Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s finale feels like a rerun of Star Wars hits
As it leads up to the film that began it all, “Part VI” begs the question: Are the show’s highs enough to warrant its existence?
TV Reviews Wan Kenobi
The issue with prequels is you know how they’ll end. There can be a thrill in that. The Star Wars prequels ran into this conundrum. For many fans, knowing that Anakin Skywalker would turn into the imposing Darth Vader didn’t detract from the enjoyment of, say, Revenge Of The Sith, because his plot arc felt like shading in the humanity the iconic villain had needed to shed ahead of A New Hope. In the case of a film like Rogue One, knowing that the ragtag of makeshift heroes we met would succeed (but at what cost?) made that breeze of a heist flick enjoyable if only because the stakes truly were high at the broad franchise level but grounded in some great character work.
But in both cases, you sort of find yourself always anticipating the moment when its ending will suture itself onto the story we already know. Not coincidentally, Obi-Wan Kenobi, like those two other properties finds itself coloring in a story before the film that began it all: A New Hope. All Star Wars roads lead to it, it seems (hey, even Solo, though the less we talk about that film, the better). Going into this final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi we knew a couple of things would need to happen: Obi-Wan, Leia, Luke, Owen, and Beru would all survive. As would Darth Vader. Our titular Jedi would become a hermit. Oh, and the secret of Luke and Leia’s parentage would remain as such. Which is to say we’d end up roughly where we first began.
If as a narrative gamble that sounds rather dull, you would be correct. But then again, there was only so much ambitious artistic license one could take with these characters once you decided this was the story you wanted to tell. I still wonder what Obi-Wan Kenobi would’ve been like if these six episodes hadn’t revolved around Leia and Vader and instead had centered on a more probing character exploration of Obi-Wan’s lonesome years in Tatooine. But maybe that just doesn’t sounds very exciting. As soon as Disney/Lucasfilm decided they’d give us Vader/Kenobi face-offs and a sassy tiny Leia, it was clear what we’d get was everything we’d gotten time and time before: Indeed, as I’ve noted in many of these recaps, this limited series has felt, at times, like a rerun of Star Wars hits. And this finale was no different. An implausible escape from the Empire in all its might? Check. A Jedi and a Sith battling it out on a rocky, remote planet? Check. Civilians fending off a powerful Sith with just blasters? Check. Even a certain ghostly cameo at the end felt less like a fan-serving surprise (though it was) than an expected narrative necessity of a Star Wars ending.
When you boil it down there were two things happening in this episode: Vader was trying to finish Obi-Wan, and Third Sister was trying to kill Luke. Again, we all knew how both those stories would play out. Except, of course, what would happen with Third Sister (but more on that in a little bit).
The Vader vs. Kenobi showdown was, I’ll admit, thrilling to watch. Give me the silhouette of a Jedi and a Sith battling it out in an inhospitable landscape, and I’m in. (The scene was aided, in large part by Natalie Holt’s haunting and dramatic score.) And the moment when Vader’s helmet is torn, revealing the ravaged “Anakin” underneath made for quite a striking image—a man broken who has clearly armored himself so as to avoid thinking himself weak. Also, it’s the one moment where the Frankenstein casting of Hayden Christensen and James Earl Jones actually pays off as you see Vader/Anakin as truly a man divided in ways both literal and figurative: “Anakin’s gone,” he may say. “I’m what remains.” But it’s hard to not see some of Anakin there still even if those lines and that sight are what eventually convince Obi-Wan that his former Padawan is a lost cause: Only an actor of Ewan McGregor’s caliber could pull off the heightened dramatics he’s called to play here.
On the other hand, the Third Sister half of the episode was, let’s just say it, a tad underwhelming, partly because the sense that she’s being fueled by revenge feels played out by this point. But it’s also because, for someone who we’ve seen deploy cruelty with such ease, Third Sister felt rather tame here as she sought out Luke. I mean, what was stopping her from killing Owen and Beru other than the story requires them to survive so we can meet them years later when A New Hope begins? I’ve long felt like Obi-Wan Kenobi was a much more fascinating story when seen through her story—a tale of revenge-turned-atonement that mirrored and inverted Vader’s rather than Kenobi’s own—but this final episode hamstrung her narrative so much that she felt almost superfluous. Especially because we’re not really given any sense of what happens to her. The final scenes show us what Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, and Vader are up to and where and how their stories will unfold (which we knew already! We’ve seen the films, folks!). Yet the one character whose future we have no knowledge of is left in the dust. One wonders if maybe there’s a spin-off in the works? Moses Ingram deserves one, honestly.
I won’t even ask whether any of us needed this six-episode mini-saga. That question feels unnecessary in our IP-saturated media ecosystem. What I will say is I doubt whether the show’s highs (Ewan, Moses, some of tiny Leia’s quips) were enough to warrant its existence. For every time I found myself giddy at seeing certain sights or enjoying a great plot twist, I ended up just as disappointed with some narrative choice or character beat. Perhaps Vader was talking both to Obi-Wan Kenobi and about Obi-Wan Kenobi: “Your strength has returned. But your weakness remains.”
Stray observations
- “You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.” Again, if we can’t love our Star Wars stories when they spout such deliciously and unintentionally self-serious campy dialogue like this, then what are we doing? (See also: “Who you become is up to you.”)
- Speaking of dialogue, so much of it in that final scene was doing some heavy lifting to make sure all Ts were crossed and Is dotted. How else could you explain Obi-Wan telling Leia, “No one must know or we could endanger us both” after telling her she could reach out to him should she ever need his help? It’s a way of letting us know why she knew to call on his help (“you’re my only hope”) when she’s endangered but it also makes it clear why their relationship was almost nonexistent/left implicit in that original film. Also, it was Kenobi who gave her the holster? I know the gesture was supposed to make me grin but it mostly just made me roll my eyes. Sometimes you don’t need every detail to have been planted somewhere else explicitly: Not even her most distinctive piece of wardrobe was of her own making!
- Considering we got cameos from the Emperor and Qui-Gon’s ghost (Liam Neeson!) I’m surprised the creators of the show couldn’t find time to squeeze in other fan favorites for no other reason than they could: Where was our glimpse of Jar Jar Binks? A hint of what C3PO and R2D2 were up to? (Though honestly, it just also made me wonder whatever happened to Lola? If we know one thing about droids is they are resilient! R.I.P. Lola, wherever you ended up!)
- Where will the Star Wars franchise go from here? I can’t imagine we’ll get a second season of Obi-Wan Kenobi (though, really, I wouldn’t put it past Disney/Lucasfilm to find yet another way to extend this story in ways that feel both needless and lucrative). Til then, may the force be with all of us!
393 Comments
The letter-grade ratings aside, I think it’s clear that parts 5 and 6 were the best out of the show. Andrew Stanton needs to do more Star Wars.
What is strange about this is that at Pixar, scripts are read, constructed and deconstructed until all wrinkles are ironed out, by the creative types there, all before a single frame of the movie is rendered. This show allowed so many dumb things to happen, so many plot holes and inconsistencies to remain in the story, it’s unbelievable. Where was the quality control?
Really disagree hard with this review.I know the show has had its issues, but I had a great time with this episode. One of the best finales I’ve seen from these short-run Disney+ shows.I know, continuity is a huge problem here…part of it is that if you come at this from A New Hope, you kind of have to twist your mind around some of the holes. But if you come at it from Revenge of the Sith, I think it was pretty damn satisfying. Especially the entire duel between Obi-Wan and Vadar, culminating in the Hayden Christensen/James Earl Jones moment that essentially allows Obi-Wan to let go thinking of him as Anakin and achieve some peace about the fall of the Republic and Jedi.I also laughed my head off at Obi-Wan’s “Hello there.” And legitimately teared up when Qui-Gon finally appeared.And while I still struggle with Reva’s motivations (the whole ‘kidnap Leia to get to Obi-Wan to get to Vader’ seemed needlessly convoluted) but having her refrain from killing young Luke was a great way of bringing her full circle.I loved Leia’s chosen new look. It felt like an organic way of her growing more into the character we know and love in ANH. And even Beru and Owen had some great moments as well. (Beru was barely even a character in ANH or RotS.)The writing definitely struggled at times. But I also do feel some of the show’s issues (like continuity and no one ever really stays dead) are more Star Wars issues in general, and not just specific to this one TV series. R.I.P. Lola, wherever you ended up!Obi-Wan brought her back to Leia on Alderaan at the end.
I agree with all of this
I also laughed my head off at Obi-Wan’s “Hello there.”So, question: was that EM doing his ultimate Alec Guinness impression, or a straight-out dub?
I imagine the former.He said it at least once during the prequels, so it kind of belongs to both Obi-Wans (Obis-Wan?) at this point.
Thank you!
But she’s not in ANH, is I believe what the reviewer means.
Are you talking about Beru? Because yes, she absolutely, definitely was in ANH.If that’s not the “she” you’re talking about, then I have no idea who you mean.
Lola.
Ah, I get what you’re saying. That was my error.
Lo lo lo lo Lola….
“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. AND LOLA!”
The she was Lola, Leia’s little droid.
Er… where is LOLA nine years later is what the reviewer is asking. C-3PO appears in the first episode, but no sign of R2.Reva gets a redemption arc? She killed innocent people. Her chasing Luke was unnecessary.I hated all the plot holes and inconsistencies, and there were many of those, in every episode, and overall the writing was mediocre at best. Just bringing back beloved legacy characters, including the cute version of one, is not enough. Do better, Lucasfilm.
>where is LOLA nine years later
Leia must have left her behind on Alderaan before boarding the blockade runner. Oops.
Or she outgrew LOLA, when she was a Senator and had R2 and 3PO at her side.
continuity is a huge problem here
It’s only a problem from a certain point of view.
“It felt like an organic way…”You mean Organa-ic way.
Somehow I just knew someone would latch onto that…
“And even Beru and Owen had some great moments as well. (Beru was barely even a character in ANH or RotS.)“Owen was always salty that Anakin and Padme had gotten Beru tangled up in some space sex cult, but apparently she learn a thing or two while she was out there.
really wish they’d just condensed this into a 2 hour movie and released it in theatres. i didn’t exactly like this but less would have been more, straight up. ewan was good, but it all looked and felt very cheap and small-scale. i think boba fett was a worse show but i had more fun hate-watching it and making fun of it than i did passively not disliking this.
I have not watched the show, probably won’t–but when I read this, I thought, YES, I would have loved a 2-hour movie about all this, would have seen it.
they only seemed to have a movie’s worth of content that they stretched out like turkey meat.feels like ‘ewan back as obi wan’ should have been the perfect hook to get star wars fans of all ages back to the cinemas…and yet…
They were planning on a movie, but after Solo was a failure, they changed it to a TV series.YMMV, but I’m happier with it this way. Personally I prefer TV projects to more movies at this point.
glad it hit for you, but i genuinely haven’t ‘liked’ any of the live action star wars tv projects at all. there are ones i like more than others, but i wouldn’t put them anywhere near my favorite tv or my favorite star wars stuff.
Should’ve been done the other way round…
That’s basically been the gist of all the Star Wars series so far, and to a lesser extent the Marvel stuff too. Taking movie ideas and stretching them out to provide content for Disney+.
Hey, I’m not above a good hate watch, but BOBF just made me sad more than anything else.I enjoyed this show on balance, despite some wonky moments. It took some swings, it didn’t always succeed. But, to comment on Disney’s other big SW show, I’ll take that over the safe blandness of “The Mandalorian” any day.
interesting. this felt much blander and safer to me.
That’s fair. At the end of the day, it was still (yet another) SW project that existed mostly to fill in unnecessary details, whereas “Mando” is telling an (at least nominally) “original” story. So, on that level, Mando wins because it at least carries greater urgency, since we don’t know the fate of any of the characters.
could be all that, but maybe it’s just the timing of it all. i didn’t like mandalorian season 1 and i mostly liked season 2, but maybe that just had to do with it being october 2020 and new content was sparse. it’s entirely possible that i could revisit it now and hate it.it’s also possible i could revisit this and like it a lot, but we’ll have to see! whenever a decent fan edit that cuts this down to 2’ish hours comes out i’ll watch it.
i think boba fett was a worse show but i had more fun hate-watching it and making fun of it than i did passively not disliking this.Wow. Have you considered just…not watching something that doesn’t grab you?
i mean it’s a new star wars show i’m always going to be curious about what happens. i do watch other stuff haha.
Same. But I have actively bailed on stuff before. I still haven’t seen the 3rd prequel because, well…
i liked it enough to see what happened but i didn’t like what happened and i didn’t know what happened until after it happened.
Yeah, this really would have worked better as a movie. I think the failure of Solo and the success of Mandalorian nudged them in this direction, but it’s just not a great fit.
Lucasfilm made a perfect TV show for us nitpickers. We’ve been very busy for the past six weeks.
