Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+ Causes a Disturbance in the Force

In the decade since Disney purchased Lucasfilm and took over the Star Wars brand, the franchise has branched off on two distinct paths: one built on potential, and one built on nostalgia. For the former, we’ve had stories ranging from Star Wars: Rebels to The Mandalorian, efforts at expanding this galaxy far, far away beyond the core Skywalker saga so that it actually feels like an entire galaxy; for the latter, we’ve had stuff like Solo and The Book of Boba Fett attempting to cash in on fans’ desire to revisit the characters they already know and love. And those results have been … let’s charitably call them “uneven.” Fans want what they want, and Disney’s Star Wars brain trust has seemed inclined to give it to them.

So it was no surprise that the prospect of Ewan McGregor returning for a Disney+ miniseries extension of his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi would be greeted with some of the greatest anticipation among Star Wars fans since the announcement of Episodes VII – IX. There was the potential for a great story in the years of Kenobi’s exile after the despair of losing Anakin to the Dark Side, and some of that potential is on display in Obi-Wan Kenobi’s first two episodes. It’s also possible that this could turn into yet another Star Wars less concerned with telling its own distinctive story than with becoming Star Wars fan-fiction.

The main story here begins 10 years after the events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, with Kenobi living an isolated existence on Tatooine and keeping an eye on now-10-year-old Luke while he lives with his Uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton). Show-runner Joby Harold concocts an interesting existence for Kenobi, basically working in a meat-processing facility and doing his best to stay under the radar of the Inquisitors still seeking the few surviving Jedi. But while Kenobi focuses his attention on Luke, there’s still another Skywalker twin out there on Alderaan, and we also get a look at young Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) growing into a spunky, headstrong youth with her adopted father, Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits). When one of the Inquisitors (Moses Ingram) seems to have a particular urge to find and capture Kenobi, it’s Leia who becomes the bait.

Not surprisingly, the first two episodes involve a fair amount of table-setting, and a limited amount of serious action. There are clear attempts to anchor it in familiar elements of the Star Wars universe—it somehow wouldn’t be a Star Wars story if someone didn’t get a hand cut off—but to Harold’s credit, Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t jump right into a parade of “I understood that reference” Easter-egging for the faithful. It simply feels a bit flat at the outset, to the point that when Kumail Nanjiani shows up in the second episode as a con artist, it feels like the first time someone decided this show could actually be fun every once in a while.

A bigger concern is the possibility that the entire narrative arc will be built around Kenobi’s interactions with Leia. It’s a well-worn trope to fall back on a sullen, self-involved main character who begins to soften through interaction with a child—heck, that’s a path The Mandalorian has already taken—and it could end up feeling awfully familiar if all of the emotional stakes are pinned on perky, quirky Leia drawing grim Kenobi out of his self-pitying shell.

More concerning is what McGregor is going to do with his performance in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Not to put to fine a point on it, but there’s almost no there there in the first two episodes; what should emerge as grief and deep sorrow instead feels simply like blankness. We’re still on the road to his reunion with the now-Darth-Vader Anakin, so there’s plenty of room for McGregor to get richer material to work with. It’s just hard not to feel like Obi-Wan Kenobi is willing to let his mere presence on screen do a lot of the heavy lifting, as the audience’s connection with the character fills in blanks that the show itself isn’t. If this isn’t going to be a story with an eye towards a lot of lively fun, marinating instead in the aftermath of failure and loss, it becomes a lot more crucial for the characters to come alive in the here and now, not just in our memory of them.

We’ve known Kenobi, in various incarnations, for more than 40 years. Let’s hope the show doesn’t decide that merely putting him up on the screen is enough.

Let’s Hear From You!

Did you stay up late to watch the debut of Obi-Wan like I did? What did you think? And what sorts of Star Wars stories do you like? The ones that chart new ground, or the ones that fill in the blanks for the characters you already know? 

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