the episode is structured as a fight between Obi-Wan’s careful defense and Vader/Anakin’s careless aggression, what ends up tilting if not outright spoiling that neat dichotomy is the third element in the present tense of our story. Back then it was just two men. Here, we have Third Sister (Moses Ingram), newly appointed Grand Inquisitor, a wild card that throws the balance between the Jedi and the Sith.
Over the past four episodes, we’ve gotten hints as to who Third Sister may be and we finally get the chance to have her backstory revealed to us, albeit in a choppy and rather implausible moment of intimacy between her and Obi-Wan as they chat across from one another in the middle of a door that’s about to give out. Obi-Wan helpfully spells it out for all of us: “You are not serving him. You are hunting him!” As exposition goes, it’s as clunky as you can get. But it helps reframe how we’ve been thinking about Third Sister and sets up a thrilling triangular conflict where each of the corners is playing the two other to get what they want.
Given that we know which two survive long enough to be heavily featured in an Oscar-winning 1977 film, it’s perhaps not a spoiler to say who ends up on the losing end of this particular cat-and-mouse game. Nevertheless, the mind games that Obi-Wan, Vader and Third Sister play with one another was enjoyable to watch unfold, especially as her own brand of vengeful wrath felt like an echo of Vader’s own. Except, as she’s reminded at the end of her fight with Vader (who fought using nothing but the Force and, eventually, both of her sabers!), her rage has stopped being useful; it is now only tiresome. Then again, she’s proof that revenge does help you cling to dear life. She may have been impaled by her own saber but, true to form, she’s still well enough to find the message from Leia’s father Obi-Wan had been fretting over earlier in the episode. This sets us up for a final climax that’ll take us to where it all began: Tatooine, of course. The place where a young Luke is sleeping peacefully, all too unaware that a season finale showdown is coming his way.
Stray observations
- Just as last week I wrote about how there was something quite thrilling about seeing Ewan’s face lit up by the blue-hued light of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber, I was reminded yet again that there are few images as striking in the Star Wars universe than that of a row of Stormtroopers lined up ready for attack. Their design remains sleek and imposing all these decades later and sometimes that’s all you need to remind us of the sheer manpower (well, clone power) of the Empire.
- I had been waiting for the scene where we’d finally see Hayden Christensen as Anakin. After all, the powers that be couldn’t possibly have cast him if he was to spend the entire time buried under Vader’s costume, right? And the flashback here didn’t disappoint, even if it did remind me of Anakin’s horrid hairstyles.
- Let us mourn Tala (Indira Varma) now, who got to live out her martyr moment shortly after (how convenient!) she explained to Obi-Wan how conflicted she’d become about what the Empire and the Grand Inquisitor had kept requiring of her as an instrument of that most fascist of galaxy governments: “Some things you can’t forget. But you can fight to make them better.” She and Third Sister made for helpful narrative foils, the two trying to find ways of making up for what remains a traumatic approach to hunting and killing Jedi—though obviously following very different paths.
- Okay, small quibble (the kind I try not to get too bogged down on when dealing with Star Wars stuff): If everyone in this makeshift hanger were truly just waiting for the hatch doors to open so they could escape right away…why weren’t they already in the ship ready for takeoff rather than scattered around like sitting ducks?
259 Comments
What the hell was that ending? “Revenge does wonders for the will to live” “we’re going to leave you in the gutter” but no we’ll… leave you here alive so your desire for revenge can give you the will to live?
And how is it that a lightsabre through the chest is, to quote the immortal Monty Python, “only a flesh wound?”
I am not prepared to pursue that line of inquiry at the moment as I think it is getting too silly!
I mean, Maul was chopped in half and thrown down a chute. He got better.
It was through the gut. I’ve heard it said that Pau’ans have two stomachs. Or maybe it’s like Tom Waits in Buster Scruggs: “didn’t hit nothin’ important!”
How careless of the seemingly otherwise fairly effective killing machine, Darth Vader then. Oh well. Maybe he’ll kill her next week.
Well it’s obvious: He stabbed her on the left side. You can get stabbed through the left side any number of times without dying.
All these years I’ve been getting stabbed on the right side.Learn something new every day.
And how is it that a lightsabre through the chest is, to quote the immortal Monty Python, “only a flesh wound?”Dark Side of the Force. It explained Maul’s survival, after all.
And technically, a lightsaber cauterizes the wound, so you’re not going to bleed out. If it misses everything vital and you don’t get an infection, a lightsaber to the torso does seem potentially survive-able. As for getting chopped in half, yeah, I got nothing. Something something speed-force (oops wrong universe).
Qui Gon Jinn is, to date, the only person who actually died from a lightsaber wound. (Old Obi Wan throwing the game on purpose doesn’t count.)
Apparently, Qui Gon is a huge friggin’ lightweight.
Maul v obi wan in Rebels is second.
Yeah, but Maul already survived what clearly should have been a lethal blow once before. You only get one!
Pretty sure Jango Fett went down to a lightsaber wound…
Mace cut off Jango’s head. I don’t think anybody is coming back from that.
True, but it was still technically a lightsaber wound
Maul
Dooku
Jango Fett
Kit Fisto (and the other Jedi whose names I can’t remember that Palpatine killed prior to his duel with Mace Windu)
Hundreds of stormtroopers and rebels
Han Solo?
Exception that proves the rule!
Well, there was Dooku in addition to Jango Fett. Seems beheading is the only final-final death. Hell, there’s probably hope for Han after all.
I was reminded of Mr. Burns teleporting down a flight of stairs to get to the greyhounds first, and when asked how he got there, he says “Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for explanations later.”The Grand Inquisitor didn’t die twice after all. He just reappeared after being impaled by a lightsaber, with no explanation.
At least it cauterises the wound?
Because if it didn’t hit any serious organs or blood routes then the wound would have been instantly cauterised by the lightsaber. Go back and check when Luke gets his hand cut off, there is no blood spurt or any sort of leakage from his wound. Thats because the blade cauterises.
I know cauterizing the wound is canon and has been for a long time now, but there is definitely blood on the ground when Ben removes Ponda Baba’s arm
Either Vader is the most powerful and most careless being in the galaxy, or he’s giving her a chance to see if she lives and becomes stronger and more like him. There’s the whole sith thing where the apprentice is always trying to kill the master. Maybe he’s – you know – nostalgic.
None of them have ever seen a James Bond movie, so they have that excuse.
So you’re saying that there’s still a chance Daniel Craig’s 007 is still out there.
Ha good point
It’s like the scenes in Ingloroius basterds where the German kills the bear Jew. I couldn’t watch that either.
It’s a Sith thing. If she lives, she’ll be useful because she’s gonna be mad at Obi Wan for talking her into trying this. If she dies- oh well.
I saw leaving her alive as an extension of Vader’s comment that she’s simply not a threat and even having her around got boring. Maybe he’s so powerful and bored that the 2% chance she’ll survive and do something interesting is how he keeps himself entertained.
The Grand Inquisitor not being done by Jason Isaacs kind of bothers me. Also the actor seems too short and too wide.
…for a stormtrooper?
I was really hoping they’d heard the feedback of how ridiculous and not-like-the-Grand-Inquisitor he looks and that’s why they killed him and cut him out for most of the show to only bring him back actually looking proper in a final scene later on or something.But nope, they’re sticking with that for their version of him in live action which is so baffingly bad despite their Ahsoka, Bo Katan, and Cad Bane all looking really good.Not to mention the writing for the Grand Inquisitor so far has made him look like such a joke. It’s going to be near impossible now for him to be anything serious in live action form.They’ve basically General Grievous’d him (a reference to the 2d cartoon they made one time before episode 3 came out, in which General Grievous was a silent jedi slaughtering predator like character, only for him to then be the coughing joke that he is in the movie lol).