Exactly! This would’ve worked perfectly fine as a movie, and in counter-point, Solo would have made much more sense as a series. I’d definitely be behind several episodes of young Han’s escapades and hijinks and it would have given us ample time to watch him build the relationships with Chewie and Lando which are a lot deeper than that of Luke and Obi Wan, not to mention Leia and Obi-Wan.Disney got it the wrong way round.
One hundred percent, yes. There just wasn’t enough material for six hours. But a re-written, tight, two-hour version of this material could have been promoted as “…a Disney+ movie event…!” or some such thing. Then it all might have had some impact. Alas…
To paraphrase Troy McClure, Disney will churn Star Wars content until doing so becomes UNprofitable.
I will make it profitable.
Wait, when was that holster ever a signature Leia accessory?P.S. “Where was Lola?” You must have been nodding off as much as I was. Lola was in the holster at the end.
I believe the intended question is, why isn’t Lola around by ANH?
Cue “When Somebody Loved Me”, to shots of Lola under Leia’s bed, forgotten.
Hey, don’t laugh. I’m sure we’re going to get a 6-part series that shows that Leia made the tough decision to leave Lola behind on Alderaan when she went off on her missions. And we all know what happened to things left on Alderaan…
I heard from a good source (my own brain) that Rian Johnston’s SW project is going to reveal that the decimation of Alderaan was actually a false flag and the Empire really evacuated all of the citizens to a distant galaxy, and that is where his project will take place.
Hey, if it’s mostly about someone not named Skywalker, I’d probably be onboard.
That… makes sense.
I’m sure there will be a scene in some series or movie where Lola is integrated into R2D2
Easy, Lola was a product of space Apple. There was an OS update 3 months after the show ended, rendering Lola inoperative. Then she was vaporized by the Death Star, just to finish the job.
Too bad Qui-Gon never learned that “shrug off getting impaled on a lightsaber” trick that all the Inquisitors seem to know
Yes, it seems much more useful than the “nag the living as a ghost” trick.
When Qui-Gon said he had always been there, you could tell Obi-Wan was thinking about how many times he’d jerked off in that cave.
“I’ve been here all along Obi-Wan, even when you were polishing your light saber while watching Beru in the space shower”
“I’m beaten Vader twice in my life with lightsabers! I could’ve killed him but I didn’t”“strike me down and I’ll be even more powerful!!!!”Vader strike him down.“Crap, all I can do is whisper in Luke’s ear as a ghost?”
He’s the Uncle Ben of the Star Wars universe.
the guy who makes rice?
The only person who stays permanently dead.
right. Spider-Man. That makes more sense.
Plot armor is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
I, too, hate villains that are hard to defeat. Why can’t our heroes be hard to defeat instead? No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.
I’m not allowed to make a joke now. Sheesh, talk about ironically making your own point!
Revenge is not the Jedi way.
Dark Side users are very good at surviving, while Jedi are very bad at it.
He’s virtually the only person in canon who actually died from a lightsaber injury.
Besides numerous soldiers and a handful of younglings?
The only major character. And the younglings probably received multiple injuries.
The only major character.
Isn’t Han Solo a major character? And Obi-Wan? I mean sure Count Dooku and Jango Fett aren’t really major characters, but still.
Han Solo’s death was not in a combat situation, so the usual rules don’t apply.
Little fuckers should have been tougher.
Based on this show I’m not convinced that any of those soldiers or younglings are actually dead.
Dooku?
Ah, Dooku suffered technically TWO injuries!
Jango, then
Continuing to poke holes in what was clear a facetious comment isn’t really a great use of your time.
I haven’t even gotten to all the times a non-droid got lightsabered out of existence in the animated shows!
Are we sure that Jango is actually dead? There’s a good chance a bacta tank could clear that right up. I mean, that’s no different than what we saw with Darth Maul.
So do we put the body in a bacta tank and it regrows its head, or do we drop the head in a bacta tank and it would regrow its body?
Insert “why not both” meme here.I mean, we never actually SAW how the cloning process worked on Kamino, did we? Those aliens just gave Obi Wan the “disney” tour of their facility. I imagine where the real cloming takes place is just a bunch of bacta tanks and some dudes cutting up previous clones of Jango Fett like planaria.
That’s not even remotely true…did you see Episode 3? Did you see Clone Wars? 🙄
Doku’s decapitated head disagrees
Not to pile on the “clearly facetious comment” but did that belligerent asshole in the Cantina die when Obi-Wan chopped his arm off? I genuinely can’t remember, though I assume there’s a whole series of spin-off novels about how he got the death penalty in so many systems.
No, but he did lose his job in that architectural firm.
Maul got cut in HALF and (dumbly) survived.I think what we’re learning is that a sword that immediately cauterizes the wound it makes isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be as a lethal weapon.
Well since the Jedi only use it for defence is it truly meant to be a lethal weapon?
Anger and thirst for revenge, two things Jedis lack. No wonder they became easily extinct.
Yes too bad Qui-Gon didn’t channel the dark side to cling to life, like a true hero. All he got was being able to retain his identity in the afterlife, bah.I’m convinced most people are too cynical and/or stupid to enjoy Star Wars.
I was hoping for some more explanation on the Grand Inquisitor’s survival, like “Haha you stabbed me in the wrong place, my vital organs are actually in my butt. Remember that the next time you want to kill me.”
or Obi in A New Hope!
Reva had machine parts which she received years later after the younglings were killed. The Grand Inquisitor has machine parts too. He had his parts repaired. Reva didn’t and that’s why she is limping and struggling. Also the Sith will to live and need for revenge makes them fight harder to live on. Jedi don’t get revenge. They accept their fate. I just destroyed your cynicism.
A Sith will to live is stronger than a Jedi. Since Sith’s want Revenge. A Jedi is more willing to accept their fate.
So nobody else was momentarily baffled that Reva just shows up on Tatooine walking and talking like she didn’t get run through with a lightsaber last week? And this is in the same span of time where the Path ship is still trying to escape Vader’s destroyer? I thought I’d missed an episode.
I was utterly confused by that. Then when they hit that duel, I suddenly started wondering if the show was going to pull a misdirection and actually have those things happen at different times and have Kenobi swoop in to save Luke. But nope, it was concurrent again, although apparently Tatooine was just right next to where they were considering how long it took to travel back there?
Obi Wan is able to get to Tatooine in what is essentially an escape shuttle (albeit one with hyperdrive) in about 4 minutes.Hey, since the escaping Path members had a hyper-capable shuttle, maybe they could have crammed all the refugees in there? Or cannibalized it for parts to fix the other hyperdrive?It would have been better if Obi Wan jacked Vader’s shuttle, leaving Vader to stew in it for a while.
It legitimately hurt my head how stupid that whole sequence was.
Although it was also hilarious that Vader was apparently so committed to just dealing with Obi-Wan alone, after having his star cruise try to blow up Kenobi’s ship, that he also ordered the star cruiser to leave the planetary orbit?
Plus, Vader’s obsession with finding Obi-Wan is no longer a thing nine years later. Glad the Emperor gave him other assignments. Imagine spending all that time in his Palace in Mustafar, all alone, just being pissed off. As if villains do that IRL…
You’re being insanely obtuse. Vader is terrified of Palpatine, that’s why he drops the Obi-Wan subject, but he’s not really over it. And, ultimately, Palpatine doesn’t want Vader to have his revenge because the dark side thrives on anger and hatred.
As you point out, we saw someone survive solely on revenge (and like it or not, this isn’t a new concept in SW). So Vader seething over his hatred of Obi-Wan is much more valuable to Palpatine than another dead Jedi. Remember Palpatine’s biggest trait is his hubris. He doesn’t think Obi-Wan is actually a threat because, as far as he knows, the prophecy has been thwarted, the Jedi Order is finished, Vader is a broken man in every sense of the word, and Vader’s child died with Padme.
Vader doesn’t get the luxury of sitting in his palace on Mustafar (a site Palpatine chose solely to remind Vader of his defeat, because again anger and hatred and all of that) and brood because he’s Palpatine’s personal weapon.
Vader chose Mustafar as his base of operations himself. Palpatine actually offered him Naboo as a world to call his own. Vader went there to bleed his Kyber crystal and found a cave steeped in the darkside like the one on Dagobah and thought he could use it to bring Padme back.
This a great analysis. Nice.
Rebels indicates he’s still interested in Kenobi’s whereabouts. But it also indicated the emperor is too, whereas his scene here shows him telling Vader to get over Kenobi
Just think how pissed he’ll be when the Imperial Senate holds public hearings and there isn’t even *one* Sith there to represent his side!
He can can always abuse the floor Zamboni dudes when they do their rounds…
The Imperial officers are so terrified of Vader that they dare not question his orders, or even make suggestions. Like “why don’t you go and chase Obi-Wan in a shuttle, and we’ll continue pursuit of the rebels in our Star Destroyer? Then we’ll achieve both objectives.”
I get that Star Wars isn’t Star Trek and the right amount of time for interstellar travel is “whatever is convenient for the plot.”But I feel like hyperspace is meant to take somewhere on the level of a few hours to get from one system to another. The timeframe of this episode required Obi-Wan to get from one solar system to another in like five minutes, including entering the Tatooine atmosphere at sublight speeds, and I’m not buying it.
Yeah.
That’s how we got the hang-out scene on the Falcon in the original movie, with 3PO playing chess with Chewbacca and Luke getting zapped by a practice drone. Definitely wasn’t instantaneous.
The “dropship” could have held many refugees. I though it was an escape pod. I bet the show’s designers had to redesign that to fit the “must get to Tatooine in the next two minutes” part of the script.
It would have made better sense to have Kenobi use an escape pod, the Star destroyer tracks it to the planet, then Vader arrives on his Lambda-class shuttle, yada yada yada Kenobi steals hyperdrive-equipped shuttle to escape. I can buy Vader getting off that planet by other, unseen means.
The transport had a diesel hyperdrive, while the shuttle’s hyperdrive ran on gasoline.
Outer Rim planets are now a few minutes away via Hyperspace. I mean, Vulcan is five seconds away from Earth, thanks to JJ Abrams.
Abrams also made hyperspace = teleportation. See they “hyperspace skipping” in Rise. (I mean, obviously don’t see that movie again).
She survived the same as a youngling. And the grand inquisitor did in the series. Only qui Gon can’t handle a saber through the gut.
She was bandaged, and was sweating, limping, and breathing heavily. Owen clocks this and hits her in the wound later.
Makes you wonder if people were actually watching or just raging because things weren’t happening like they wanted
Seems the author of this article falls into the latter
nope, show was terrible
Raging and barely paying attention so that they could rush to the internet and snark. It’s the Star Wars fan way.
They did the same thing with Force Awakens and Kylo’s fight, where they show that he’s bleeding heavily because he was shot with a crossbow, thus Rey could beat him.
Why not both? I didn’t want anything to happen specifically. Just some consistency and logical thought to the writing.Defend how she survived getting run through with a light saber. Unpossible. Defend how, despite that injury she hopped a ship to Tattoine, hit up a village to ask about a farmer all while a caravan of Imperial ships was STILL pursuing a ship seemingly minutes after takeoff. Also unpossible. And ridiculous. Writing should keep us engaged, not take us out of the story with improbability.
Well, she’s not going to bleed out because the wound is instantly cauterized…. however, her stomach and surrounding organs would be instantly destroyed. It seems like it would be an incredibly painful death, and I don’t know how any human could logically survive a wound like that for an hour let alone a couple days of walking, traveling and ultimately fighting.
What I wonder about is just how many people out there think giving someone a limp and heavy breathing is an adequate signpost for having had their internal organs melted for a good solid 20 seconds or so.
I get that she’s hurt. But we’re seriously just skipping past how she pulled her guts together enough to get to Tatooine DAYS ahead of Kenobi?
Plus, the series’ whole thing of nobody ever checking to see if their defeated opponent is really dead was just a bad joke by this point. And then it happened AGAIN with Darth v Obi 1.3!
They got there the same day, she beat him by hours not days. And Obi-wan obviously didn’t think he killed Vader, nor did he want to. Anakin is dead, and Obi-wan won’t kill Vader in cold blood. Not a very Jedi thing to do. Better to let Vader keep punishing himself and wallow in self-hatred. Really his own worst enemy.
you nailed it
Wounds. She had a whole in her front and also a hole in her back where a lightning hot light saber drilled right through her. She shouldn’t have even been able to apply a bandage.Vader left her for dead. Then Obi Wan for dead. Who is this merciful young Vader?
1) Fair: wounds, plural. I dunno, it’s Star Wars? If the lightsaber cauterizes everything (which is inconsistent, and has been since ‘77— sometimes there’s blood and sometimes not), and it doesn’t hit anything vital, I suppose it’s possible for the average person to survive, let alone a dark side user. Ever since Maul got sliced in half and lived (which was Lucas-approved, like it or not), it’s been a thing. Or even before that in III when Palps was talking about using the dark side to cheat death.
