Obi-Wan has taught us well
An update on season one Obi-Wan Kenobi (Disney+)
I first published this piece on Medium.com prior to the season finale—two episodes short of it, to be precise. Here is an updated version. If you haven’t watched or finished the show, of course there will be spoilers, so if that is a concern, stop here or tread carefully. Please understand that I’m analyzing this show in self-awareness. I “heart” the show as I “heart” most of the Star Wars-verse, but I am not an expert on any of it, nor do I have an Aristotelian memory for all of the terms essential for the wiki. My analysis is intended to emphasize the characters and the story. I leave the data librarians at the Wookieepedia to be precise on the terminologies. I also consider myself unworthy to give a critical review of the show Obi-Wan Kenobi, because this show, in my humble opinion, has a rightful place in the Lucasfilm canon. What shall we call it? The sequel of the prequel? Sequentially, it falls right between the ’90s prequel and the ’70s/’80s trilogy, making it…? Midquel? This show is so solidly perfect and so much beyond my abilities as a reviewer that I leave it to others to decide how many stars it deserves. In my humble opinion, it deserves an infinity of constellations. Ewan McGregor alone! Let alone Hayden Christensen and Vivien Lyra Blair! But I’m aware that as a member of the Star Wars fandom, I am incapable of objectivity. So I surrender! And I confine myself to the analytical sphere.
Analysis
Depression. This is the first word that comes to mind. I loved the way the script dealt with the Jedi Master’s emotions. We first see him in a slump, utterly despondent. It is ten years from the turning of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader—that is, from the end of Star Wars: Episode III: Return of the Sith. Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) still doesn’t know what to do. He is going through the motions of life, but there is no enjoyment, barely a moment of comic relief, even when dealing with a laughably mercenary Jawa named Teeka, who teases him about needing soap because he stinks to high heaven. What humorous relief he has, is caustic— only a thin veneer to cover the agony he feels inside. His powers are impacted by the mental exhaustion. Nari, a random Jedi in hiding, accuses him of giving up. But the truth is that Ben is in survival mode. He needed every ounce of energy just to get through another day. Nowhere is safe. No one can be trusted. He has no friends left, or so it seems. He cannot afford to draw attention to himself. He watches Luke from afar. Quelle tristesse! He cannot give Luke a present without even that becoming a problem. Obi-Wan, now going by Ben, is too tainted, too risky an association, for Owen Lars (Joel Edgerton) to allow him anywhere near Luke. Things are so bad, Kenobi cannot make a new life, for he cannot forget the old one. He is stuck in a hellish limbo, where everyday is the same and nothing you do seems to matter.1 Uncle Owen’s fearful reaction to Ben’s proximity is a fascinating contrast against Bail Organa’s desperation to get him to rescue Princess Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair.) Kenobi is considered too dangerous to give a toy plane to one Skywalker child, but he is the single hope for rescuing the other one.
Owen, a poor moisture farmer2 on the Outer Rim3 planet of Tatooine, couldn’t bear the thought of losing what he worked everyday to maintain. His only recourse is to keep his head down and endure the status quo without going insane. Far away on the cosmopolitan planet of Alderaan, it is only from desperation that Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) seeks the aid of a person otherwise too dangerous to be associated with. A tremendous risk, indeed—and, given Kenobi’s mental state, help is hardly assured. Yet nothing less than a mortal threat to one of the Skywalker twins could motivate our protagonist to leap into action — from a horrible place, one where he keeps his head down and clings to whatever “safety” for himself and others that he can.
Young Leia, too, needs interference. She is far from contented. Just as her unknown brother does — far away, fantasizing about flying — Leia wants more out of life than elegant dinner parties. Far from being “just a child,” she is intelligent and brave beyond her years. She feels more congeniality with her droid, Lola, than other children. Her cousin mocks her for not being a real Organa. Just as Harry Potter found friendship in “lower”/misfit beings, Princess Leia finds camaraderie in the servile robots of the Empire. “But what if he has something to say,” she wonders when told by Tala (Indira Varma) that a loader is not allowed to communicate. “Actions speak louder than words,” Tala replies.4 Indeed.