The show was long finished shooting before it started airing. And having a bunch of nerds complain that a live action person doesn’t fully resemble a cartoon isn’t the kind of argument anyone should ever take seriously anyway.
I’m sure there have been more last minute edits among big budget studio movies and tv shows. True enough about the latter though, but I do still feel it’s a bummer when a character’s created in a cool story/way and then an adaptation comes along that’s supposed to be the “main” depiction of said character and it’s nothing like the original cool creation.Not end of the world bummer mind you, think my original post coulda come across like I was frothing at the mouth or something, but just wanna state for the record it’s not exactly a living in my head rent free situation, just one of those things I find a little sad.
Haha. Thanks for the clarification. Yes, last minute changes are sometimes made, but not to placate whiny fan boys about something as utterly trivial as the size of the Inquisitor’s head (even though, come on, it is pretty huge.)I don’t think the GI is “nothing like” his animated version. They seem very similar in terms of personality and demeanor. It’s just that ridiculous head.
I feel his demeanor in this comes across more like a Wormtongue like character, and less like a wannabe Thrawn.But yeah his head is also huge lol.
I don’t know who that is.
Ah! I’m not good at explaining things without references lol.Um, basically GI came across (in the cartoon) as more of someone who calculates and plans and intimidates and commands attention when he’s in the room (unless he’s in the room with one of his betters).His plans didn’t always work, his calculations may have been skew, but that’s still how he did things. Basically, a wannabe cold-chess-master-type character (aka a wannabe Thrawn – from Star Wars).But GI in this show has come across more like someone who gets riled easily, resorts to small insults quickly, is foolish enough to be stabbed in the back by a fellow Inquisitor, and just a bit of a petty-almost-joke-villain kind of character (aka a Wormtongue – from Lord of the Rings).His speech in the first episode of this show was pretty on brand for him though, so I think that was done well – the one about jedi compassion, but almost everything after that’s kind of made him out to be rather silly.Obviously this is all just my perspective, but I don’t think I’m wrong, maybe I’ll find it less of a jarring thing on a future rewatch someday though, so who knows.
I was just never much of an LOTR guy. But Brad Dourif, hey, he’s cool!I don’t agree with your characterization of the OB1 version of the GI, though.To me, he definitely seems cool and commanding and loses his shit only a little bit and only because he has to deal with the bratty loose cannon that is Reva.He doesn’t come across to me as petty or easily rattled.But, hey, YMMV.
My turn to be confused, had to google “YMMV” lol, but that’s a fun saying (assuming google didn’t lie to me).Ty for fun convo.
Ha! Ty, 2(?) I like that expression, as it’s much more colorful than something banal like, “agree to disagree!” Cheers! 🙂
A Thrawn Mocktail, if you will…
… except they have a track record of being pretty good at replicating the cartoon characters. I didn’t even think that roly poly guy with the apple cheeks was the same Grand Inquisitor from Rebels. I thought it was just a predecessor to that one.
The fact that he’s the same race, has the same facial tattoos, the same job, the same name and the same outfit didn’t clue you in?
Job titles and uniforms aren’t unique to individuals. But this is the “Cad Bane in BoBF” thing all over again.
I guess I thought that stuff was somehow tribal or something; I dunno. But he’s really a sad representation of the GI. If Inquisitors eat cheeseburgers, this one’s ordered way too many.
The actor just has a big head that doesn’t look good shaved! It’s really not the end of the world…..
My recurring joke about the Clone Wars TV show is that General Grievous is only competent off-screen.
The actor is Rupert Friend, who was fantastic on Homeland as Peter Quinn. Too bad he’s barely gotten to do anything in this show.
A few silly things aside, a much better episode than last week. The return of Kumail Nanjiani was silly. I know the stormtroopers can’t shoot for shit, but this was ridiculous! lol. They leave Reva to die? Even though the Inquisitor had the same wound and was left to die and lived. WTF?
So with you on last comment. I would have everyone ready to go rather than milling about. Understand why they had to wait unti Vader was wrecking the other ship before leaving…Also why were they shooting the door when the lightsaber cut through it like butter? As per the over used trope from clone wars.Also this episode proved that a storm trooper cannot fish in a barrel (escaping jedi in a tunnel)Still enjoyed…
Beautiful parallel between the past and present with Obi and Anakin. But I love that shot of scary, powerful, almost invincible Vader…made to look like a Padawan fool as his master flies away safely.
this was such a shitshow
I really, really want to like this show. And in many respects I do. I’d underestimated how much it would mean to me seeing Ewan McGregor back in this role. And like the reviewer, that scene last week of him fighting stormtroopers did a lot for me. Plus, he was unequivocally the MVP of the prequels trilogy, so I’ve long been rooting for him to get a show or movie like this.I also have really enjoyed getting to know more of Leia’s character; and the young actor playing her is fantastic. It’s also providing a really great emotional throughline between the prequels and A New Hope that – continuity problems aside – I’m enjoying a lot. Having a James Earl Jones Darth Vader hunting down McGregor Obi-Wan is great.But sometimes the show just doesn’t make a lot of sense.Easily my biggest issue have to do with Reva’s motivations. Since the premiere, she’s been obsessively hunting Obi-Wan. And now it’s confirmed that she was a Youngling, and she’s been wanting to get revenge on Anakin, no matter the price. That’s great…but it doesn’t entirely gel with everything that’s come before. Since they made the choice to hide this up until the fifth episode, it also feels pretty underdeveloped, imo. And I still have no idea why she was so bent on finding Obi-Wan.Also, death just really doesn’t mean anything anymore in this universe – especially death by lightsaber. We have literally had people come back from being thrown down a power shaft (complete with lightning-explosion), being stabbed through the gut, being chopped in half and being thrown down a power shaft, and having all their limbs chopped off and left to die on a lava planet. In a matter of years, we’ll probably get a Ben Solo TV series in which we learn he just faked his death after kissing Rey.
Basically the gist is this.Reva hates Obi wan cause he was this great hero jedi master but when his own padawan came into the temple killing childrens he was nowhere to be found. Even better, he cannot say that Anakin was too strong since obiwan bested him, so he could have saved all the kids in the temple if he had been there.This couples with the other reason we got. That finding obiwan and putting him against vader was the only way for reva to have a chance. If vader tires himself by pulling a whole ship and only focus on kenobi being right there maybe he wont see the sneak attack coming.I really liked the flex on vader s part. Like in jedi fallen order we got reminded that every struggle every hardship and every milestone of anyone else is moot in front of vader.All reva’s planning is nothing. All kal kestis retraining, all the might of the second sister…..once you get to vader they are all like children.What i didnt like is the deaging technology that was non existant/crap.Anakin looked 45 in the flashbacks. Come on
Oh sure – I get that’s the inference. But I really think it needs to be explicitly stated. Especially since it’s kind of a lame subversion; I would’ve preferred that she be after Obi-Wan for his own sake, rather than just to use him against Vader. As is, it’s pretty confusing. (Either that, or make clear from the start who she is and what her real motives are.)
> Anakin looked 45 in the flashbacks. Come onFortunately six seasons of Better Call Saul have conditioned me to just roll with it.
I for one appreciated the old school “give them the old haircut” method of de-aging an actor’s appearance. Somehow it was refreshing despite the show being a sea of CGI. (Also, damn, Obi-Wan’s Ep. 2 hairdo was even worse than I remember, lol.)Despite that it does help that Ewan and Hayden have both aged *very* gracefully so 50 and 40-something actors playing 30- and 20-something characters wasn’t nearly as jarring as it typically would be. (I feel like I’ve aged pretty well, but damn if I tried to look like I did at 25 I’d be running a fool’s errand.)
That bothered me too, but at least his acting was slightly less bad.
I figured she wanted Obi-Wan since he was the one person who might get Vader to let his defense down to indulge his obsessive hatred, like Hector to Gus in Breaking Bad.