2) Not merciful. Arrogant. Overconfident.
She was very obviously injured and barely hanging on. Did you hear the pain when Owen smashed her in the abdomen?
Hate keeps darksiders blood pumping. See Anakin/Maul/Grand Inquisitor straight up said revenge does wonders for the will to live.
One thing SW has shown us in general is that a lightsaber is supremely ineffectual in most cases. Apparently in this galaxy nobody has organs.
It was ridiculously contrived, but a perfect summation of this show
But how did Reva leave the planet? She was left for dead and certified a traitor so it’s not like the Empire abandoned her shuttle too. Where’s the Star Destroyer? Why didn’t it blast Obi-Wan’s small ship into oblivion? Plot holes and inconsistencies? Lucasfilm promised the greatest TV show evah!
I thought the show overall was a mixed bag but this complaint is absurd. You shouldn’t need every bit of information fed to you piecemeal. The issue with fast travel in something like Game of Thrones is that it was established in the first season that traveling from North to South in Westeros is something that takes weeks with hundreds of people traveling by road and more than a few days for a small group going by boat.But SW doesn’t have those kinds of logistics. We see in Empire that Luke is able to leave a backwater planet like Dagobah and be in Bespin in a few hours at most, because this is a world where hyperdrives are a thing. So, presumably, Reva stole a ship with a capable hyperdrive, which are not rare commodities in the SW Universe. You understand the idea of pacing right? That some things wind up not being featured because they hurt the flow and progression of a story, so the creators trust viewers to fill in the gaps on their own.
This particular issue isn’t one of pacing or not bothering to show the journey a character took. This episode picked up right where the last one left off. Vader is following the Path ship that had just taken off. Obi Wan decides to take off on the shuttle, he fights Vader, and as soon as he gets back in his ship he detects that Luke is in trouble, which shows this was all happening concurrently. So in that same time Reva gets to Tatooine and then waits till nightfall to attack? A nightfall that the characters on the show made sound like was a signifcant time away. Was Vader chasing that ship, ineffectually shooting at it, for hours? Because otherwise the timing doesn’t make sense.
As a viewer, I would have guessed Jabiim was an isolated and uninhabited planet with no settlements, so if Reva was left to die there, there was no way for her to leave Jabiim. If there had been settlers there, sure, she could have stolen a transport with a hyperdrive.
You could easily see that she was injured. She wasn’t moving well and kept wincing. Also during the fight with Owen he hits her in the stomach and realises that she is carrying an injury there and continues attacking the same area.
Even when she starts running she is showing its hurting her.
Obi Wan was being burned alive, and a few hours later he’s fine running around in evil villain lairs. Bacta tanks do wonders, I guess.
They do wonders for everyone but Vader oddly.
A lot of people on this tangent need to look up the definition of “momentarily.”
This totally took me out of the episode. I couldn’t get over how dumb and stupid and improbable and unlikely it was. Are the writers lazy? Do they think we’re stupid? Are they just so arrogant it doesn’t matter?
Vader left his saber in her for a long time, too. Think back to what Qui Gon did to that blast door in The Phantom Menace with the same move. Unmelted internal organs, who needs them?
“like she didn’t get run through with a lightsaber”…except for the part where she’s holding her side likes she’s been stabbed. And the part where Owen jabs his hand into the wound to much greater effect than he should be able to have over a force user.
MOMENTARILY.AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EPISODE.NOT HALFWAY THROUGH.
A space wizard did it
She has machine parts. How do you think they fixed her the first time she got stabbed with a lightsaber as a Padawan? Think people!
“Warrant its existence”
Fuck all the way off.
I don’t really know with this show. For me, ultimately the larger character arc did sell on why it was necessary. This was that bridge between who Obi-Wan was at the end of the prequels and who he was at the start of the New Hope while giving his story with Vader a sense of closure even if it would come ahead in the future. And McGregor was great in the role.
However, the story just constantly had staggeringly stupid beats that just required things to happen without any thought. I mean, Jesus Chris, just in this episode how long was that star destroyer following that ship considering that the Third Sister had enough time to get back to Tatooine and track down Owen? Who also turns out to be the only person with that name on the whole planet. Also I did start laughing when the Empire vessel could only chase Kenobi or the refugees as apparently that huge ship didn’t have any Tie fighters or any other ships they could send after the refugee ship.To me, however, that final fight between Vader and Obi-Wan was such an example of what this show could have been and what it was. The fight for the most part was awesome, to the degree that I could even roll with Vader suddenly being just convinced that Obi-Wan was dead and start to walk away without a body. Then the final dialogue had so many great beats and I was getting chills before Obi-Wan just turns and walks away. I guess just striking down one of the greatest monsters in the Empire would been below him, especially since he got the victory that mattered the most: The moral victory, which will surely comfort Vader’s future victims.
I mean, Jesus Chris, just in this episode how long was that star destroyer following that ship considering that the Third Sister had enough time to get back to Tatooine and track down Owen?That whole bit did feel incredibly Last Jedi.
There were just stupid moments throughout the series. When Kenobi and Leia are running through the hallway in the underwater base and Kenobi shouts, “Hide!” to Leia… It’s a hallway. There is nowhere to hide. When Vader and Kenobi first fight and Vader drags Kenobi into the fire and Tala… shoots a stormtrooper and not Vader… and continues to NOT SHOOT VADER. And nobody seems to want to run through or around the fire to get Kenobi. Just dumb.
I think these things hit on my big issue with the kind of stupid this show was. I can handle when things need to be stupid to move things along, and here it certainly was that, but it often felt unnecessarily stupid. Like you only need to do a couple of changes to reduce the level of stupidity, but the show didn’t. Which gives this weird sense of laziness.
Yes. It was so lazy that even though I was only half paying attention as the series wore on (because it was so stupid, an lazy…) I would immediatley come up with 2 or 3 simple changes they could made to hit the same story beat. At times it really seemed to be aimed at a kids, like an old Saturday morning cartoon.
Don’t forget this show had characters just leave people to die FOUR times without making sure they’re actually dead.
I mean, why would a military facility have large, panoramic windows underwater to begin with, let alone a lack of watertight bulkheads (“this won’t hold long”) in the event of flooding?Still, I enjoyed the series far more than the author. Much better than Boba Fett/Mando.
This is a VERY good point. I briefly worked in a building in which they designed and built missile guidance systems and there was not ONE window in any of the buildings. (It was super depressing on so many levels)
Star Wars has always lived by Saturday morning cartoon rules
I mean, why would a military facility have large, panoramic windows underwater to begin withSo the kids can see the fish when it’s “bring your children to work day”.
The Empire may be terrible, but it’s worth working for them for all the perks.
Indeed. Vader on his shuttle following Obi-Wan, sure. Star Destroyer gives up following hated enemies of the Emperor escaping in a rustbucket? WTF?
Vader is in charge on that destroyer. When he gives an order, nobody disagrees with him. If he says “forget the refugees, go after Kenobi” they’re going to say “Yes, Lord Vader.”This series has been clear on Vader being obsessed with finding Kenobi. He literally says this in a previous episode. Given the choice of chasing Kenobi and chasing the refugees, he’s going to choose Kenobi every time.
I still find it completely unnecessary, and didn’t find any of the character arcs to ge good. I do agree however, that the Obi/Vader fight was great. I just wish they didn’t keep cross-cutting it with the Reva stuff. For me this was the best episode, in the sense that the fight scene was mostly successful in distracting me from the regular barrage of distractingly dumb (and avoidable) plot contrivances the series kept foisting on us. As to the characters, Reva ended up being the most disappointing. They either should’ve made her the main antagonist, and left Vader out, or not include her at all. I mean, it was right there. Her arc was basically Anakin in reverse, created by the Jedi Order and Obi Wan’s failures, but her couple minute redemption scene felt unearned. If the focus of the series was her and Obi Wan, then both characters could have had interesting arcs. Reva felt abandoned by the Jedi. Obi Wan was abandoning the Jedi and felt hopeless. Her eventually turning from the dark side would leave Obi Wan in the same essentially “hopeful” mindset he ends up at the end of this series, and be a standalone story.Instead the SW D+ series just cannot help but inject main characters from the movies and make the stories feel smaller and make the plot inevitable. If the only character you knew had to survive the series was Obi, then the fates of new characters still contain some drama. When your series has 10+ characters that you know aren’t in any peril, then the narrative becomes a tiresome exercise of, “how do we make it feel like there are stakes here… when there are no stakes here,” and all the contrivances that come with that, which the writers of this show clearly cannot handle. This insistence on shoehorning existing characters in leads to the idiocy of Reva’s “redemption arc.” She now knows everything regarding the Skywalker lineage and is still alive. Obi thinks she’s cool now since she couldn’t cut down a kid, even though he saw her maim adults and only not kill some because other Inquisitors held her back. And Obi decides this, now desperate person who has to go on the run, is completely safe with this info. It’s not an interesting wrinkle, it’s a dumb and unnecessary and completely avoidable wrinkle that messes with the original films. Much like the fights with Vader and Obi Wan. The fight in this episode was neat, but Obi Wan ends up kicking his ass… and walks away. It only succeeds in making some of the dialogue from the original trilogy, and Obi Wan’s demeanor towards Vader, make no sense. All this stuff would be avoidable if LucasFilm didn’t seem dead set on forcing well known characters into these series. It’s particularly baffling considering that Mando S1 was a massive success without making it revolve around legacy characters. Then is S2 they made much of it revolve around legacy characters.
Exactly my thoughts – OH, so all of the death stars and planet destruction and killing of billions of people could have been prevented if Obi-Wan had just cut off Vader’s head at the end of this episode – well, at least he had the high ground. LOL. I guess the case could be made that it’s all the emperor’s plan anyway and there’d just be another Vader in some other form regardless but still, that was pretty weak. I was dearly hoping there’d be some other macguffin to end that fight other than just “kenobi walks away”.
“the Third Sister had enough time to get back to Tatooine and track down Owen? Who also turns out to be the only person with that name on the whole planet.” In the first episode when Reeva is hunting the runaway Jedi, she interrogates Owen and asks him his name. So when she hears from Bail’s recording that there is an Owen on Tattoine she would think that was him.“the Empire vessel could only chase Kenobi or the refugees as apparently that huge ship didn’t have any Tie fighters or any other ships they could send after the refugee ship.” Of course Vader could have split his resources to chase both Kenobi and the refugees. But the whole point of this series is how obsessed Vader is with finding Obi-Wan. He literally said in a previous episode that “Kenobi is what matters”. Given the choice of chasing Kenobi and chasing the ship of refugees, he’s going to choose Kenobi every time.
This was a badly written …
Dumbest possible way to end it with Leia, by far. I was expecting a Jedi hand wave and a “hey dad, who was that?” as his ship flies away. Not “Hey Leia, if you’re ever directly asking for my help in taking down a fascist empire………….pretend like we don’t know each other! Oh and one more thing, show zero emotion when you see me killed on the Death Star later on in our lives. K, thx byeeee.” And hey, great thing Vader’s Star Destroyer left orbit when Obi-wan was leaving the planet…maybe they went to go pick up the TIE fighters they should have deployed while chasing the ship earlier on in the episode?! This whole thing was just so frustrating…and ultimately pointless.
“Also, it was Kenobi who gave her the holster? I know the gesture was supposed to make me grin but it mostly just made me roll my eyes. Sometimes you don’t need every detail to have been planted somewhere else explicitly: Not even her most distinctive piece of wardrobe was of her own making!”What are you talking about? Leia never had a signature or otherwise distinctive holster at any point. The only time she wears one, IIRC, is in Return of the Jedi, when she’s in full commando attire.
I’ve seen people mention that the outfit and holster is a look she rocks in certain comics and relates to her rebellion days? Seems like a deep cut. I’m okay with taking it more symbolically as Leia learns the value of sacrifice to fight the bad guys.
Exactly, it’s just supposed to be symbolic of her future as a fighter.
I’ve seen those comic book covers. She certainly is wearing A holster. But if it’s supposed to be the comic holster, that’s literally the dumbest connection of all time. I can’t imagine that the writers of this show were thinking about that even a little.I think Manuel invented this whole holster thing completely out of his head. In his defense, SW does this kind of pointless “origin” crap all the damn time (it was 90% of the Solo movie), so it’s reasonable that someone might eventually confabulate one out of thin air.
Feels like the whole “Han’s dice” shit from the Disney Trilogy.
I always thought “Darth” was a title within the SW universe…Darth Vader, Darth Sidius, Darth Maul.
So when Kenobi utters “Goodbye…Darth” I snort-laughed, because I would have thought addressing him as “Vader” would have been correct.
Yet I recall in ANH Ben addresses him as “Darth”. So…do you just say “hey Darth” to any Darths, and if there are multiple Darths in a room, does this cause confusion?
