A Year Later, It’s Clear Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) Was a Miscalculation in Conception and Execution

It’s remarkable that I was unmoved by Obi-Wan Kenobi. Here’s a Star Wars spinoff that fully embraces the prequels, while affectionately trying to provide childhood backstories to the young adult Luke and Leia we meet in A New Hope. Here’s the return of Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan, the lifeblood performance of the prequels, and also Hayden Christensen, whose portrayal of Anakin I’ve championed. Here’s not one but two new lightsaber duels between Kenobi and Darth Vader! On paper, there is much that I should be applauding.

How could this show be such a dud?

I have to admit, I’m writing a year after the show’s release since I never finished Obi-Wan Kenobi until this summer. In 2022, I quit after the first episode but then decided to try again this year, with the thought that some distance from my initial disappointment and general frustration with Disney Star Wars might help me to better assess the return of Kenobi.

I see the first episode more clearly now, but I also see that everything went wrong from the start. The series is a miscalculation in both conception and execution. Deborah Chow, who worked on The Mandalorian, directed all six episodes, and Joby Harold was the showrunner, having taken over writing the series from Hossein Amini, who had originally been working on a film version. Talented people like Andrew Stanton worked on the scripts of individual episodes. I don’t know enough about the production to say who is to blame, but it’s clear to me that things went wrong with the very idea about how to bring back Obi-Wan. 

To justify returning to a principal character, such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, the series required a strong enough hook. Why should we catch up with Obi-Wan during his years as a hermit on Tatooine? The creative team’s answer was the kidnapping of Princess Leia (played by Vivien Lyra Blair), which must have seemed to them an urgent enough mission to justify Obi-Wan getting back into action.

But is Obi-Wan rescuing Princess Leia before the events of A New Hope plausible, given the information presented in Episodes III and IV? Bail Organa and Kenobi are compatriots in the aftermath of Order 66. When Luke mentions Ben Kenobi when he first meets Princess Leia in A New Hope, Leia’s reaction suggests familiarity:

Luke: “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.” 

Leia: “You’re who?”

Luke: “I’m here to rescue you. I’ve got your R2 unit, I’m here with Ben Kenobi!”

Leia: “Ben Kenobi, where is he?!” 

The message Leia records and puts in R2-D2 begins formally, but by the end it has become a personal plea, perhaps suggesting a deep prior relationship, such as being rescued by the man as a child: “Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars…. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope.” So, while the Original Trilogy and prequels only suggest familiarity and not necessarily a connection as extravagant as a prior rescue, the show’s premise that Obi-Wan rescued Leia when she was a child is not implausible.

The premise betrays, however, the tendency of Disney Star Wars to simply repeat patterns from earlier Star Wars movies rather than create new ones. Kenobi must rescue Leia once again, although this rescue will take place first chronologically. Even if we accept this premise, the creative team takes a meandering path to tell their six-part limited series, introducing unnecessary new characters and too many subplots that only get in the way of their core concerns. If this is a story about the rescue of Princess Leia, let’s focus on the rescue of Princess Leia first and foremost. Why sideline the rescue plot after the second episode?

At the same time, the emotional core of the show is the relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. While Obi-Wan develops affection for the young Leia, it is his relationship with his old padawan and now nemesis that provokes his strongest emotions, stirring up old traumas. This raises an aspect of the show that makes little sense to me: if the emotional core is Obi-Wan and Vader, why have the rescue of Leia, given that Vader cannot know of her existence until Return of the Jedi? The two plotlines do not fit smoothly together.

Even less convincing are aspects of Vader and Kenobi’s conflict. I’m not talking about their continued obsession with each other. But is it likely Obi-Wan would never have heard of Lord Vader, the most famous right-hand man of the Emperor, until eight years after the events of Episode III? We could perhaps be led to believe Vader and Kenobi encountered each other in the years between the two trilogies, but we cannot believe that Obi-Wan would leave Vader almost dead a second time. In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan intends to kill Anakin. He would not be foolish enough to leave him alive a second time. After all the evil that Obi-Wan sees Anakin commit in this series, how could Obi-Wan return to Tatooine with Vader’s fate unclear and still feel like all was now well?

Obi-Wan’s trauma is portrayed as a form of PTSD; he cannot get over the images of his pupil and former friend burning alive on Mustafar after their duel. Vader’s hatred and malevolence also disturb Obi-Wan. While this angle brings internal emotional turmoil to the character, the show leans too far into making Obi-Wan Kenobi a man who has lost his faith in the Force, in people, and in the fight for good. When we meet Obi-Wan, in a bizarre desert whale meat-packing factory (can that meat really stay fresh for days in the heat of two suns?), it made me think of the 2000s movie fashion to make things fresh by making them gritty. But the problem is even more specific to Disney Star Wars. Why does every single hero of the former movies—noticeably apart from Leia—have to become washed up in order to be renewed? As I’ve written elsewhere, there are other ways to reintroduce a character, and the pattern has grown stale. At least Episode III ended unhappily, so they are not destroying a happy ending to bring back the old cast, as they did for Episode VII. 