You’d think that, but then in this very episode she makes a point of saying how she doesn’t want to use him and HE has to convince HER apparently.Way to take that whole plotpoint out from under her feet writers.
She says she feels betrayed by Obi Wan’s failure to stop Anakin.Though I agree the “grand plan” motivation would have been cool, too, but is sorta undercut by her reluctance.
She did want to use Obi-Wan as bait/distraction. She just didn’t want to team up with him (what Obi-Wan was proposing, now we know as a ruse). While Vader is beating the shit out of Obi-Wan, she would strike. She would’ve done this in episode 3 but was stopped by the other inquisitor on Vader’s orders to search the town, instead—now we know, intentionally.
She says that she feels personally betrayed that Anakin’s own master and friend couldn’t stop him.
Anyone else perturbed by the Disney era’s continual reuse of stuff they already did? A second transport ship was hiding behind the first one?!It actually works here a lot better thematically, emotionally, plot-wise, etc. than it did in Rise of Skywalker when it was just stated by someone and explained away a major character’s fake-out death, but it’s still weird they went with it here because it immediately calls to mind the time they did it much worse 3 years ago. I’m all for the “it’s like poetry, it rhymes” aspect that will always be in Star Wars, but this seems like something else. Just bugged me. Also, I actually love the series despite the many issues I have with the series (so, perfectly in line with my relationship to basically all of Star Wars).
> Also, I actually love the series despite the many issues I have with the series (so, perfectly in line with my relationship to basically all of Star Wars).Preach!
Even if the rest of the show was terrible, it would all have been worth it for the way it made the toxic fans lose their minds for weeks over the show supposedly breaking canon by killing the Grand Inquisitor before he appears in Rebels, only to make them eat their words here.Honestly, if I was running a Star Wars show at this point I’d throw in all kinds of canon-breaking shit just as a pure “Fuck you” to those people.
Agreed. All media should be made out of spite. (And thankfully it’s kind of already happening.)This is The Way.
All media should be made out of spite.- The AV Club
Go touch grass
That and all the people whining about how Reva couldn’t possibly know Vader was Anakin when the obvious answer was all but spelled out in the first scene of the first episode…
i dunno i think if you’re gonna go for spite you actually break canon. where’s the fun in bringing him back?
Sequel movies are a bit shit, but what is hardly given enough credit is how Kylo Ren is just an avatar for the toxic, d-bag, incel fanboys.
Yeah, but did anyone, toxic or not, think he was “really” dead?
I was thinking he was a different GI of the same alien race this how he “appeared” in Rebels, but I’m also happy with the fake out.
I think that would have just been weird and I think most only speculated about that because of head shape. 🙂
I had a little bit of “Oh, there’s going to be another Grand Inquistor and then it’ll finally be played by Jason Isaccs and everything will work out great!”Didn’t happen and no slam whatsoever on Rupert Friend (the GI being a saucy bitch towards Reva when he came back was so delicious) but there’s a part of me that really wishes they somehow got Jason Iasccs back for the role.
Joby Harold: “Honestly, if I was running a Star Wars show at this point I’d throw in all kinds of canon-breaking shit just as a pure ‘Fuck you’ to those people.”Kathleen Kennedy: “You’re hired.”
If I was making a Star Wars show I’d break canon all over the place. Leia dies, Vader becomes a full robot, Obi-Wan is a werewolf, Snoke time travels and makes Anakin, etc.
Whether people like or hate this show or somewhere in between, just about everyone figured the Grand Inquisitor would be back precisely because he appears in the future somewhere else.
I would make Thrawn a green Transdosian
People who don’t like the idea of the show going against established canon are “toxic”, are they?
Much like Tala and Reva, there are two ways to approach the issue. Some fans were attached to the Rebels canon but were willing to see this show through to find out how things played out. Other fans sent racist hate mail to an actress. Which side do you think was being referred to as “toxic” in these two scenarios?
He literally says which people he is referring to as toxic in this instance, the ones who didn’t like canon being broken. There is no reference to those who sent hate mail to Moses Ingram.
I think you would be hard pressed to argue that a lot of the people who “just don’t like canon being broken” are themselves not also behaving in some really toxic and cringey ways, particularly for anyone above the age of, say, 12.
I mean Star Trek has been breaking established canon for like 40 years. At a certain point you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride. Head canon your fixes if you must but just sit back and go with the flow.
Some would be for sure. But they assumption that toxic fans are all toxic for the same reasons is false. This is the reason why you can never make everyone happy no matter what you do.
Sucking the fun out of live-action Star Wars because something happened differently than a fucking cartoon are more pathetic than toxic, but the rage and whining over it sometimes reaches toxic levels. I read the words “established canon” and cringe. It’s not a religion.
There’s not liking it and being a total shit heel about it. How about they let the story actually finish before you complain about it?
Not necessarily, but the toxic portion of the fanbase all have extremely closed minds (big shock), so they get especially worked up and look for opportunities to gripe about retcons, real or imagined.
get over yourself you’re too precious about stuff.
I sorta thought that was the GI from Rebels. But that round face and paunchy body made me thing he was a GI predecessor.I know we won’t see Thrawn in this, but I’d like to see Thrawn in this.
The word “Toxic Fan” is so played out. A “Toxic Fan” is now even includes someone who gives anything Star Wars related a bad review.
It’s seems to be playing out much like the story line when Captain America was apart of Hydra. It’s as if the people that complained the most had no idea of what comics and story arcs are.
In a way, i think the casting kind of ruined any “surprise” that the Grand Inquisitor wasn’t really dead. Rupert Friend isn’t a HUGE name, but he seems a big enough name that it seemed odd that they’d cast him and kill him off so quickly.
One nicely subtle bit: It now makes perfect sense why Anakin would say he was still a “learner” the last time he and Obi Wan met.
How so?
Because he’s still learnin’.ETA: No, in all seriousness, I’m the flashback Obi-Wan says until Anakin learns that his anger makes him predictable, he will always be a padawan. And then in the present we see that his anger still makes him predictable, so he’s still a padawan learner.
In no way, shape, or form does Vader consider himself a “learner.” Heck, even if Obi Wan still totally takes him to task in the final episode, Vader would never be self-aware enough to refer to himself as such, even years later.
Because he has to learn to grab the second ship instead of just standing there like a schlub?
I’m going to head-canon that Vader was weakened by holding the first ship that he had no Force-juice to stop the second…
He shoulda had a V8.
Yeah, he only had enough to jerk around a Force-used going full-tilt by literally twiddling his thumbs.
Im really suprised at how little people are talking about how this show sucks, and is completely unessecary, even for a star wars project. Your ratings are all wrong, this show is a C or D, at BEST.
Okay, there’s something I really need explained to me as I watched this particular scene, rewinded it and still could not make sense of it.So Vader rushed into the hangar space and sees the ship take off while we see at this point that the rest of the hangar is empty. To stop the ship, Vader uses the Force to grab it and pull it back down, but at that moment sees there was another transport hiding behind it and that suddenly took off. So my questions is where was that other transport hiding as we saw the hangar clearly and it wasn’t there when Vader arrived? I will freely admit that I can be really dumb here, but I was just flabbergasted by that scene.Also where did Kenobi get that message from Senator Organa from?
I rewound and watched the transport scene a second time, a second transport is barely visible in the back.
Ok, now on third rewatch I saw it. I think it was so close to the wall that I was assuming it was a container or something.
I’ll bet Darth Vader wishes he could rewind to check for a second transport too.
I thought the transport was /inside/ the ship that Darth Vader is using the force to keep in place.
That said, Vader’s display of the force was super impressive. I wasn’t aware he was THAT powerful, and I was surprised somewhat, but being as it was Darth Vader, I was easily good with him holding back the entire space ship that conceivably could have generated enough thrust to escape a planet’s atmosphere…
Where did he “get it from?” Organa left him a voice mail on his phone. That’s all that was.