The person upthread who said that a sequel to Revenge of the Sith is different from a prequel to the original movie had the right idea. It’s pretty clear in the original movie that “Darth” is supposed to be Vader’s first name (even then, it’s kind of funny that Obi-Wan would be is on a first-name basis with his archenemy, but that might be the Japanese influence). It’s also ambiguous whether Obi-Wan was waiting around Tatooine for his friend’s son Luke to visit him, or if it’s a coincidence. That ambiguity gets at the larger ambiguity of what exactly the Jedi Knights were in the original movie. Obi-Wan has a badass sword and some low-key mental powers, but the idea of the Jedi as a fairly small group of telekinetic superhumans didn’t emerge until later. It’s all to say that the original movie is an awkward building-block.
Well in the A New Hope Obi Wan mentions Darth Vader was his pupil berfore turning to the darkside, and also that Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy
Palpatine also clearly has another name so I get the other reasons why he isn’t Anakin anymore, but in world, it never seemed like it would be odd for him to be Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader. And Obi-Wan would know this because they knew Darth Maul was Darth Maul?All that said, this is also a universe where Kenobi still needs to be establish as a boring, common name or everyone needs to accept Luke is dumb for being like “do you think Obi-Wan and Ben Kenobi could be the same person?!”
I hope at some point they clarify why Luke starts openly using the Skywalker last name if they want him to remain hidden.
Which again to me serves as a reminder that the I am your father reveal was never planned until Empire because an easy fix would have just been to have that be Owen’s last name too or to just never mention Owen and Beru’s last name. It doesn’t work with the prequels etc. But if that had been an actual plan, they would have covered for it.
I think the only thing that could work is if they did give him the Lars last name, but Luke on his own discovers his real last name somehow and insists on using it.
Woulda made more sense even if it wouldn’t have sounded as cool.I mean, I’m pretty sure he just straight up knows Anakin is his dad. He just doesn’t know he’s alive. I can also buy that the Dark Side clouds your vision so Darth Vader wouldn’t notice, but surely every other person good and bad out there would be like “hey someone named Skywalker is on Tatooine should we check that out?” Unless you establish Skywalker isn’t an unusual name.
Having a secret identity name like “Luke Lars” is much more of a Marvel thing.
Or in Jedi Darth Vaders real name was never revealed as Skywalker but something else. Would of helped with the great big plot hole!
Maybe Skywalker is like Smith on Tatooine.
My headcanon is that Skywalker is a slave name.
Palpatine had a ‘non-Darth’ name because he was trying to hide his nefarious intentions. Wasn’t that the whole reveal of the prequels?And as boring as it sounds, before Darth Maul was Darth Maul, he was just Maul. Like Madonna.
Just assume that “Kenobi” is the “Smith” of the Star Wars universe.
I took it has a heavy dose of sarcasm from Kenobi, like mocking Vader into thinking he was not as good as a real Sith lord
Obi Wan’s sole use of “Darth” stands out in the context of the rest of the franchise and its use here was clearly meant to massage that a bit.There’s absolutely nothing wrong with calling someone by their title, though.If you were a duke and someone called you, “Duke”, well, that wouldn’t be weird, would it?
Yeah, exactly. I never thought this was a particularly sticky question. If he was Captain Vader it wouldn’t be weird to call him “Captain.” Certainly plenty of people call Leia “Princess” with varying degrees of familiarity.Obi-Wan addressing Anakin by his “title” here actually works reasonably well, as a bit of glum resignation regarding his former friend’s new role.
In STAR WARS (1977), there’s plenty of folks addressing him as “Lord Vader.” Indeed, in the original version of the end credits, the character is listed as Lord Darth Vader.
It’s one of those cumbersome old fashioned titles, like “George Gordon, Lord Byron,” or “Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville.”So the full title is “Anakin Skywalker, Lord Darth Vader.”
Kinda like Anakin and Vader being different people, “Darth” as a title hadn’t been decided yet in ANH, so that line always sticks out in hindsight. I gather this is the writers finding a way to make it work from “a certain point of view.”
‘”Kinda like Anakin and Vader being different people, “Darth” as a title hadn’t been decided yet in ANH, so that line always sticks out in hindsight. ”’If you go by the documentary of how George Lucas conceived Star Wars in advance of filming it as a multichapter book. He had to have some planning in advance to already have his book waiting in the wings to be filmed. Perhaps from the get go he viewed it as an honorific.
My head canon has always been that Obi-Wan calls him just “Darth” as a jab at him for losing his identity and becoming a Sith.
This is always how I’ve felt. I always though Obi Wan used it almost mockingly.
I think that’s the common fan-interpretation, and I suspect is the intent in this episode.
In the movie STAR WARS (1977), Ben refers to “a young Jedi named Darth Vader.” It was his given name, at least until the prequels retconned it as a Sith honorific.
Subsequent movies revealed that Obi-Wan was a compulsive liar during the most famous exposition scene in history. But we must now interpret that scene in the context of all the information that’s been filled in.Obi-Wan has spent 19 years trying to figure out how he can explain Luke’s Jedi heritage and begin his training, without simultaneously telling him that his biological father is space Hitler, while also preparing him for the reality that space Hitler will take a special interest in Luke once he reveals himself to the galaxy.So, that’s what Obi-Wan settled on. He establishes Darth Vader as a villain in Luke’s personal story (“a pupil of mine before he turned to evil” who “betrayed and murdered your father”), but does not get into the convoluted mythology of the Sith or note that “Darth” is actually a title and not a first name. Luke gets it — Darth Vader is bad news and he’ll probably recognize the name Skywalker.Obi-Wan got the job done. Luke wasn’t ready to hear the full truth in the cave. He wasn’t ready on Bespin.
Return of the Jedi: “Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.”
I’m Star Wars Orthodox. I’ve never accepted ROTJ as “A” canon.
Well, okay. But Kenobi is clearly keeping the identity secret here, in the grand tradition of wizard guide not telling chosen one hero everything they should know. And the full quote can be pretty directly tied to the dialogue in this episode, too. “A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.”Feels like Kenobi is spinning a half-truth, using Anakin/Vader’s own declaration that Vader killed Anakin and just leaving out the part where actually they’re the same person. The Lord thing…idk, man, maybe the power crazy autocrat with insecurity issues tacked another title on because he liked being called Lord too? It’s not like we saw any evidence of how he demanded ridiculous standards of obedience and fealty at all times or anything.
Doesn’t Palatine give him the Lord title in Episode III?
As someone who saw ANH in the theaters in 1977, I can confirm that for the next 3 years Vader was repeatedly referred to as “Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith” (in the comics, toys, books, articles, etc).
Yes, but when Kenobi had said “…a young Jedi named Darth Vader…. He betrayed and murdered your father.” Theres no indication he’s using “Darth” as a name or an honorific title at all. The only point to that line was that (whether wholly preconceived or not) that ‘his father’ and Darth Vader were separate “people or identities”.And this is, of course, the interesting retconning reason for Vader’s line in this episode to Ben “You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.” Because it (retroactively) informs Kenobi’s “certain point of view” as told to Luke – and makes it into *Anakin’s/Vader’s* point of view, rather than (what we have always assumed to have been) *Kenobi’s*. That’s actually an interesting layering through new context, which I appreciated.
I have to think that even a hick farmboy like Luke would know that if “Darth” means you’re a Sith, you can’t also be a Jedi.
This was done to align with how Kenobi referred to him in ANH. It plays like a dismissive title.
It’s like if someone said to General Kenobi. “Goodbye, General”.
He doesn’t see him as Anakin anymore, the “you didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker, I did” sealed it. So he calls him by his title because that is all that remains. This was Obi-Wan truly believing that Anakin is dead and he’s more machine now than man, twisted and evil. This was the connective tissue that was needed from Revenge of the Sith “You were my brother Anakin, I loved you” and ANH cold confrontation. (once again this is based upon retcons ontop of retcons from the ‘77 mention of Darth to now but like all Star Wars retcons it all kinda works)
It was said with disdain, genius. Obi-Wan has no respect for his title.
You were right to laugh. I think he was mocking “Darth” by calling him that. Anakin was always keen on winning, and as humble as Obi-Wan is he won because of love. Anakin is “dead” and what is left he feels not only pity, but joy he has love and light from Anakin’s children (the good thing to come from Anakin) that “Darth” doesn’t deserve to have. Remember, he told 10 year old Leia he wished she was his daughter.
It would be like addressing someone as “Captain” or “Sarge.”
Kenobi is never going to respect that title, especially as it replaced his apprentice’s real name. But also because Lucas made all this up as he went along. I guess it’s a title like Lord.
You’ll notice that the Sith and the Imperials will always use the term Lord Vader, not Darth. That’s similar to how you address a British noble as “Lord so-and-so” instead of Baron or Duke, and the Queen as “your majesty.” It’s an honorific. So, I can buy Obi-Wan calling Vader “Darth” as a sign of contempt for what Anakin Skywalker has chosen to become. “Yeah, see you later, ‘Duke.’”
The Sith are just a legend by the the Phantom Menace begins and maybe Obi-Wan isn’t up on their naming rules. He may just think his first name is Darth now.
“So…do you just say “hey Darth” to any Darths, and if there are multiple Darths in a room, does this cause confusion?”Mandatory: I’m seeing double! Four Darths!
Holy Shit! Youtuber makes the Obi vs Darth fight even better with John Williams score from Revenge of the Sith. The scene is now more exciting and dramatic and it fits more in line with the journey these two characters have been on. It’s a shame they didn’t go down this route.
Really feels like the final scene between them was a way to smooth over Obi-wan and Vader’s final duel after the prequels, specifically why Obi-wan calls him ‘Darth’ as if it’s his given name and not a title (the real answer was Lucas didn’t have the entire story fleshed out at that point, and this is fine! We don’t need every last incongruence smoothed out)But honestly, I can’t hate it either. Just the spectacle of seeing Christensen in Vader’s costume facing off against McGregor gave me what I actually wanted out of Revenge of the Sith (an entire last act as Vader and him and Obi-wan parting like that, rather than the ‘Nooooooooooooo’ moment).
While it may look cool – and believe me, that was an epic fight – the problem remains that all the characters have to return to their pre-assigned places after the end of the series to pick up with New Hope. So no threat, no risk, not the slightest danger to any participants. Vader will be fine, Kenobi will be fine. Thus, no teeth to the fight.
It did look cool tho.
this fight had more teeth than anything in recent Star Wars. Doesn’t matter that we know where they end up, there were real emotional stakes. It wasn’t set up very well in this series, but Ewan and Hayden sold the real tragedy and drama of the fight. I don’t think there necessarily has to be great change or surprise to engender great drama. Arguably this fight works (despite the lack of focus of the series itself) BECAUSE we know who these people are and where they’re going. There is great tension within the fight and a sort of meta-textual tension for the spectator.
I think the only big sin was allowing Reva to live. Either have her succumb to the lightsaber wound after returning Luke, or have Owen shoot her to preserve the secret. She had an arc, it finished, they didn’t need to keep her around to pop back up in another show or six issue Marvel miniseries. She’s now out there with the biggest secret in the Star Wars universe? It’s too big a thread to leave because the creators are being precious with a new pet character.
(hey, even Solo, though the less we talk about that film, the better) Solo is good
I thought it was great. You expected too much. That was your first mistake.
I loved every minute of this episode, which is how I knew the AV Club would hate it.
edgy stuff! as if this site doesn’t go gaga for mediocrity on a daily basis. as if it wasn’t gushing praise about this show as well for weeks!
Love the show or hate it, but can we do away with this stupid “does it warrant its existence?” bullshit? If this is the new filter in which we judge creative endeavors, I’m taking my ball and going home.
Art can exist and be enjoyed for its own sake, and that’s perfectly okay, the simple fact of giving pleasure to the creator and the viewer is a worthy enough reason itself. However, in total fairness this is the kind of question that creators bring on themselves when they choose to participate in this whole “endless prequel-sequel-legacyquel glorified multi-billion dollar fanfiction” vortex that pop culture seems to reside in these days. Rather than, well, creating something new. Obi-Wan Kenobi can be enjoyed for its own sake, sure, but it isn’t being created purely for the joy of artistic expression and creating a hat where there was no hat before either. There’s a fundamental mercenary cynicism behind it; they’re doing so at least partly because it’s easier and safer and there’s potentially quicker and bigger rewards in bolting your story onto an existing IP rather than creating something entirely new. That’s not to say it can’t still be good or enjoyable, but the more you do it, the more you open yourself up to being questioned about your motives and the end result’s purpose. And, well, if they’re gonna keep adding patches and brims onto an old hat and making part of it only accessible behind a paywall, okay, maybe that’s just how the game is played these days. But they shouldn’t be surprised and affronted when people start questioning if all the additions really make it better or whether they’re a bit pointless and unnecessary and it might be worth just making a new hat. Cynicism breeds cynicism.