But here we come to the worst feature of Obi-Wan Kenobi. If we were going to make a show about Obi-Wan’s trauma after his duel with Anakin and the creation of Darth Vader, and if we decided that Obi-Wan rescuing a young Princess Leia was the best plot device to tell that story—and these are big “ifs” in my book—why decide that the six-part limited series really needed a new badass sorta-Sith, sorta-Jedi character who could be one of the show’s main interests?

I’m talking about the character of Reva Sevander or Third Sister (Moses Ingram), who is the worst major character in the Star Wars TV shows. She’s so poorly conceived that I could understand neither her motivations and goals nor the extent of her abilities. It’s not the character’s secrets that make her hard to read: it’s the writing. She wants to kill young Luke to get back at who exactly? I thought she was after Obi-Wan, or is it Vader really? Ingram also never comfortably inhabits the role. Her performance relies almost entirely on a pattern of slow, low talking with outbursts of shouting. She never seems genuinely menacing, or possessing the control and mastery to rise to her rank as an Inquisitor. Like the First Order, she’s just another wannabe.

Worse still, why does Reva have such developed Force powers? Who trained her after the destruction of the Jedi Temple? Her powers surpass anything Luke Skywalker can do in the Original Trilogy. I’m told the Inquisitors originated in the Star Wars animated shows, where they are basically Force-sensitive people working for the Empire, but as portrayed in Obi-Wan Kenobi the Inquisitors come too close to being Sith. Remember, there can only be two Sith! Even if Vader is using Third Sister all along, it seems doubtful the Emperor would tolerate the existence of a servant who is basically a fully-formed dark Jedi. The inconsistency goes even further, though. How can we believe that Third Sister could potentially kill Lord Vader, wielding the Force and a lightsaber like a Sith for all intents and purposes, but a moisture farmer and his wife can fight her off well enough? The character’s conception doesn’t work on any level, and betrays a serious lack of either understanding or concern about how the Force operates in the Star Wars movies.

The show’s combination of cross-purposes and unessential elements never forms a coherent, engaging whole. There’s almost no electricity to events that should be stirring. In fact, without my affection for the original characters, the basic story told here would not hold my attention for six episodes, even with the addition of too many characters and side plots. But, sadly, it’s not just Obi-Wan Kenobi: the plots of all recent Disney Star Wars shows have drifted into meandering messes.

I’ve talked a lot about the show’s lack of narrative command, but its formal features are also subpar, with bland storytelling, character construction, cinematography, and design. Deborah Chow decides to circumvent the usual Star Wars shot construction by relying on too many close ups and unmotivated handheld camera work. The result is not added immediacy but rather a diminished sense of space and movement for actions. In terms of design, while Vader’s castle on Mustafar and the underwater Inquisitor base are compelling, at other times the show falls back on a variety of desert landscapes, like some random episode of Star Trek. 

Overall, it is the staging of characters within environments that is the most bland. Why are Obi-Wan and Vader just meeting on the edge of some razor rock range in their climactic battle at the end of the series? It looks like a fan poster rather than a real environment. The shots for key sequences in the lightsaber fights are lifeless and not centred, the camera rarely capturing the best angle for a particular combat movement. Similarly, when Stormtroopers raid a base, they just rush forward down the middle, and the rebels stand around without taking cover, shooting back. Most action scenes lack energy, plausibility, and excitement. Like the character of Obi-Wan when we meet him in the belly of the whale, the filmmaking has been drained of energy and vitality.

If my disappointment comes across too strongly, it is chiefly because the ingredients were promising but they did not come together. Some of the stuff kinda works. I was happy to see Vader’s lava castle, hinted at for decades in pre-production art. I like seeing the return of Bail Organa. The ending, with Obi-Wan meeting the boy Luke, was nice and actually touching. I don’t hate this show. I just find it astonishingly mediocre.

If, given all this excellent material, all they could do was feebly resuscitate the corpse of Obi-Wan, it’s clear the Disney team should just hold off and leave these characters alone. Fine, go ahead, make some more of The Mandalorian and other side stories, filling the galaxy in around the edges. But please stop remaking how we remember the original six Star Wars movies.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022, USA)

Directed by Deborah Chow; starring Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Vivien Lyra Blair, Rupert Friend, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Sung Kang.

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