The silly part is ‘Oh well they got me guess I have to let that transport go!”
Is Vader really canonically strong enough to hold back a jet engine?
I think so.Being the “Chosen One” and all that, he’s supposed to be one of the most powerful Force users alive. And the Dark Side of the Force grants power to negative emotions. Vader is nothing but negative emotions.
Even the Emperor is wary of Vader’s power. It’s good that Vader full power is diminished by being a cyborg in constant pain.
Rey did it in that Star Wars movie I keep trying to forget I watched (twice).
I’m sorry to hear that. I was one and done with that one and have done a fairly good job of purging it from my memory. (Mostly.)
It’s largely gone the way of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for me, as well.(Fourth Indiana Jones movie? What fourth Indiana Jones movie?)
God bless you.
Exactly!
You forgot twice? (Good for you!) orYou watched twice? (Oof.)
Short answer: Emphatically yes.
Longer answer: In the Disney era of star wars, they have done quite a lot to show just how horrifically powerful Vader is. Prior to that there wasn’t nearly as much exploration of Vader’s power. Multiple storylines in the comics have gone out of their way to show the Vader can’t be beaten and how absurd the amounts of destruction he can cause. Why he is rightfully an object of dread for so many. The inquisitors can’t hold a candle to Vader’s power. They can be skilled. They can be deadly. But Vader towers over them all. They’ve done a great job I think in building up his fear factor since they took over. Things like his massacre in Rogue One. Or his actions terrorizing the civilians when Obi-Wan was hiding. Just how effortlessly he does it.
The Inquisitors are deliberately kept under-powered by Vader and the Emperor. They want servants, not deadly competitors so the inquisitors are not taught how to fully use the Force. They can go up against Jedi because they hunt in packs. They cannot go up against Vader or Sidious.
And did she think Vader actual thought Obi-Wan killed the Grand Inquisitor, when he (Obi) was so out of practice and weak? Not a lot of thought went into that.
Yet apparently they couldn’t go up against a half trained Jedi and a precocious little padawan in training like in Rebels.
Nah, I got the point but even in packs, they couldn’t even take out a kid and a half-trained jedi so by that logic, Vader kept the Inquisitors underpowered to the point of uselessness.The Sith Inquisitors were nothing more than a means to introduce a dumb, new lightsaber gimmick that was more goofy than intimidating and then they doubled down in the later seasons.
The point is that defeating the Inquisitor is to Kanan what defeating Maul was to Obi-Wan.
Or Maul. He can crush them easily in a straight fight.
Inquisitors or Jedi?
I’m actually delighted – and a little impressed – that Disney has had the balls to make Vader such a figure of terror, first in Rogue One, now here.I mean, the guy’s been around for so long and is such an ubiquitous piece of pop culture with his face emblazoned on literally billions of pieces of merch, it’s kind of impressive they were able to so effectively get him back to Scary MF mode.
They’ve done a lot to make him pretty terrifying in the comics. There’s a mini-series called Vader Down where, while chasing Luke in-between Eps IV and V, his fighter crashes on a planet and the Rebellion sees a chance to take him out once and for all. Which leads into a couple of pages at the end of the first issue that have basically become a meme in their own right (forgive me if they don’t show up right, I’m trying to post URLs and the site is just automatically translating them into images and I have no clue what the comment system’s gonna do with that):
Fuck it, if Rey can do it, so can Vader. It seemed a little TOO easy for him, but that was my only gripe. It should have been a greater effort.
The old Tartakovsky Clone Wars microseries had Yoda TK grab an enormous trade federation battleship in space and just whack it into another one.
And Mace Windu single-handed wiped out an entire droid army, including Battle Droids, with just the force and his fists.
Starkiller pulled a Star Destroyer out of the sky in Force Unleashed.
The Clone Wars spent a fair amount of effort to show just how powerful Anakin really was.
To all replies here: I now realize that I have no idea what SW is about any more, because I missed all the animated shows and comics. (I sort of knew this before, what with the constant stream of “oh, that Mandalorian character is a fan favorite” for people I’ve never heard of.) So it goes. Thanks.
He can in “Star Tours”!
I mean, Starkiller essentially did it in the force unleashed games before it was de-canonized, and that was with a star destroyer.
Yes, but The Force Unleashed series was always meant to be a “what if” type of game, with exaggerated Force powers. I remember a dev video from when the first game released, where they said the aim was to let the player “just kick ass with the Force”. I wouldn’t say it was ever the same level of canon as the films or TV series, or even other more grounded games like Battlefront.
Size matters not.
He was super pissed off which adds a lot and the thing was auto-pilot and unmanned if that helps (nobody to goose the engines in response). So yah I buy it even if it did raise an eyebrow in my Star Wars Nerd Canon Power Scales (cuz Yoda looked very tried after lifting the X-Wing and that wasn’t trying to fly away).But yah, Angry Vader is Angry so I buy it any era any company producing it be it by Lucas or Disney (which does tend to ramp up the Force power scales a tad here and there)
Well, if the Obi-Wan show is canon, then all signs point to yes.
Yes, but just the one.
His hated of Obi-Wan (and thus, his connection to the dark side of the Force) is at its absolute peak, so well within his ability I think.
It’s not something that’s come up on-screen, but there are some moments in particular in the comics and novels that emphasize just how strong he is in the Force. (Just not in the way that lets you conjure up stolen data tapes.) It’s just rare he has to be that direct with it, when he can solve a lot of his problems with his lightsaber skill and his uncanny-even-by-Jedi-standards talent for flying. And while he can’t just casually toss around ships like toys, yanking that transport out of the sky is pretty well within his capabilities.(While this example is more a matter of precision than raw power, I keep thinking of a scene in one of the comics where he’s presented with the wreckage of a Jedi’s ship. When told it’s going to take a month to analyze the pieces and identify the model and owner, he telekinetically reassembles it like a jigsaw puzzle in moments, getting it to a state where he can identify whose it is.)
Wasn’t the whole point of the Luke/Yoda “Do or Do Not” scene in Empire that the Force didn’t give a crap about the size of the ship? Or did 8 year old me just misconstrue it (I was kinda a dumbass at times)?
‘”Is Vader really canonically strong enough to hold back a jet engine?”’In my mind as per a similar scene in the Force Unleashed where yet another if his understudies Star Killer does much the same I don’t see why not. This scene in and of itself confirms that those Star Wars games are cannon as well.
Size Matters Not.
Hereby, he is.
Thrust matters not.
all of these advanced force powers are great, but it makes Vader ibn a new hope look absolutely powerless and weak
He is now
Yes, but don’t ask him to ground and rip open one ship right after he does that to another one. He has a refractory time, OK?! He isn’t just some performing monkey!! ;-P
Yes, definitely
His apprentice can bring down an entire Star Destroyer in “Force Unleashed”:
Every time they show Vader use the Force to stop a ship from flying off or Kylo Ren stop a laser bolt in mid-air, I wonder why they bother with giving people little Force shoves when they could obviously just use the Force to turn a person into a sticky puddle on the ground.
If Jedi/Sith can do that, why can’t they all just fly instead of falling more slowly?
Like Luke taught Grogu to use the force to let him jump great distances (well, great compared to his own size) instead of just walking slowly.
This week’s episode had a lot of potential but sadly was let down once again by poor execution. It seems that common sense just doesn’t exist in the SW universe. Why sit outside shooting at a heavy door when Reva can just easily cut through it? Why do both sides just stand out in the open firing at one another after the door is breached? Why does Obi-Wan, with his laser deflecting weapon, stop using it to help people stand back up? Why didn’t any of the good guys just booby trap the passage to the hangar expecting that it eventually would be breached? Also I know Reva did this so that Obi-Wan could help her with Vader, but did none of the Stormtroopers think it was a little odd that after they captured Obi-Wan she sent him back inside the enemy base (and with just two guards)? At least we got to see Vader do some cool stuff though!