Well said, ScottyEnn. We need some new hats. Who’s gonna be our Sci-Fi Sondheim?
When did laser bolt s ever before explode in space and leave smoke trails ?
I noticed that. Smoke in Space. WTF?! Someone has to explain why.
Let’s go back to ‘77 and get an explanation for sound in space! Pew pew!
But we have had sounds in Space since 1977, in every Star Wars movie. This is the first time we’ve had smoke in Space and that doesn’t make sense for any reason. It’s just ridiculous.
It makes as much sense as the smoke. If you don’t like the smoke because it’s new, that’s one thing.
Not because it’s new per se, but because it’s ridiculous. All the Star Wars movies have visual effects by ILM. Why would ILM go ahead with smoke? Doesn’t make sense.
I must not be following. The show had visuals by ILM as well. I’m saying the smoke is just as ridiculous / nonsensical as the sound; it’s just new. You’re saying… what are you saying?
Something that stood out to me during this series, and this is actually a general issue with Star Wars, is that it is so focused on the Skywalker bloodline that it doesn’t really know how to approach the people who actually raised Luke and Leia. I actually think this show did a better job than most with showing both the Organas as well as Owen and Beru as devoted parents, but it always needs to be about the Skywalker bloodline which causes those divertions.Thus, no matter how great the Owen and Beru fighting to defend Luke was, it couldn’t amount to anything as it needed to be about Vader and Third Sister’s traumatic experience with him. The Organas are awesome people, but the message from Obi-Wan was how much Leia was like her biological parents. It’s this balance the SW Universe really can’t seem to find, which here stuck out to me due to how much I liked the adoptive parents.
Well said. Throughout the series Uncle Owen had an interiority to him that made him seem more interesting than the writing allowed him to be. And I know Leia wanted to know about her biological parents, but the people who truly raised her were standing right there, and I was waiting for that sort of realization, because I love that kind of thing. The show had the chance to examine two different adoptive parents and how they too may have shaped Luke and Leia, but at only 6 episodes, they didn’t have the time. (A generous take. The cynical one is they just didn’t want to)
I think they would’ve had more Tattooine if the Mandalorian and Boba Fett hadn’t done that to death already. I was hoping to see more Owen and Obi-Wan interacting than we got.
I enjoyed the Obi-Wan series and I enjoy most of the Disney Star Wars content. Are you enjoying it too? You’re not? Well that’s not a good thing for you. Glad I’m not you. I bet you wish you were like me who’s enjoying Disney Star Wars. It’s sad to read how your comment and how depressed you are over Star Wars not being what you want it to be. You seem angry about it and lashing against producers and actors. Well, better luck next time or just move on from Star Wars. It’s not for you anymore.
Much like Boba Fett, this is a situation of a show everyone thought they wanted. A one-off adventure of Obi-Wan having to save tiny-Leia, awesome. But there is so much story that could be told from this era of Star Wars if we just branched out a little. That’s why Rogue One was relatively successful or Rebels. Because you’re at least dealing with characters that might have expiration dates.A part of me would actually be interested in seeing a Leia show, not because I think I would be surprised, but if you took the actual Skywalker side out seeing how kid Leia goes to teen Leia goes to rebel Leia is actually potentially interesting and she’d be allowed to arc. But filling in gaps of stories that don’t impact the characters isn’t necessary.
I like Rogue One specifically because all the characters don’t get much of a backstory, they were “forgotten” heroes of the Rebellion who did a crucial thing, and then all died. Too many times Star Wars doesn’t just let a character’s story end. I would’ve had Ezra die too in Rebels.
Leia got Lola back when obi wan returned it to her on Alderan. She made a huge deal about it, ignoring obi wan at first. I thought it sort of rude, but that’s kids for ya. Did you watch the episode or just read a synopsis?Also, Solo was the best Star Wars movie that Disney had made. The only reason Rogue One was any good was because the large cast of forgettable characters all died at the end (except K2S0. That droid was the shznit)
“Did you watch the episode or just read a synopsis?”It’s pretty clear that when the reviewer asked what happened to Lola they meant “during the time after this series ended and before ANH starts”. We don’t see Lola in ANH so did Leia outgrow it? Did she leave it on Alderan?
Now we wait to see if Disney will actually have the balls to follow through with more of Reva’s story, or pull a Rose Tico with “The racist fans didn’t like her, and we need to listen to them.”
What do you think they should do with her? I suppose she could join the Path and help them or something. I didn’t have an issue with Moses Ingram’s performance but thought the writing failed her quite a bit. I get the basic concept was to create a character who pretended to be on the side of Vader to get revenge and became corrupted by the dark force in the process. It just was executed really poorly. Maybe if they had chosen to show her backstory from the very beginning, it would have worked better.
Well, we didn’t have to wait long to see the soft bigotry of low expectations and fanboys ranting about their personal racist boogeyman. The character and actress were awful. Hopefully they’ll have the balls to ignore race-baiters and focus on better characters and stories.
Why? This show is ended. Who cares about her character? She got her redemption arc, and she got away with killing people for the Empire.
They made 6 seasons of Xena
Okay… I’ve never seen Xena, so I’m guessing it’s about her and her friends going around killing people.
Xena started out as a villain in Hercules, but changed her ways by the time she got her own show, where she spent quite a bit of time atoning for her sins.She becomes the wandering hero who comes into town when the day needs saving.
Thanks for the show’s description.
One could say the same thing about everyone from the original trilogy and yet…
And here we go…was waiting for this….
I feel like a lot of the prequel bashers, myself included, owe a big time apology to Hayden Christiansen, because he absolutely rocked in this series, tonight’s episode especially. Turns out it really was Lucas’s lousy direction of actors this whole time.
I don’t blame Hayden for his portrayal in the prequels. George Lucas made a lot of actors look awful in those movies. The only actors who put in decent performances are Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid. It’s great that he get redemption as an actor here because he does deserve it.
100% – well, and Christopher Lee. I think it’s the strong theater background and willingness to pick a ~tone ~ and then just ham it up makes those three stand out. There are plenty of other actors in the prequels who have been great in other stuff, but oof. If you watch Hayden Christensen closely in the prequels you can see him trying SO HARD to do something and just not managing to break through the dialogue and directing choices.
IDK, man. He’s had a few decades to hone his craft, so hopefully he’s improved since then.
I don’t see it. What were his best bits of acting?
Ha. Voice of sanity. He was acceptable. Not as annoying as the prequels, yet you barely had to look at him or hear him in this. He was a glorified extra.
When he stood there watching Obi Wan escape after the fire being ignited. The pained expression under his mask quietly said “if only I could do something about this fire…”
Hayden has shown in other movies that he can act. Star Wars killed his career mostly but I think we all knew it was Lucas that is the issue
I liked the previous episode, but felt like this finale dropped the ball on furthering the interesting developments from the prior episode. I thought that one of the big lessons from the 5th episode was that Obi-wan realized that he couldn’t take Vader in a head-to-head physical/force and that the way to win is by not fighting. This sets up nicely their confrontation in ANH, where Obi-wan doesn’t even try to fight him, but is confident that Vader will be fixated on him, allowing Luke and Leia to escape. Then in this finale, Obi-wan kicks Vader’s ass, undoing all of that?I also thought that Obi-wan had come to see the monster that Vader had become and felt guilty for not finishing off Anakin when he had the chance. But obviously that didn’t happen either, and he felt fine about letting Vader keep marauding and killing untold numbers of innocent people.
Good points, both
Yes, exactly. I thought that they’d at least contrive some way for the duel to end inconclusively – giant chasm opening and separating them or whatever – but nope. Kenobi just goes “welp, bye.” He misses a second chance to kill Vader (after just leaving him to slowly burn to death on hot rocks in RotS) and then goes on to encourage Luke to commit patricide to finish doing his dirty work. He’s the worst villain in Star Wars.
I thought when Obi got covered by boulders that’s how their confrontation would end. The show had to contrive some way in which they both survive, so I thought that was going to be, the admittedly chintzy, way they were going to do it. Vader would, inexplicably given his force sense of Obi Wan, just assume Obi was dead. Not great, but that would’ve made a whole lot more sense than Obi Wan recovering to beat the piss out of Vader and then just walk away leaving him alive.As you note, the “lessons” Obi Wan gave Anikan in those intercuts in the prior episode in no way played into this fight. All we’re left with is that Obi Wan was powerful enough to kill Vader… but didn’t because ANH had to happen.
Ian McDiarmid looked more like an old man cosplaying as the emperor than as how the emperor should look. But the man is 77 year years old, so I get it. Just didn’t seem like he had the zeal of the emperor we’d see in the OT.Overall, I give the show 3 stars. And it would have been better pretty much without any of the Reva storyline. That didn’t serve a ton of purpose even if it put the action in place.
It looked like they didn’t even put makeup on him.
He looked closer to ROTJ than the inexplicable Twilight Zone makeup from the prequels, at least.
I liked the idea of Palpatine just looking like that due to the dark side corrupting him, so he has do some sort of glamour spell. But the movie presents it as if the lightning just messed up his face. Why didn’t he just stop?! Same for Rise of Skywalker
Yeah, or that his normal look in the prequels would have been fine— just put the hood on and that’s it— but then over the years the dark side made his skin pale, eyes yellow, etc, as we see in the OT. But the makeup they used in the prequels is just bonkers. One of these looks like a pale, slightly deformed old man (ironic, of course, since he was late 30s), and one looks like a dude with shit all over his face:
He looks like a bleached klingon in ROTS
…following up since it’s too late to edit. Kenobi vs. ROTJ. Much closer IMO.
“ instead had centered on a more probing character exploration of Obi-Wan’s lonesome years in Tatooine” – I was hoping for this as well
Yes, why couldn’t we have had 6 episodes where we watched 45 minutes of Obi-Wan wandering around the desert alone? Captivating!
Like you, I broadly liked the series, issues and all.I think the stupidest part was actually including a young Leia at all. The actress was great, but I just didn’t buy such a magical level of precociousness and wisdom. The holster/outfit at the end really just confirmed it. No-one decides what they’re going to wear when they’re 17 when they’re a child ffs.
If you don’t understand why they made Leia they way they did, you haven’t been watching Kathleen Kennedy for years. Obi-Wan’s exile existed to protect Luke Skywalker who, not to put too fine a point on it, was practically non-existent in this entire series. More woke SW, more grrrl power, more emasculation of classic SW characters, including Obi-Wan himself. But please KK, make little Leia just a miniature version of the grown up Princess and all is well.
Its so exciting to discover that the expansive and exciting Star Wars universe, famous for its realistically lived-in quality, is actually just the same thirty-odd people discussing the same things for their entire lives.
I’ll never get why writers who don’t seem to be fans of beloved franchises are the ones who are assigned to review them.Obi-Wan has had it’s bumps, but I think it did a pretty good job of telling a pretty good little story without breaking continuity. I was concerned about the trajectory of the Disney shows in terms of quality after The Book of Boba Fett fell pretty flat but this series seemed to get things back on track.
Because it generates this kind of controversy!
you don’t need reviews if you have to ask a question that fucking dopey. just consume.
While the show was better than I expected, this finale was bad.https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2022/06/22/is-obi-wan-kenobi-an-obi-yawn/
Why can’t the Grand Inquisitor continue the pursuit in in the star destroyer since Darth took his own craft to Kenobi’s bait?
Why didn’t he put Vader out of the galaxy’s misery? Not slaying Vader when he had the chance again makes Kenobi worse!
Why isn’t Palpatine interested in hunting Kenobi down since he has Inquisitors specifically for this purpose?
Now can we get more Ewok media?
The way this show was written naturally and logically invites nitpicking until the end of time.
They probably did it on purpose as an excuse to make MORE shows to explain those plot holes
“Why can’t the Grand Inquisitor continue the pursuit in in the star destroyer since Darth took his own craft to Kenobi’s bait?”
Because it’s Vader’s ship and he outranks the Grand Inquisitor? If Vader says “We chase Kenobi and let the refugees go” then that’s what they do.“Why didn’t he put Vader out of the galaxy’s misery? Not slaying Vader when he had the chance again makes Kenobi worse!”Because killing Vader there would not be a Jedi thing to do. He would killing a defeated foe, which would be something a Sith would do.“Why isn’t Palpatine interested in hunting Kenobi down since he has Inquisitors specifically for this purpose?”
The Inquisitors’ purpose are to hunt down *all* existing Jedi, and any potential Jedi. Their purpose was never to hunt down Obi-Wan.“Now can we get more Ewok media?”Biggest problem with this finale – no Yub Nub song!
At this point in the streaming multiverse I am just glad to have NEW content. No it was not spectacular or world chantingly great but at least it was NEW content. I liked it. It was OK.
The problem at this point in the streaming multiverse is that there’s TOO MUCH new content to keep up with. If anything, a Star Wars spinoff is as FAMILIAR a thing as can be made.
god that sounds so bleak
You’re exactly the demographic KK relies on to keep peddling her warmed over, made up, canon-ruining bullshit.
“You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.” This must be intended to absolve Obi-Wan of lying to Luke in ANH. The certain point of view it was true from, was in fact Annakin’s point of view!
I prefer the idea of Obi-Wan as a Dumbledore-like manipulator of young men into fighting their wars for them. Last Jedi should’ve had Luke be PISSED that Obi-Wan roped him into a life-ruining mess and now his nephew is fucked too.
Every Jedi is a Dumbledore, each manipulating the next. That’s why bringing balance to the force required getting rid of the jedi as well as getting rid of the Sith.Luke WAS pissed; he noped off to the hermit planet.
Lucas kept saying it was Vader killing Palpatine though. I like the idea of them thinking it’s that, but it’s the end of both orders and a balance of light and dark instead.
R2 and 3PO were on Alderaan and were shown early in the series having to serve/mingle at a party.
Did you see even watch the show? C3PO was in the first episode and Leia lost her shit and screamed “LOLA” when Obi-Wan gave it back to her. Seems like you couldn’t bother to watch the show through your blind hate for it.
When he asked “what happened to Lola?” he meant what happened to her after this series and before ANH starts? She doesn’t appear in ANH so did Leia outgrow her? Did she leave her on Alderan?
You’re really trying hard to hate this ep. It was fun and action packed and was a nice resolution.
Roken (I had to look his name up on IMDB) is clearly being paid by the hour. He’s always saying that things will take hours to fix (hangar door, ship’s drive, etc) yet every time we see him he’s just standing around listening to Obi-Wan’s monologue, or having a heart to heart conversation, or daydreaming of being a competent leader someday.
No one must know or we could endanger us bothI figured they would handle it this way. It’s pretty much the same thing Star Trek: Discovery did with Spock and pre-emptively mocked by the Simpson’s agreement to never talk of things again under penalty of catapult.Overall, I thought the show was largely enjoyable ad unnecessary. It did a better job handling Anakin’s turn to the dark side than the prequels did.
Could have sworn it was the more general ‘torture’, not the inferior to the trebuchet siege weapon catapult.
I’m just glad that was able to sit and watch this filled with happiness and enjoy the show, recognizing it isn’t perfect but not letting that get in the way of the rush of emotions and satisfaction of seeing it all wrap up so well.Of course, the token response to me saying “well, I enjoyed it” was “blah blah blah well it must be nice to have such a low bar for enjoyment har har” or “well ackshually you just have bad taste huh huh…”
All I see in this comment section is dozens of different personalized variations of “well it would have been better/perfect if this had happened instead…”
People make a joke out of it but honestly it’s really true that no one gives Star Wars a hard time like Star Wars fans. To many of them, everyone making it today is an idiot, and none of them are up to the task, the entire thing needs to be reworked, and lets just let the fans and expert YouTubers be consultants on it from now on because then EVERYTHING will be just fine.
“You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.” Again, if we can’t love our Star Wars stories when they spout such deliciously and unintentionally self-serious campy dialogue like this, then what are we doing?
Lucas’ dialogue was definitely intentionally self-serious and campy, and that is why I think that moment was the best moment of the series: it was pure Star Wars, and would have fit perfectly in one of Lucas’ movies! I personally didn’t think there was a bit of Anakin in there. I thought Christensen looked like the devil incarnate.
For the rest, though, ugh… Why did Obi-Wan let Vader live? He totally had him, and he just decided that he couldn’t be saved. And did they really have two different characters survive a lightsaber to the stomach in a 6-episode series? That weapon sure lost a lot of its luster…
It’s a way of letting us know why she knew to call on his help (“you’re
my only hope”) when she’s endangered but it also makes it clear why
their relationship was almost nonexistent/left implicit in that original
film.
The relationship was nonexistent. She called him because he fought with her dad during the Clone Wars, and he died before she could meet him. And the dad in question was Bail Organa, not Anakin, because at that time, she was supposed to be Luke’s love interest, before Lucas decided to retcon her as his sister in the next film. I understand the need we all have to make the movies work together but we shouldn’t have to pretend to see stuff that wasn’t there.Obi-Wan Kenobi is the first time I agreed with the criticism that Star Wars became to Skywalker-centric. I don’t think it’s true for the other shows, but for this one, it was a real problem. We all knew Obi-Wan would survive, and most of us would agree that an Obi-Wan series would need Darth Vader in it in some capacity. But Luke and Leia? This added an unnecessary layer of predictability, and did not make progress any character we knew. I’m glad McGregor and Christensen had a more positive Star Wars experience, but that’s about all the good I can say about this show.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance.” Again and again and again. People never learn. Even Reva gets her redemption, despite being a cold-blooded killer of innocent people.
Yeah, this is why I’d be a grey Jedi. The Sith are obsessed with revenge to a silly and self-defeating degree, but the Jedi just let dangerous mass murderers go based on Goku logic that they learned their lesson or that to do so would be just as bad as being a Sith, when seconds earlier they were decapitating stormtroopers.
The Leia thing is even a bit more complicated than that. Lucas originally planned to keep making movies in the franchise for quite a while, and the “another” Yoda mentioned was intended at the time to be a completely new character who would be introduced in the next film and then be developed for a while before becoming a full partner to Luke. Then a bunch of stuff caused him to decide to end the whole story with the next film, which meant the “another” had to be someone we already knew, and Leia was the one that made the most sense.
The way I heard was that Lucas wanted Han and Leia to end up together, but without Luke (the protagonist and third part of the triangle) looking weak. So making them brother and sister was an easy way of solving that: Han and Leia end up a couple and Luke comes out just fine.
“Why did Obi-Wan let Vader live? He totally had him, and he just decided that he couldn’t be saved.”Killing a defeated enemy at your mercy is not something the Jedi do. That way leads to the dark side.
Exactly. It’s pounded into young Jedi skulls that you NEVER give into your anger and hatred for someone, and you only kill them in self-defense or in response to a direct threat to innocents. In the ROTJ novelization, Luke struggles with this a lot when deciding whether to kill Jabba the Hutt: he knows Jabba is total scum and the galaxy would be better off without him, but Jabba hasn’t really done anything to Luke. When he offers Jabba the opportunity to let Han go and not be destroyed, he’s actually happy when Jabba turns him down, because now Luke has a legitimate reason to kill him (i.e. Jabba’s going to kill Han and enslave Leia, and killing Jabba is the only way to stop that).
I do think this show inadvertently filled in one plot hole: It sort of explains why Leia and Han would name their kid Ben, which was a bit of a head scratcher. I don’t actually know if that was a goal the showrunners had but I’ll take it.
As others have mentioned in the comments for the previous episodes, in ANH when Luke breaks Leia out of her cell and says that he’s here with General Kenobi, Leia says “Ben Kenobi”? So she knows him by that name.
Its impossible to generate any tension when the characters already have a predetermined future.Luke – We know he’s safeBen – SafeBeru – SafeObi Wan – SafeVader – SafeInquisitors – No one cares because they aren’t an integral part of the Skywalker universe.Why they keep focusing on the past with characters that we all already know what their outcomes are is beyond me. THINK OF SOMETHING NEW DISNEY.
“Civilians fending off a powerful Sith with just blasters? Check.”
To be fair Owen and Beru less fended off Reva then they provided a speed bump for her. And that’s with her being hurt and having problems moving.
A hint of what C3PO and R2D2 were up to?Threepio had a cameo on Alderaan at the beginning of the series where he is translating between two aliens in the background at a palace function.
Didn’t love the pacing or structure of this show, but there were enough great moments scattered throughout it to at least justify the exercise. Glad we finally got a scene of Anakin in a half-mask. Come to think of it, with this show’s apparently recurring theme of people being stabbed through with lightsabers but staying alive to pursue revenge… it would have been shocking and effective to have Obi-Wan “kill” Vader in a similar fashion, and actually believe him dead as he walks away… then we’d get the iconic breathing to reveal his suit’s keeping him alive, like a horror movie villain.
Original movie art and the comic book cover featured Leia with a holster (and weapon). Now the tiny little wheels are spinning, I believe the promo stills from the movie did too. Not defending it’s presence… just saying.
This started off with some promise, but there’s no way I can say its anything more than a disappointment. The writing is just flat out weak.Part of the challenge of doing a prequel to anything is the audience knows set outcomes are coming down the road so you have the extra challenge of creating something compelling despite the audience knowing certain outcomes aren’t possible because of set events in the future. It’s possible to do. Rogue One, Clone Wars, Rebels, have all had success. Obi Wan Kenobi failed in this regard.They flirt with some interesting ideas (Obi Wan’s trauma and how he cut himself off from the Force, etc) but they literally never go beyond an idea. In fact, the writing is so weak I’m not sure you can even say what this show is about. It’s just a series of events that happened, many of them completely contrived. It’s so weak that 2 of the 6 episodes have the same plot; Leia is kidnapped and has to be rescued. Ultimately, this show had absolutely nothing to say. It didn’t add any thing to the story we already knew. Those other examples I mentioned enriched the world of the events of the prequels and OT.
It wasn’t a complete failure. McGregor did his usual great job. Vivian Blair was very good as Leia and she’s got a bright future if she sticks with acting. The scenes with Vader looking like a badass were a lot of fun. But it’s not enough to boost the overall grade to anything more than middling. Weak writing and honestly, some poor directing (some of the staging of the larger battles made no sense at all) are just too much to overcome.I’d say the overall series gets a C+. Entertaining in parts, but A LOT left on the table for what could have been
Yes. The direction was TERRIBLE. The staging and action scenes were obviously bad but even dialogue exchanges felt like someone trying to mimic things they’d watched on a screener the night before shooting. The entire endeavor reeks of old rich people in charge of IP handing it off to young, inexperienced writers and directors.
Some of the dialogue is painfully bad. Just as bad or maybe worse than anything Lucas did in the prequels, which plenty of people rag on (some of it justified). Roken, the people associated with The Path, a lot of that dialogue is cringe worthy bland. It’s lifeless. None of them feel like people having conversations, but instead just set pieces necessary to move from one scene to the next.
I have an idea: Let’s cast the delightful comic actor Maya Erskine in this and then give her almost no dialogue or anything else to do.
I have an idea: Let’s cast the delightful comic actor Maya Erskine in this and then give her almost no dialogue or anything else to do.Holy shit, I didn’t realize that was her until I read that.
Agreed. Lucasfilm has an army of keepers and experts of the Star Wars franchise, but somehow all these plot holes, inconsistencies and truly dumb things weren’t found and pointed out before they shot a single frame?How is that even possible?
Someone did point it out but then they gave that person a swirly and then hung him on the Lucasarts flag pole by his underwear.Seriously do not know what can make some Star Wars fans happy. You guys seem to like nothing. Personally this was the best Disney+ Star Wars show and maybe one of the best thing Disney has done with the Star Wars IP. I think it would have been better a two and a half hour movie. It was still tons better then Boba Fett or Mando season 2. I didn’t have to watch four seasons of very uneven and poorly CGI animated kids show to know who half the characters were. Anyways you guys love or hate what you want. I loved this and am happy with it. But please no season 2. It was great and let it be done
To be honest, this show is ripe for nitpicking, especially because Lucasfilm was selling it as the best thing since sliced bread and singing the praises of the show runner. It better than average, even good, but if my teenage son can scream at the TV for inconsistencies too, then I’m sure they could have done better.
It is conventional to say that the audience knowing the outcome is a problem to work around, but it really isn’t. There are entire genres where the audience knows the outcome from looking at the poster. The guy will get the girl. The heist will succeed. Bond will stop the villain. Movies where the ending is intended as a surprise (“He’s dead the whole time!”) are more the exception. The most callow teenager who saw Star Wars back in 1977 [raises hand] knew that Luke would destroy the Death Star. Surprising us with the ending was never the point.The problem is that Hollywood institutionally disparages writing. Having a script is a regrettable necessity but regarded as the least important element of the production. Movies can and have begun shooting without a complete script. It simply isn’t taken seriously. I very much doubt that anyone in a position of authority approached this project as something requiring a thoughtful, well-written script. It had plot point that had to be ticked off and snippets of dialogue to service the fans. Plot holes? Who cares? Good writing does something survive the Hollywood process, but it is a minor miracle every time.
So this is the second time Obi-Wan bested Anakin in a duel and simply left him wounded on the battlefield to the torment and suffering of countless systems to come as a result of Kenobi’s mercy.This alone is one of the reasons why this show shouldn’t exist.
It kind of fits in with the flawed Jedi logic of you’re automatically forgiven for years and years of murdering, torturing, and maiming people for realizing at some point all that shit you did was wrong.
I guess Maul caught Obi-Wan on a bad day?