Bonus points for, “Did anyone go up into that vent to see why the hangar door isn’t opening?” lol. Bonus bonus points for when Reva’s lightsaber hit that stormtrooper in the leg (or so it appeared) when they were running towards the door after being force pushed away.
did none of the Stormtroopers think it was a little odd that after they captured Obi-Wan she sent him back inside the enemy base (and with just two guards)That really bugged and confused me, too. Even accounting for the notion that they’re all just (potentially somewhat mindless) clones, none of her lackies had any objections to her just letting him go??
Ahktually the Empire eliminated using clones a few years after their formation. If you really want to delve into EU stuff the Empire sought to grow the military ranks as much as possible making it one of the best sources of employment to make people want to be part of it.
We had to rewind to make sure that was Obi Wan running down the corridor after the scene with Reva.
The entire fight in the hangar was nonsensical. The two sides were shooting at each other from 30-40′ away. It was comical and ridiculous. Sometimes stormtroopers would walk right up to people, while not firing their own weapons, just to get shot from five feet away.And they couldn’t get the hangar door open because of a fucking tripped breaker!?! What was the guy even trying to fix remotely? And why would that take hours? It was literally the equivalent of a blown fuse…. in a compartment that could easily fit an adult. The guy told Leia exactly which breaker it was so the problem was a couple feet behind an obviously accessible grate and his plan was instead to dick around with a remote pad for hours rather than grab a ladder and fix it in a couple minutes. It’s just mind bogglingly stupid. For every minute of the show that has a cool moment, there’s 30 minutes of, why is everyone so stupid?
On top of that it was all filmed with a constantly nauseating shaky cam that adds no value besides being annoying to the already questionable stuff you mentioned.
One of my least favorite tropes.“How much time do you need to fix it?”“3-4 hours”“You have one”
I liked:
(gargantuan Star Destroyer pulls into orbit)
“Send the attack.”
(ooh, chills, I’ll bet they just unleash holy hell onto the surface and swarms of fighters in an insurmountable display of)
(two teeny little ships drop down)
(sad oh.)
That’s called “pulling a Scotty”.
By the way, I do genuinely adore how one of the running themes of this show is how ridiculously easy it is to escape the Empire.Like they had a star cruiser there, but still can’t catch one transport flying from the very base they are observing and that doesn’t have a functioning hyperdrive?
Yeah, that made no sense. They should have just barely made it to hyperspace surrounded by TIEs. Without hyperdrive, you literally can’t escape.
Vader to Piet, orbiting Hoth: “Deploy the fleet so that nothing gets off the system. Except the one guy I’m looking for — the one I named earlier: If he flies up from Hoth, leave him totally alone! I don’t even want him to see any Imperial ships around as he goes on his merry way.”
They did have the Rebels clear a path for the feeing transports and starfighter escorts, so there was something to suggest an explanation for how Luke got away.
A long time (25 years) ago….No one must be allowed to escape this rebel ship! The fate of the empire depends on it!So we should shoot that escape pod that’s headed toward the planet’s surface?Naw, it doesn’t have any people on board.In a galaxy crawling with sentient machines, maybe we should shoot it anyway?What, you think laser beams grow on trees?
“Hold your fire.”“Why, are we paying for each laser?”“You don’t do the budget Jeff, I do”It feels like the Family Guy Star Wars is more and more realistic with each series.
It’s worse. There’s a hangar with one exit. The Empire hacks the exit to trap their enemies. Why in the world wouldn’t you scramble a few wings of TIEs to fly around the hatch to ensure that they can’t get away even if they fix the mechanism? Is the price of Ion fuel just too high?
At least this series corrects one major problem I had with the Prequel Trilogy.They put some friggin’ plants in the Jedi temple. Both scenes!I always though the temple was ridiculously sterile in the PT. George, pay attention to your own rules!The Jedi comes from “all living things.” The friggin’ Jedi Temple should look like a botanical garden crossed with a zoo. There should have been plants draped over every surface, massive trees filling up all those open spaces. Maybe even birds flying around those atriums, rushing water, streams, animals. Etc.
Maybe they had but baby Yodas ate them all? They’re enthusiastic omnivores!
That tracks.
*babies Yoda
Yodlings?
My god, the hoops people will go through to praise this awful show just to spite the “toxic fans”. What a shitty, absurd time to be alive.
As this series unfolds the one thing I keep thinking is that they got it wrong by making Solo into a movie and Obi Wan into a TV show. Young Han Solo’s adventures would easily make for a great TV series as by the time we meet him in ep. IV he’s already pretty much well formed into a scoundrel and someone you believe had a heist or two behind him. On the other hand this 6 part series would have easily been dealt with as a movie, episode 3.5 as it were. We got so much filler in the first few episodes…I liked this one. Badass Vader is the best kind of Vader, but seriously, 6 episodes was stretching the story a little too thin.
.
Hey, it’s Jimmy Smits! I got impatient so I figured I’d leave a message with details of that big galactic secret we’re keeping about the boy on Tatooine with Owen! I mean, I guess I could have said “the thing in the place with you-know-who” since you do already know who and all, but I… did not do that.
Looks like he NYPD Blew it.
Organ a sucks at covert stuff.. He has a picture of him, Kenobi and the twins on his work desk at home, signed “see you on Tatooine, love Ben”. :DCheers
Fuck yeah! This is the show I was hoping it would be. I’m annoyed it took until the show was already 2/3 done, but in this case, late really is better than never.Was the reaction to CGI Luke the reason Young Anakin looked like he wasn’t digitally de-aged at all? It looked to me like they just pancaked him in make-up and let the hair do the heavy-lifting to sell the effect, but I’m not an expert.I fucking loved the asymmetrical lightsaber duel. Using the Force to duel was badass. More please and thank you. I’m glad that Disney is hiring composers to write new music instead of only using pieces from John Williams’ score, but my partner is livid that they haven’t played the Imperial March. It’s a little weird they haven’t played it at all but like… I’ve heard it enough times in my life. She’s new to Star Wars so she can’t stand that they don’t play it when it seems appropriate.Darth Vader pulling the spaceship down looked wonky but pulling huge chunks off of it looked really cool.I’m seeing other commenters claiming this was terrible and the writing is awful and like… I don’t know, this is everything the “haters” have been asking for:Anakin/Obi-Wan flashback | Obi-Wan being a badass | Vader being a badass | Less Leia| Canon being respected | Fan Theory Confirmed | Weirdly obsessive shot zooming in on Luke to convey to the audience how Very Important he isSo like… yeah the writing sucks. It’s not like it’s gotten worse since the first episode, but at least it’s gotten more awesome.
I think there’s been off key pieces of the Imperial March here and there, especially during the hangar shoot out, kind of like how Obi-Wan’s theme recalls the Force Theme but isn’t quite there.
People caring more about content than execution is exactly why Disney keeps serving this tripe in the first place.
You won’t hear me disagree, but the execution has been lackluster since the first episode, and even the people that have been consistently complaining about the execution are acting like the last two episodes are substantially worse. And many of those people were complaining that the show was missing things that the most recent episode delivered.
I am now convinced that this show is only better than The Book of Boba Fett because Ewan McGregor is a much better actor than Temuera Morrison. Otherwise, the writing is just as awful.The problem is that we know where every character is going to end. Lucas did not make Episode III thinking that Obi-Wan and Darth Vader had some character progression to achieve before Episode IV; he made it with the mind that this was the moment to show more or less why they were who they were at the beginning of the latter. So we have a series with the length of 3 films where nothing important really happens, and where we have “surprises” that pretty much every fan saw coming (the Grand Inquisitor’s non-death, the Third Sister’s origin & motivation).I’m glad Ewan & Hayden could come back to the franchise in a more positive context than the first time around (Hayden, in particular, just looked more content during that duel scene than any time during the prequels). But I can’t find any other positive to the show.