Or maybe Obi Wan just assumed Maul knows how to recover from being impaled by a lightsaber given multiple Inquisitors were able to and Maul himself survived being chopped in half…
Shhh, don’t give Disney any ideas.Coming in 2023, MAUL: A Revenge Story
2 thingsFirst off, it’s clear Obi-Wan gives into his anger then and it’s not his finest moment as a JediSecondly Maul was still an active threat. Both times Ben bested Anakin his was beaten and defeated and killing a defenseless person is not the Jedi wayPlus of course he wasn’t gonna kill him and any other way they could have ended the fight to would have seemed silly and convoluted. Obi-Wan showing mercy for his former best friend is kinda the best way they could have ended the fight. Honestly I liked this series. Way better then Boba Fett and season 2 of Mando. But I really hope we don’t get second season.
Vader wasn’t an active threat at this point? Kenobi stood by and watched him slaughter an entire town of innocent men, women and children just to draw Obi-Wan out and that was in like episode 2. Showing mercy to his old friend in their final duel of the series is not only foolish but so cruel that even Obi-Wan should’ve seen at this point that sparing him a second time was the final nail in the jedi coffin.Mace Windu was a senior authority on the jedi council and he knew full well when someone was too dangerous to be left alive.Hell, Anakin even gave Obi-Wan a get-out-of-guilt-free pass by confessing that it wasn’t Kenobi that killed Anakin. Anakin killed Anakin.When Kenobi says in RotS that “I will do what I must.”, he meant it then because he saw what he could be come, what he and Palpatine had become. The only reason he didn’t take Anakin’s head then on Mustafar because he had already dismembered him, watched him go up in a blaze along a lava bank. For all intent and purpose, Anakin WAS dead. He just didn’t realize then the resilience of shear hate.If he had no intention of killing Vader the second time, then why face him at all, let alone repeat that same line, “I will do what I must?” He didn’t save anyone by facing him and then letting him go.The whole thing is a fan-service circle jerk.
Still better then Book of Boba Fett
I wish they addressed this, it would’ve been great if Vader asked WHY he wasn’t put out of his misery, and screaming at Obi-Wan to kill him when he again just walks away. Or Qui Gon repeatedly convincing him from beyond that it’s not time for Anakin to die yet.
The idea that Qui Gon is quietly pulling the strings to ensure that millions of planets suffer under the wrath of Darth Vader’s rule is kind of fun.“oh trustme, I know we have to sacrifice Alderaan and various other planets, but we’ll get to balance in the force….eventually”
I was thinking about this… Given that the show has established a pattern of people being stabbed through the torso, presumed dead, and later revealed to be alive, it would have been dramatically effective to have Obi-Wan “kill” Vader in the same way, assuming he’s dead for real this time, and leaving, before it’s revealed to the audience that the suit is still keeping him alive. AlasEdit: just noticed I put this same though in a standalone comment elsewhere in this section. Guess the thought has been continuously rattling in my brain. Show just ended super weird.
Vader is the Gollum of Star Wars. If he hadn’t been allowed to live, the good guys would’ve lost.
When Obi-Wan defeated Anakin in ROTS, he cut off his arms and legs and left him alone and burning alive on the shores of a molten planet. There’s a reason she spent 10 years thinking Anakin was dead.In this episode, he had defeated him, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill a defenseless foe, which is the way to the dark side.
I mostly loved the finale. I think what would have helped the whole show was having 10 episodes. Flesh the story out, make it deeper, give it some room to breathe. Let us see Obi-Wan’s crisis of confidence, let us see him really work to get his strength back. Really build the tension by having Obi-Wan and Ben work towards each other. It would have made those big moments (Obi-Wan fully regaining his Force powers, Obi-Wan fully remembering how to use a lightsaber, the first face to face between the two) so much more satisfying, not that they weren’t! I also would have liked more dialogue between Kenobi and Vader.
It either needed to be cut down to a movie or expanded to 8 to 10 episodes like you said. 6 episodes wasn’t the answer. I feel like there’s enough Vader/Ben content to provided for a movie, but they tried to fill out the rest of the show with the Path and Inquisitor stuff. The problem was they never really fleshed much of that out beyond some token attempts. A few more episodes would have made it feel more grounded in the events of the SW universe than just a vehicle to get Obi Wan and Vader to interact. If they went the movie route, they could have skipped all the Path stuff, did a simple introduction of the Inquisitors (which could build off what we’ve seen in shows like Rebels), have them kidnap Leia and the movie be Obi-Wan tracking her down and ultimately confronting Vader.
There’s a reason this was 6 episodes, and a big clue is the episode titles: Part 1, Part 2, etc. Each episode was paralleling events/the plot/etc from the 6 films (i.e. Part 4 included Obi-Wan sneaking into an Imperial Base to rescue a princess, just like in ANH).
I keep thinking how they missed a great opportunity by getting it so wrong with making Obi Wan Kenobi a series, and Solo a movie. Young Han’s exploits would more than make for a great multi-season TV show. He’s disconnected from the Skywalkers until ep. IV, and could have gone on to many heists and escapades before that fateful day on Tatooine. Also, it would give audiences a lot of time to get used to Alden Ehrenreich’s portrayal of the young Harrison Ford (which, let’s face it, is just as close as McGregor is to Alec Guiness).
On the other hand this Obi Wan story arc would have easily been dealt with as a standalone movie. So much filler…Too bad.
The biggest problem with the Solo movie is that everything we learned about Han’s past in the 3 films – apparently all of that happened to him within the same week.
“Your father’s lightsaber. An elegant weap . . .”“Yeah, yeah. I know. A lady tried to kill me with one of these about 10 years ago. Right before you gave me that toy.”
1) Luke was knocked out when she ignited the saber2) What’s wrong with a “strange old hermit” giving a kid a toy? (Besides the obvious, I mean– but it’s established in ANH that Luke and Ben know each other)
Some good moments in this series but overall disappointing. I think Obi-Wan would have been better served with a smaller scale story that focused more on his PTSD and realizing how to adapt to his new identity while avoiding detection. I think Reva would have been better served if her backstory was told from the first episode and you followed her knowing her conflicted feelings.There was a good story to tell in the muddled mess this ended up being. Maybe it was as simple as having Reva hunting down another Jedi on Tatooine while Obi-Wan debates whether it’s more important to help or stay hidden and protect Luke from afar. Maybe it’s just me. Oh well.
It might have been better if it wasn’t an announced Obi-Wan show.What if it was just Jedi Hunters or Rise of the Empire or some other vague title and we’re focused entirely on Reva and then suddenly baby Leia, Obi-Wan, Luke – That’s periphery, maybe Obi-Wan is the one to help her get to her redemption, whatever. But we’re not just following the characters with the lowest stakes. I’d argue that’s what we all liked about Rogue One and the Mandalorian. People can die. There’s less plot armor. People who seem like villains can become heroes and vice versa. There’s no stakes in a show where Obi-Wan protects Leia because we know they’re going to be safe. Obi-Wan as a piece in a larger story could be interesting because at least everyone else is at risk. Obi-Wan having to rescue literally anyone else could have done the same thing.
I agree with everything you said and had that complaint from the first episode. The entire concept of a character we know survives rescuing a child we know survives while clashing with an old villain we know survives is so boring. There may be good scenes within that boring story, like Obi-Wan fighting Vader, but there is nothing meaningful about the actual events that happen.I personally would go a step even further and say just pick another era of the galaxy to cover. Go do the Old Republic or the distant future when everyone from the movies has passed. Show the Sith war before the rule of two. Like do anything new.
Agreed that I’d love Old Republic stuff!I could go for Obi-Wan and Leia having some buddy adventure, but I think it would have worked better with an older Leia. Like an 11 – 13 year old Leia on the verge of becoming the woman we knew who is morally influenced by Obi-Wan has potential. I commented elsewhere that there’s a lot of story with Leia in terms of how she actually became a woman on diplomatic missions who is secretly super high in the resistance. It would allow for a lot of Padme call backs, and he could have still been old Ben Kenobi. Leia being outraged by Jedi hunters or being the one trying to protect Jedi etc. has some more character potential at least. This ultimately felt a little inconsequential.
Yeah, I liked the promise of Leia and Obi Wan having an exciting adventure from the early episodes. It’s too bad that the series pulled a “Star Wars” in order to pull in Vader and it abandoned that idea in favor of “resolving” the emo Obi Wan/Vader relationship….that frustratingly both starts with the exact way the prequels ended and at the same time resolves with the exact way the prequels ended.
“Begs the question” does NOT mean, “asks the question.” Think a writer should know that.
It was great, actually. A-
They somehow managed to make Qui-Gon’s appearance at the very end as much empty box-ticking as it was when Yoda explained about it to Obi-Wan at the end of the prequels
And endless comments later, we reaffirm that the SW universe is bloated more than a Gundark. You all want it, scream for it, can’t wait for more, and then when you get it, the same tired critical over-over-over analysis.
On the one hand I really don’t think we need a Season 2 of this show. On the other we still have the upcoming Star Wars: Andor Disney+ show. I’m not sure when Ahsoka will be taking place in the Star wars timeline (they could fill in the back story of her childhood). But its pretty clear that both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett take place after if not tangentially in the latter’s case with Episode IV A New Hope. So those two shows won’t be further filling in the gap betwixt the Star Wars movies Episode III and Episode IV.
Darth Maul gets cut in half, survives, people shrug and move on.The Grand Inquisitor and Reva get stabbed and survive, everyone goes “Hold up.”But all kidding aside, Dark Side Force-users are notoriously hard to kill. To be fair, the Grand Inquisitor might have some cybernetics that contributed. But all in all, even before you get into the whole mess with Palpatine, when people talk about the power of the Dark Side, one of the things they mean is surviving what should be fatal wounds (lava, stabbing, etc.) by literally sustaining yourself on your anger and hate.
To be real Darth Maul is blatantly absurd and shouldn’t really be used as a counter example. I think most people shrug and move on is because he was so cool in Phantom Menace and people really wanted to see more, and it was helped that what we got after was generally some of the very best content of the Clone Wars and Rebels.
That’s sort of my point, though, that Maul’s survival is absurd and doesn’t seem to have gotten as much backlash. Though to be fair his showing up on Clone Wars was also before a time when people decided that ‘hating Star Wars’ can be their whole personality.I can’t remember whether his survival had already been established in the EU (I think it was) or if that came later to explain his appearance on Clone Wars, but I recall hearing somewhere that his appearing on Clone Wars was actually at Lucas’ behest. While Filoni wasn’t a fan of the idea he still insisted on doing the best he could with it. I know that Filoni has said that Maul’s arc on Rebels was always intended to build to that last showdown against Obi-Wan, to definitively cap off that story so he doesn’t just persist through the canon across future time periods.
Force users are definitely notoriously hard to kill except when Order 66 is given and then any rando storm troopers can just blast them down immediately.
“people shrug and move on”No, quite a lot of us thought it was incredibly fucking stupid.
Of course this show warrants its existence!
Where else will you find such a perfect example of failing at all levels, from the big (why does Kenobi walk away from Vader again) to the medium (why is it obvious to Owen and Beru that the Inquisitor will attack after dark) to the small (why is Vader lounging in his throne when he talks to the Emperor)?
A terrible dissappointment. Especially since there were a few occasional moments that were so rich and rewarding- how the water-seller not only didn’t tell the Inquisitor what she wanted but is also taking the risk of warning Owen she’s coming, for example.
And the utter clumsiness of how they set up the threads to A New Hope is just the cherry on the wampa turd cake.
Oh well, at least it’s done with. And after all, we all watched, “who’s more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?”.
Speak for yourself, I didn’t watch it!My checklist of all things I’ve ever seen on paid streaming.1. Wandavision (had to take a day off work to watch it at my friend’s place on his subscription.2. Two episodes of the IT Crowd my brother bappened to have on when I was at his place.My claim checks out, it’s not on the list!
Point taken, correction noted, formal apology to follow by post.
1) Mercy (and revenge is a Sith trait)
2) Common sense
3) Why not?
1) If you are not prepared to kill Vader, why challenge him to a duel?
2) Alright, explain it. Why is it so obvious that an Imperial Inquisitor will attack a moisture farm in the middle of the desert after dark instead of in broad daylight?
3) In Empire Strikes Back, Vader kneels to receive the Emperor’s communication. In Return Of The Jedi, Vader kneels to welcome the Emperor on the Death Star, only standing up when instructed, and never sits in his presence. Because he is his apprentice, and Palpatine is his Master.
1) He was prepared to kill Vader. Paraphrasing, but it was something like “one of us will die, but either way, this ends today.” And if it was kill or be killed, I think that would be one thing. But he beat Vader. Vader lost. At that point killing him would have been an execution— like Anakin executing Dooku, which was a step on his path to becoming Vader in the first place. “Revenge is not the Jedi way.” (Like it or not.)
2) The same reason anyone would attack anything under cover of darkness vs. broad daylight? (I can elaborate, I’m just confused by the question, to be honest.)
3) Okay, I’ll give you that one— I admit I forgot the kneeling was a thing. Best I can suggest is since they cut in mid-scene (they were already in conversation), maybe we just didn’t see the usual “Riiiiiiise, my friiiiennnd.”
1) Vader didn’t lose. It wasn’t a sparring match. Vader alive wins. Obi-Wan knows this, he knows what “beating” him and leaving him alive will result in. He’s not doing it for revenge, he’s doing it to save the people Vader will destroy if he’s not stopped.
Look, I get that they were going for a moment like when Luke throws down his lightsaber, but the way it happened just doesn’t make sense. Luke at least got to say “I’m a Jedi like my father before me” so we understand why he’s doing it, they gave us nothing of comparable clarity here.
2) There are as many advantages to attacking in daylight as in darkness. They’re just different advantages. How do the Larses know which advantages the Inquisitor would make?
3) Well, the best Vader can get is to be allowed to stand, then. And suddenly here he’s in the position of superiority.
1) Agree to disagree. “You can’t win, Darth.” Obi-Wan’s act of mercy was in line with Jedi code, IMO. If Kenobi executes Vader, Kenobi loses.
2) What are they? (Honest question.)
3) I can sort of see where you’re coming from re: not being allowed to sit, but it’s never stated that’s a thing, so it seems like personal headcanon to me (which is totally fair!). I guess it visually suggests a power dynamic since Vader is the “larger” of the two and Palps is a small hologram, but of course he’s, y’know… bigger than that IRL. 🙂 Also maybe his feed of Vader was from the chest up? We’ve seen that in holocommunications before. Anyway, clearly it didn’t bug me, but again, to each their own.
Sorry for the late reply, been a hectic few days.
1) I certainly see there’s logical consistency to your take on this, it just doesn’t fully convince me. So yeah, let’s not drive it too far into the ground. After all discussions like this is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors…
2) Less time for the farmers to call on others for assistance, less time for them to organise a defense or getaway, much lower chance of Sand People turning up and throwing everything out of kilter, and, if someone decides to make a run for it, it’s easier to spot and track them by daylight.
3) Not so much headcanon as following standard despotic etiquette from the ancient time to practically today so it kind of instincively made sense to me -the fellow was an Emperor after all. Of course, formalities in a galaxy far, far away don’t have to be identical to those on our planet!
Honestly, if none of this bothers you, that’s perfectly fine, only a Sith deals in absolutes. Heck, I envy you a little for actually enjoying the show as much as I hoped to do!
🙂
Good on you for engaging with someone for so long that thought that attacking a home in the daylight (when everyone can see you coming) was just as beneficial as attacking at night (when everyone can’t see you coming).
I liked the series enough, and I think that’s the point: It was meant to be the type of summer blockbuster that you don’t overthink. In some ways, the story might have been stronger as an adaptation of the JJ Miller novel Kenobi— But I believe they cannibalized too many aspects of that book in Book of Boba Fett. Therein lies the issue with Disney Star Wars: In the desire to rapidly push more content, they’re taking here and there from other properties in the universe. Casual viewers who follow only the live action stuff won’t necessarily notice, but fans who have seen the cartoons, read the books, etc. will feel progressively more disillusioned. Personally, I’d rather see a straight-up film adaptation of some of the really good Star Wars novels than see them brought to the screen piecemeal in ways that make me think the screenwriters just ran out of ideas.
I mean, they take a similar approach with Marvel. They take iconic things from the comics and easter eggs, but then mold it into something that’s not quite the same.I think Star Wars needs its Feige or its Pete Doctor because even Pixar has method to their madness and knows how to nurture things. Maybe it’s Feloni. I mean, he’s certainly done some good work. But they need to just hand it to someone and say map out what the next ten years will look like, give us an outline, give us the properties, put it on a timeline, we won’t start making it until we have that picture clear. Star Wars seems to be taking the tactic of throw everything at the wall including things the fans think they want (Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and Boba Fett) and see what sticks.The Mandalorian is arguably so successful because people weren’t really expecting it or anticipating it. It’s struggled more since introducing Luke and people have had time to latch on.
I feel like there’s a much better potential second season completely divorced from the need to things up for A New Hope where cool guy Ben Kenobi (with some sweet AF desert goggles) just gets up to some stuff, helping people in need here and there before returning to hermitage on Tatooine. There’s also a Vader series that’s just him ganking fools and being cool. I’d watch both!
98% of all problems in the Star Wars universe could have been avoided if dumbass Jedi & Sith would quit leaving people for dead, and actually take the extra 4 seconds to kill them.
I wasn’t expecting this to be as good as the original trilogy or anything, but I was hoping for at least the same quality as The Mandalorian. Instead, this show managed to be mediocre from start to finish, with surprisingly low production values that at times reminded me of the Arrowverse shows.Maybe Deborah Chow just wasn’t ready for a project like this. I wonder if Bryce Dallas-Howard, whose Mandalorian and even Boba Fett episodes were all great, would have done a better job with the same material.
“R.I.P. Lola, wherever you ended up!”She was in Leia’s holster while they waited for the ship to land at the very end.
I wasn’t sure about that, so I just rewatched the scene. Lola is in the ship with Obi-wan when he arrives, and she floats out. Leia exclaims “Lola!” and runs over to get her. There’s a shot of her saying “I missed you” to Lola while Obi-wan talks to the Organas. Then Obi-wan goes to talk to Leia and at that point Leia has (off-camera) put Lola in the holster.
They meant where did Lola end after this series ended and before ANH starts. We don’t see Lola in ANH so was she back on Alderan? Did Leia outgrow her and gave her to another child?
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s finale feels like a rerun of Star Wars hitsIf only it were that good, instead of the lazy, labored crap that it was.
One of the worst single episodes of TV I’ve ever experienced. And in SW parlance, it destroys the character of Obi-Wan and ruins SO much canon that exists. KK ruins everything she touches. What a wretched money grab this whole thing has been.
I thought that, at least in the first few episodes, having Obi Wan and Little Leia having an adventure would be fun…. But then it turned into an Obi Wan and Vader broodiness show, in which nothing really changed in their relationship from where we last left it. (Because of the prequel nature). And it seems strange that Obi Wan learns of the “tomb of force sensitive people” and the terrible things the inquisitors do, and gets his mojo back, and his response is… I’m going to be even MORE hermit-y?
Obi-Wan feels that his primary purpose is to stay on Tatooine and protect Luke. Not run around the galaxy and fight the Empire.
A re-run of hits? Oh noes!
It was fine. Felt very much like fan fiction but it was entertaining
I do have to wonder how many of the fans sniping and whining about their disappointment with the Obi-Wan series were eager readers of the dreck that compromised the Expanded Universe before Disney bought Lucasfilm? Obi-Wan’s 6 episodes of interstitial detail looks like a meticulously planned and executed triumph in contrast to a lot of the dreck in those old novels.
This show was Star Wars’s last chance at getting me to watch one of their live-action TV shows as it aired, rather than waiting to binge it later or just avoiding it entirely. And it failed. The trailer for Andor looked pretty good but I’ll be fine waiting a few weeks to binge it (or just ignore it, if it turns out to be as godawful as the other shows).
It was astonishing how incompetent the storytelling was in this show, or it would have been, if The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett hadn’t had the same problems. Every episode after the first one was just rife with weird dialogue and direction choices, nonsensical events, inexplicable or contradictory character motivations, and every character acting as stupidly as possible as often as possible. Yeah, there were some cool moments: I thought the scene with Vader’s mask half ripped off was really well done, as Anakin’s rage came through. But far more often than not, their impact was blunted or overshadowed by the shoddy framework they were contained in.
You can always handwave away some contrivances in a story, as long as the overall narrative is coherent and the characters are relatable and interesting. But there’s always a limit, and this show blew past it so often that I couldn’t go two minutes without facepalming or sighing in dismay at how stupid something was.
Unfortunately, I’m forced (lol) to conclude that this show didn’t really need to happen. Which sucks! Because I was looking forward to this back when it was getting whispered about years ago. Super tired of Star Wars content, to be honest. Give it a rest! Let us breathe!Moses Ingram obviously does not deserve the shit they’ve been getting under any circumstances, but I’m not sure I understand the praise they’ve been receiving. She’s totally fine, but her character is kind of poorly written, in my opinion. The concept is good — one of Vader’s youngling victims reemerges as a Sith — but I never felt like she was a compelling character. Sith should be terrifying or creepy or weird, and I never got any of those vibes from Third Sister. Even Sung Kang’s barely-there Fifth Brother felt more like a Sith to me. Oh well. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by expanded universe content, like that one Sith dude who was in pieces and his body was only held together by the force. Now, that’s a good, freaky Sith.Anyway, I really wish this new Star Wars shit was better! There’s so much to see and so little to get excited about. The monkey’s paw has imploded.
Inquisitors aren’t Sith.
*farts and walks away*
feels like a rerun of Star Wars hitsso… like Return of the Jedi, the prequels, the sequels, and everything else in between?
“You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.” Again, if we can’t love our Star Wars stories
when they spout such deliciously and unintentionally self-serious campy
dialogue like this, then what are we doing? (See also: “Who you become
is up to you.”)
Listen, this to me is the heart and soul of Star Wars. It’s literally driven almost all appreciation of the prequels in subsequent years, and to me it’s one of the biggest failures of the sequels: not a memorable line in the bunch.One of the things that worked for me about Obi Wan Kenobi (and there were a lot of things that didn’t) was how well it (often but not always) captured the feel of Lucas-era Star Wars. The clunky but endearing dialogue. The lightsaber battles, which felt like a perfect transition between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Even Vader, who did not feel much like Vader to me in Rogue One, was much better realized.
As much as I loved this episode… didn’t they do the exact same helmet breaking thing on Rebels with Anakin and Ahsoka? Fine live action but also…. retread.
To make a counter argument to this review as a 30-something person for whom “The Phantom Menace” was my first film I ever saw in theatres…. yah… I needed this. I fucking loved this.
Revenge of the Sith was anti-climactic and I feel like I’ve been holding in a fart for the past 15 years.
Did you seriously just use the words “fan favorite” and “Jar Jar Binks” in the same paragraph?
The Kenobi show should have been a tight 2-hour kinetic, nearly non-stop action movie like Fury Road. Had it been done so, critics and viewers would be singing it praises.
In fact, Disney keeps making this mistake, developing too-long shows that should have been movies and one-off movies that should have been series.
For example, IMO, movies that should have been shows:
Lightyear obviously could have been a prestige reboot of the ‘90’s cartoon series where there was a Star Command, adventure, and a non-retconned Zurg instead of whatever the hell that was.Meanwhile, The Eternals would have worked much better as an 8- or 10-episode series that SHOWED their evolution as individuals and impact on human society. (Arishem and others could have been actual characters instead of 1-note heroes and villains.)Similarly, the twice-made Solo obviously wanted to introduce a Darth Maul-led crime syndicate serial that might have worked better on Disney+.Likewise, Black Widow might have had better potential as a more realistic, high-stakes spy serial, instead of just a forgotten footnote-sequel to Civil War.
Shows that should have been movies:
Moon Knight would have been much better as a high-budget cinematic adventure romp with its action SHOWN, not implied post-blackout.Yes, Imagine a fast-paced Obi-Wan Kenobi with no l’il Lea “running,” no long commutes, and no ponderously drawn-out scenes gazing into the middle distance of Southern California? Rather, it could have been a straight-up, fast-paced, magnificent sequel to Revenge of the Sith. Hawkeye, too, although fun for the most part, had a ton of filler, goofball action, and a cartoonish Kingpin. Might have been more fun done in a tight two hours with better stunts.
I would watch a show that follows Kumail’s fake jedi, or – due to my friend’s initial mishearing of one of the inquisitors – the Sith I will only ever refer to as ‘The Bird Sister’.Would have enjoyed more about the jedi smuggling network I think. Feels like a wealth of story potential there.
Holy Shit! Youtuber makes the Obi vs Darth fight even better with John Williams score from Revenge of the Sith. The scene is now more exciting and dramatic and it fits more in line with the journey these two characters have been on. It’s a shame they didn’t go down this route.
YOU HAD ANAKIN/VADER DOWN ON THE GROUND HELPLESS AGAIN. JUST KILL HIM. IT TAKES AN EXTRA FIVE SECONDS. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY OTHER PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE YOU KEEP DOING THAT. Otherwise, I loved that fight; it was nice seeing Vader getting a beatdown. It also reinforced in their fight in Star Wars that Obi-Wan did what he did not because he would have lost anyway but because he had a higher reason.
Killing a helpless foe, someone that he once thought of as a brother, is not something a Jedi would do. That way leads to the dark side.
That passivity (twice) led to so many other deaths; maybe they should think about the larger picture. Or maybe have the rock that Anakin is on break away, with lava in between, and leave it ambiguous.