Good episode. Whats with leaving people barely alive and thinking they will die. I mean that just happened with the grand inquisitor. Did Vader not think of slicing her in two ???
Between this show and Fallen Order it turns out I really dig the Purge era of Star War. Maybe I should watch Rebels.
This show is about 5% cool scenes and 95% ridiculous contrivances, and/or everyone being an idiot, to stitch them together. The hangar fight was spatially nonsensical. It was a huge gun fight where everyone was about 40-50′ apart to start. It kept cutting to the same shot of about 15, supposedly untrained, defenders shooting at a horde of Stormtroopers. Stormtroopers who inexplicably are often shown to not even be firing, and instead walking up to the defenders, so they can be killed from a few yards away. Then we have the hangar doors, that Roken says will take hours to fix, even though it’s just a breaker a couple feet behind a grate any adult could easily fit into. So rather than just grabbing a ladder and taking off a couple panels to pop a fuse back in, Roken says this will take a long time (to somehow fix remotely) just so Leia had something to do this episode. It’s just so contrived.The we have Reva, who was obviously one of the surviving kids from Order 66 from the get go, getting that obviousness delivered in the clunkiest way. And we’re to believe her whole motivation this whole time was to kill Anikan. Putting aside for a second the wildly improbable shift from her being a Padawan to a current Inquisitor, how the fuck would she know Vader is Anikan? Yeah, she knows Anakin was an awful guy, but she was child at that time. How could she possibly know the events that followed that turned Anakin into Vader? It makes no sense. Oh, and now she knows that Luke and Leia are Anakin’s kids, cause you know, fuck everything that makes sense. Which means she has to die in the last episode. I’m sure it will be a heroic retread of Vader’s death where she sacrifices herself to save Obi/Leia and dies with that knowledge. Oh, and if you want to make sure someone lives in this universe stab them in the gut with a lightsaber. Apparently having a hole through you is no big deal.
“This show is about 5% cool scenes and 95% ridiculous contrivances”THANK YOU. You said much more succinctly what I was struggling to lay out before I dropped my mouse and deleted the entire entry.I go into each week’s episode with hope, but, yeah. And Twitter thinks this is A Grand Return To How Star Wars Should Be, and I couldn’t disagree more.But I’m still frustrated that it wasn’t called KENOBI! and filled with musical numbers.
There’s a dude around here who is insisting that this is the best Star Wars show so far and will get really angry when you point out how badly written and edited it is.“But I’m still frustrated that it wasn’t called KENOBI! and filled with musical numbers.”
Yeah, I’m sure you’d totally forget the insane Jedi who turned evil and then killed all of your friends.
You have some valid complaints, but how Reva would know Vader was Anakin is not one of them. In fact, that’s a laughable complaint that makes you look like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. Only with poorer hygiene.
What? I didn’t say she should have forgotten about Anakin. I’m saying it’s dumb that she would know that Anakin fell to Ob-Wan right after leaving the temple and got turned into Vader. She was still a kid and that was one of the Emperor’s closet guarded secrets. But now apparently Vader was blabbing that secret out to her, who he knew wanted to betray him, as well as some other Inquisitors.
If she knows it already, why wouldn’t Vader say it? Closely guarded or not, she was there when he killed her friends. Literally, in the room, pretending to be dead. Little kid or not, you’re not going to forget that person. And when you run into him years later, you’d still know it was him, especially if you happen to have psychic powers like, you know, The Force.
And it’s not Vader didn’t read her mind during the process of making her an Inquisitor. Vader would probably have kept her around, just because he could feel her hatred for him every time she was near.
He still looked like Anakin when he was in the Jedi Temple, not a 7′ tall cyborg with a completely different voice. The one thing they could have done that would make some sense is to have shown Reva playing dead and have a clone call Anakin, Lord Vader, or something. Otherwise there is no reason she would connect Anakin to the name Vader. Anakin gets turned into cyborg Vader very shortly after the Temple and the Emperor promptly tells the galaxy that Anakin Skywalker died.And I’m not buying any force stuff. I know the Force has become an excuse to do almost anything in SW these days, but Reva couldn’t even read a kids mind, let alone one of the most accomplished Force users in the galaxy.
Can you not read? I was talking about Vader reading her mind, not the other way around, Cappy. And how do you know none of the clone troopers called him Lord Vader? He was officially Darth Vader by that point, as decried by the Sidious, who had become the Emperor. Do you think the wording of Order 66 is “Kill all the Jedi except specifically Anakin Skywalker?” What if he hadn’t turned? Sidious had a long term plan that took years. Was he going to go and reprogram all the clones? No. There was probably programming in there to make exceptions for Sith. Obviously, the clones knew him as Lord Vader by that point and probably one of them said it in front of Reva.
Just because YOU actually need a scene to tell you that information does not mean that the rest of us are that stunted.
“This show is about 5% cool scenes and 95% ridiculous contrivances” is a perfect descriptor.
Oh, and if you want to make sure someone lives in this universe stab them in the gut with a lightsaber. Apparently having a hole through you is no big deal.To be fair, I always thought a light saber inflicted wound would be immediately cauterized by the light saber (the bloody arm Kenobi hacks off in the cantina not withstanding). But, yeah. 🙂
Owen is going to immediately shoot Reva for trespassing on his property thereby ending with a long rambling speech about proving the wisdom of the Space Constitution Second Amendment. Roll credits.
“He was wise to turn you against me.” Sounds like Vader is on his way to becoming a more patient, cunning Sith Lord.
So didn’t Vader snap her sword in two ?
I believe they are snap-able by design (per Rebels)
If everyone in this makeshift hanger were truly just waiting for the
hatch doors to open so they could escape right away…why weren’t they
already in the ship ready for takeoff rather than scattered around like
sitting ducks?
I immediately thought the exact same thing. Why are they all just sitting around?Another thing that bothered me was I don’t remember seeing a second transport ship before Vader showed up. They pulled a Chewy fake out like in the Last Jedi.
The Chewy fakeout was in Rise of Skywalker. I can understand how you tried to forget that movie existed, though…
hahhah, yeah, brain fart there but all three movies are pretty forgettable.
Not to mention that apparently they only had one ship with which to evacuate all these people, but then decided to let Ben borrow it to go rescue Leia (one person) instead of helping hundreds of people evacuate. And Until that happened, the Empire didn’t know where the Path base was, and nobody seems to be upset that Ben led the Empire back to them!This show is so fucking stupid.
word to that!! plus… surprise… second ship, or maybe that’s what your implying…
it was actually Rise of Skywalker, which makes it even weirder that they insisted on using the same (silly) story device twice in almost as many years of Star Wars content. It worked much, much better here IMO – thematically anyway (still silly) – but just mind boggling that they couldn’t come up with something else.
Who is this Darth Vader that’s snappin’ necks of strangers but then just walks away from a wounded Reva, who should have, by the way, died immediately from that would. Pussy Darth Vader, that’s who. He should have killed her for incompetence the episode before.
Maybe it’s just the wine talking, but I started crying about half way through and I’m not stopping. I wish they had taken a moment for Leia to feel betrayed by Lola before she fixed her/it, but this whole episode just broke me. The most horrific thing in the prequels for me was Anakin killing younglings and boy did they pull all the right strings for me in this one. Goddammit.
The series has some weak writing. Even this episode being one of the stronger ones, there’s still some things I could pick apart. And I’m not talking little canonical stuff people throw fits about either. I’m talking basic logic and logistics stuff where a scene starts to fall apart if you spend a couple of seconds thinking about it that better written shows wouldn’t have.But they had Vader fighting and looking like a badass. That was enough for me. I guess they got me, but whatever. That was fucking dope.
Boy, what a difference an Andrew Stanton writing credit makes
That Mario-Kart-steering-wheel-with-lightsabers-attached was the dumbest gimik I’ve seen in ages, but the actual fight was still possibly the best since Jedi.
Wait until you find out how those lightsabers work in Rebels…
definitely don’t watch Rebels if you thought that was bad
Mario Kart steering wheel! LOL!!!
Dear Lord, that was terrible. That was “clever plotting for imbeciles”.
Why is Organa still on Alderaan? At this point Vader knows that he has a connection to Kenobi so strong Obi-Wan will come out of hiding after ten years to rescue his daughter, why isn’t Bail strapped into an interrogation machine spilling his guts by this point?
Why is the Empire not using starfighters? None of them patrolling the Inquisitors’ fortress, none stationed to cripple any Path ship if they manage to get the hangar door open.
Nothing in this series makes sense. And it bothers me that I notice. I’m sure A New Hope, Empire… and Return… all have their share of impossibilities, but even today when I sit down to rewatch them they manage to carry me along with their rhythm, spectacle and charm and paper over any such hiccups. This doesn’t, since the only thing it can offer is telegraphed “badass/awesome” moments.
Terrible, just terrible.
Tala: I’ve got a long heartfelt speech for you that I’m going to deliver in a rather actorly manner.Obi Wan: Nice knowing you.
No matter what happens in the final episode, it can’t save this series. It hasn’t been terrible, just completely forgettable. Its laughably bad when they end an episode showing Luke sleeping like he is in danger when we know nothing is going to happen to him. I really don’t know what Disney was thinking with this story arc, its gone absolutely nowhere.
Did… did I just completely misinterpret the whole scene between Reva and Obi-Wan? My takeaway from that little convo of theirs was that he was going to stay behind and serve as a jangly set of keys in front of Vader while she came at him, and instead he pulled a “Nope I’m out lol you’re sol good luck with Ani there”
To be fair if she would have just ignited her lightsaber behind his back and impaled him instead of screaming and trying to slash at him, things might have been different.But then again she’s not been written as a particularly competent character.
That’s exactly how I read it, and expected Obi-Wan to come out of hiding (or behind the invisible second ship, I guess 🙄), to make Vader let go of the first ship or something
‘”Given that we know which two survive long enough to be heavily featured in an Oscar-winning 1977 film, it’s perhaps not a spoiler to say who ends up on the losing end of this particular cat-and-mouse game.”’Indeed we do.‘”Okay, small quibble (the kind I try not to get too bogged down on when dealing with Star Wars stuff): If everyone in this makeshift hanger were truly just waiting for the hatch doors to open so they could escape right away…why weren’t they already in the ship ready for takeoff rather than scattered around like sitting ducks?”’This is simply poor narrative design in a cheap bid to evoke a sense intrigue and suspense. They’re asking would we be invested if they hadn’t?Obi Wan Kenobi has an odd tightrope to walk as far as building suspense goes.On the one hand you know that Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and even Obi wan Kenobi himself can’t die before they show up in Episode IV A New Hope.Yet those are exactly the strings they feel the need to pull in order to try to get the audience emotionally invested. Simply put it only works marginally. And the degree to which it works on the overall audience depends on how deep they are into the overall Star Wars lore of the movies. The lesser known characters may be fair game but even that depends on their presence within Star Wars Lore.
“If everyone in this makeshift hanger were truly just waiting for the hatch doors to open so they could escape right away…why weren’t they already in the ship ready for takeoff rather than scattered around like sitting ducks?”So you don’t know there is a second ship in the hanger.
Arguably, a shot of everyone sitting in a ship waiting would’ve sold the second-ship-switcheroo even more! Sequenced and edited correctly, it could’ve played out like Silence of the Lambs where we think Vader is coming up to their door only to open up an empty ship as the other flies away. I think the answer is more so that they think suspense can only be built around people scrambling for their lives, and that they needed people scrambling so that Kumail could bump into someone and drop Kenobi’s iphone so that Reva could find it later.
There should have been a ? at the end of my sentence. After I wrote that I realized basically what you’d written.
Yes, there was, ridiculously, another ship in the hangar that the people also weren’t, “already in the ship ready for takeoff rather than scattered around like sitting ducks?” So that complaint still stands. It doesn’t matter what ship they were leaving on, everyone standing around like idiots instead of boarding still makes no sense. Them boarding wouldn’t have given anything away to the enemy because there was no enemy’s watching them at that time, and that’s exactly what they did anyway. Apparently instantly. It’s bad writing and direction.
I laughed out loud when the second, hidden ship that was clearly not there before took off from behind the wreckage of the ship that apparently no one was piloting, that Vader grounded and ripped apart. That shit was insulting.
we at least needed a pilot or droid or *someone* piloting it right?! Save Tala’s droid Ned-B’s sacrifice for that! or Leia’s droid! someone’s damn droid! Imagine Vader rips it open, pulls out Ned-B – who has never been allowed to communicate – and Ned-B says some beautifully poignant one-liner before Vader smarshes him head in! C’mon!
That would have at least been something.
Insulting is the best way to put it in that case, and this show (and the D+ SW shows in general) just keep doing this jarringly stupid stuff. I can suspend my disbelief about space wizards, and just about anything else, if the narrative is compelling and has at least somewhat of an internal logic. Too much of this show often depends on characters being idiots or treating the audience like idiots with dumbfounding, completely avoidable, plot contrivances being the norm.
When will people learn to delete sensitive emails, voicemails, and holo-messages.
That was the stupidest part of the episode, and that’s saying something. Bail says, “I know we said no communication, but your silence worries me.” I mean, what? That’s radio silence, man. He then goes on to spill the beans on Vader’s kids down to which planet Luke is on and his uncle’s fucking name! He reassures Obi that he’ll take care of Luke but that makes no sense. If he thinks Obi is dead or captured, or even just decided to go into hiding, then just do that. This is a dumbass technology that anyone could pick up and play and you just spilled the secrets you’ve been trying to keep for years on it. There’s no scenario where that makes sense.
He then goes on to spill the beans on Vader’s kids down to which planet Luke is on and his uncle’s fucking name!It would have been fun to see Bail Organa’s hologram saying “I’ll head to you-know-where…” “…to see you-know-who…” “…about taking care of you-know-what.” 🙂
I liked the episode but the scenes with the storm troopers on the planet looked washed out. I don’t think every cinematographer has worked out how to shoot in the volume yet.
The good: Vader being a total badassThe bad: Pretty much everything elseI’m oddly relieved that there’s only 1 episode left.
I more or less enjoyed the episode, though I did have a few critiques:I knew where they were going with the flashback scenes, illustrating that Anakin’s win-at-all-costs fighting style opened him up for attack. The problem was the action itself didn’t really succeed in paying that off. In a better crafted version of this scene, the mechanics of how Obi Wan beats Anakin would’ve clearly illustrated to the audience that he won because Anakin was too worried about winning. But all that really happens is Obi Wan pulls a sudden counter-move on him that it feels like he could’ve pulled at any point prior.Similarly, it seems like the payoff of this idea in the present day doesn’t work quite as well as it could have. We’re meant to see that Vader loses Obi Wan because he’s too obsessed with victory and doesn’t expect Obi Wan to run instead of facing him, I think. The trouble is, Obi Wan has already been running for ten years. It strains belief that Vader wouldn’t expect this again, obsessed with winning or not.This episode pulls another “Huh?” moment with an escape from Vader similar to Part 3, as the second transport ship gets away because the first one was a decoy. But it was… right there for Vader to snatch out of the air just like he did the first? Vader showed a terrifying reaction time grabbing the first ship the second he saw it; why couldn’t he have just done the same with the second which was right behind the first?This episode clearly puts the lie to all the fans who defended Obi Wan’s goofy, nonsensical escape in Part 3 as “Vader let him go”. Clearly Vader has no interest in letting him go. He just stares in menacing disbelief at all Obi Wan’s escapes because that’s what the plot requires him to do to have a next episode, and that’s sloppy of the creative team.I will defend the episode in one regard: This article says “As exposition goes, it’s as clunky as you can get.” But I say: Good. (Ma)Clunky expository dialogue is a Star Wars signature, one I wish they’d employ more often.
We’re meant to see that Vader loses Obi Wan because he’s too obsessed with victory and doesn’t expect Obi Wan to run instead of facing him, I think. Yeah, that was all muddled in regards to narrative intent. It was more that Vader thought Obi Wan would give himself up to save the people in my view, but I’ve read multiple recaps of the episode and it doesn’t seem anyone has an exact grasp of how that framing duel was supposed to mirror the main narrative. Which speaks to how sloppy the writing in this show has been. Reva and Obi Wan’s “plan” is equally weird. Obi makes it sound like he and Reva would fight Vader together. That she’ll be able to get the drop on him, “because all he’ll see is me.” But all Obi does is escape, inexplicably, as you note. So the plan was Reva would be able to get the drop on Vader, alone, because Vader would be preoccupied with fuming over Obi’s escape? It’s pretty nonsensical. Reva has been biding her time for years and years. She’s not stupid and clearly knows she’s not a match for Vader alone or she would’ve tried something before. Yet now, she truly thinks this plan will work? And, of course, she’s inexplicably left alive to find Bail’s message, which is truly the most egregious plot point in the episode. Bail is apparently wildy stupid when the plot demands it. He literally says, I know we said we’ll have radio silence but I find your silence worrisome. WTF? He then goes on to give away… literally everything, including Luke’s location and his uncle’s name. WHY WOULD HE SEND THAT!?! If he’s worried that something happened to Obi Wan then his obvious conclusion should be that Obi’s communicator could be in enemy hands. Not, hey, I’m worried you’re in trouble so let me give away all the secrets we’ve been trying to keep in a transmission that any numbnut can watch.
Yeah these are great points too, and the one about the message from Bail honestly went right past me amid all the other weirdness until you mentioned it. It’s hilarious because the event that triggers Reva finding out this secret amounts to Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi doing a “Whoopsie! Butterfingers!” with the most important information he has ever possessed.
It’s frustrating because the show isn’t bad. It’s inches away from being great. I’m just so tired of the handwavy approach to narrative logic used by so many Hollywood writers lately. If all I wanted as a Star Wars fan was Star Wars porn, this series delivers. But I would rather have a good, well told story. That has to come first in my eyes, always, no matter how many beloved characters or props they trot out. It’s like all these shows are written for people who don’t like to think about what they’re watching.
What I want to know is what on earth happened to all the Star Wars music? I don’t think I’ve heard even a tiny sliver of it. I mean, this episode featured Vader marching into a confrontation on a rebel base and they don’t use his famous theme… have they lost the rights or something?!
This show is so poorly written, acted, produced it’s left me baffled.
*Minor spoilers for Rogue One and the Jedi Fallen Order video game belowIt’s interesting to see how much modern Star Wars media is taking the time to directly show just how insanely powerful Vader is. He was certainly imposing in the original Episode IV/V/VI trilogy with his iconic outfit and James Earl Jones voice, but other than force choking a few lackeys and smacking Luke around a bit at the end of Empire Strikes Back, his menace was more implied than directly seen.However, between this new Obi-Wan show, video games like Jedi Fallen Order, and scenes like the Rogue One trooper massacre, we can now see with our own eyes just how terrifying Vader can be. I have my own bones to pick with Star Wars media as of late, but their portrayal of Vader as an unrelenting and nigh unstoppable juggernaut of Force-fueled pain and anger certainly ain’t one of them.
That actually bothers me. To phrase it as an (oversimplified) question, “If Vader can do what he did in Rogue One, why doesn’t he do it on Leia’s ship in A New Hope?”.
The Vader/Reva fight did a great job showing how much of an unstoppable tank Vader is in a fight, something we see in the comics a lot (and is awesome) but have only ever seen in Rogue One. Reva was outclassed without Vader igniting his lightsaber.
Note: Pucci died on the way back to her home planet
Did I misunderstand what happened in the hangars with the shuttles? Or did one shuttle take off, then get pulled back to the ground and torn apart dramatically by Vader, only to reveal that it was empty? Without even a pilot, apparently? And then a second shuttle took off that was filled with our hero and all the civilians? So I guess the first one was a distraction, and apparently the people escaping knew that Darth Vader would do that? Like, they took the time to launch a fake shuttle, banking on the fact that it would take Darth Vader several moments to do an incredible feat of Force power, in order to cover their own escape, instead of just … escaping first, as fast as possible, preferably before Vader gets there. Which maybe they could have done if they didn’t take the time to set up that fake-out shuttle.
That kinda sums up my feelings about the show. Sure, an Inquisitor with a grudge against Darth Vader could kidnap Bail Organa’s daughter, in order to lure out Obi-Wan Kenobi, on the hunch that Bail would ask Obi-Wan to save his daughter (instead of his massive resources as an Imperial senator) all to lure out Darth Vader. But Vader knew she was going to do that, long before he promoted her to Grand Inquisitor, because she failed to kill the Grand Inquisitor and this was all some kinda long con to get her to reveal herself too. All of this instead of Reva just, like, trying to stab Vader in the back at her next performance review. It’s constantly bending over backwards to justify its own existence.
This is the kind of place where I feel comfortable to ask really stupid questions about some basic engineering issues in the Star Wars universe. Maybe it’s the fact that I am a fictional Vulcan engineer with a mullet, but allow me this one.
At the Inquisitors Base, they have TIE fighters hanging from the ceiling, ready to fly (I guess).
… looks cool and all, but how do the pilots get into them when they need to use them?
Is there a ladder that reaches down to the hatch, or are the pilots just sitting in there, all day, drinking juice boxes, just waiting in case they are called to duty?
Honestly, major things like FTL travel, artificial gravity, space magic.. they don’t bother me as much as little things like this do. At least I’m not going to bring up the missing handrail question again.
I think they are suspended like the TIE Fighters on a Gozanti-class cruiser, so the pilots shinny down a ladder/tube from the floor above when its time to scramble the fighters.
I’ll accept that. Next question is why they didn’t use the fighters for their intended purpose, to chase the escaping ship. But that’s another kettle of [checks Wookieepedia] Denusian Squirmers.
The Empire was in the middle of one of its “Go Big” phases, so they skipped the fighters and went straight to pursuing the Rebel transport with a star destroyer.
Don’t understand folks claiming what a “badass” Vader is. He is badly written, badly directed, badly performed, synthetically and stiltedly voiced, badly scored, badly edited… yuck. It’s all super mediocre stuff that doesn’t hit any of the high notes the OT trilogy did that inspired a million backyard toy fights.
Just watched. Sorry to necro. But yea, 100% spot on. One big problem with Vader in the newer stuff, is that his iconic costume is more cumbersome and restrictive than even Michael Keaton’s 1989 Batsuit was. It makes him unable to replicate any of the most basic movements or advanced acrobatics that all force sensitives have become totally accustomed to during battle. Despite being such a “badass”, all he can do is swing a sabre and occasionally force grab. The contrast to all the ninja flipping, slicing, and sliding Jedi and Sith make him look like a clownshoe.
I grew up with Star Wars. I saw the original in theaters when I was just 5 years old. That being said I enjoyed the series. I’m older now and appreciate any new SW content. I no longer get worked up about it like I did in my youth. I’m less cynical and nitpicky. Star Wars was always about having fun and has never been serious or complicated like Star Trek. Some SW fans take things too personally and find ways to connect everything in entertainment to politics and the culture war. If you didn’t like the Obi-Wan series, guess what? It’s not the end of the world or the end of Star Wars. If you feel that way, that’s too bad for you. Just don’t try to speak for every SW fan. Don’t try and bring us down to your level. We’re not there and never will be.