The Force is strong with Leia, as with Luke, and between the two of them, oddly enough (given the superiority of her socio-economic circumstances) she is tested first. The original trilogy began with Leia sending a message to Kenobi. This new show explains the origin of their seemingly established relationship by the time of Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. In both — in Obi-Wan Kenobi and A New Hope — Leia needs help, spurring the protagonist to action. It’s definitely a twist on the standard slay-the-dragon-save-the-princess formula. Here, we’ve got a whole crew of dragons. Besides the Sith Lord himself, there are the Inquisitors — the Dark Lord’s minions, tasked with hunting down Jedi Knights and Force-Sensitives. They have bizarre names and none of them like each other. They’re all competing, it seems, to be “Grand Inquisitor.” The “Fifth Brother” (Sung Kang) and the “Third Sister” (Moses Ingram) are locked in a particularly fierce oneupmanship game. The Third Sister, by name Reva, has nothing to lose. It is she who mostly spurs the action forward. She organizes the kidnapping of Leia, twice, and she somehow manages to slip a tracker onto the cargo vessel that carries Kenobi and Leia away from the Fortress Inquisitorius5 on the water moon of Nur.6
Episode 4 ends with Leia feeling gratitude for Kenobi being alive. The crew loses a man in the struggle to rescue Leia from the Inquisitors, and as they fly away, grief hangs in the air, but Leia seizes the moment to show Kenobi how much he means to her. She touches his hand, and he touches back, and they hold hands as they look at each other. She already has a father-figure in Bail Organa, but in Kenobi, she has even a grandfather. She had said it earlier in the show, as a joke. When he advised her to pretend that they were father and daughter, she retorted, “Granddaughter, maybe.”7 He had been startled and speechless, but of course “grandfather” would make more sense, given that he was almost a father to Anakin.
Episode V begins with a memory Darth Vader is having, as he star gazes from his ship. We see Kenobi and Anakin (Hayden Christensen) lightsaber-dueling on an open-air platform, overlooking a bustling galactic city. It’s a friendly fight. Kenobi is still affectionate master, Anakin still his loyal son/brother. What a contrast to the present! Wounded, traumatized, embittered pupil hunting the Jedi Master to the ends of the galaxy!
Kenobi remembers too. Anakin’s sharp reflexes and aggressive, no-mercy approach. He senses the same impatience from Darth Vader. “You won’t stop him alone,” he advises Reva. She retorts, “You have no idea what I’ve done alone.”8
There it is! The bigger picture! It is easy to get sucked into the personal story of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. We have emotional ties to Darth Vader through Kenobi and through the Skywalker children. But there are all those faceless Force-Sensitives, Jedi Knights, Padawans, and Rebels. Each one has a story. Each one suffers loss. Darth Vader hunts Kenobi without regard for them—impatiently, selfishly, obsessively.
Obi-Wan and Reva represent my two streams of thought about the whole series. In both cases, we have a psychological journey to analyze. Obi-Wan has to resolve his feelings for Anakin—regrets, guilt and remorse about failing his Padawan, despair about the current situation, one crisis after another, constantly on the run. He is both hero and liability for the refugees and other rebels. Dueling with Darth Vader, he battles not only the Sith Lord but his own feelings. His love for Anakin makes him weaker than Anakin. Anakin loves Obi-Wan too; no one can convince me otherwise. But Anakin’s love is buried so deep beneath the Sith, it is obscured so completely by anger.
Yoda said it perfectly. He elaborated: “Beware…anger, fear, aggression, the dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
Obi-Wan never hated Anakin. He pities him. He hates the behavior/choices, but his love for the lost friend and brother/son remains. And that did weaken him in their fights. Until…. He recalls the children. His friendship with Anakin is truly dead; that is in the past. The Skywalker children are the present and the future, giving Obi-Wan something to keep fighting for. Through Luke and Leia, Obi-Wan regains his strength.
Reva (“Third Sister”) is only just beginning to battle her psychological demons. Even though she has already been through her own hell, she has only now just lost everything. After the night Anakin slaughtered her friends, she went on a course of revenge and clawed her way into a position of power, in Darth Vader’s inner circle! But once she is no longer of use to the Inquisitorius,9 she is cut loose. They use her Force-sensitivity to track Obi-Wan, and then they send her back to the “gutter”10 where they say she belongs. She lost everything, and then she loses everything again. Her defeat at the hands of Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode V is at least as bad as when Anakin slaughtered her friends—the “only family I knew, and he slaughtered them.”11 She’s been broken again, broken in spirit, robbed of her pride and sense of identity. In revenge, she almost murders helpless Luke; she is so close to completing (or cementing) her path to the dark side. She recalls herself as a youngling. She actually sees her own face in place of Luke’s. (Recall future Luke [Mark Hamill] seeing his face in place of Darth Vader’s!) I’m fascinated to follow Reva’s story. I doubt we’ve seen the last of her. Will she join the Rebellion? Will she become a spy and work toward helping Obi-Wan protect the Skywalker children?
Groundhog Day quote:
Confession: I’ve never actually understood precisely what a moisture farmer is. But from the looks of life on Tatooine and the conditions of the Lars family household, it seems like a difficult existence. There is a funny meme on the internet about the rapid aging process of the people of Tatooine.
The first time I watched the show, I was puzzled about Reva’s early knowledge about Darth Vader’s pre-Sith identity as Anakin Skywalker, but as I watched the season through again, I realized that, as one of the Jedi younglings attacked by Anakin on the night of his total surrender to the Dark Side, of course she would know about Vader’s real identity. And Vader, knowing she was one of the younglings who survived the attack, made use of her Force-Sensitive powers to make her one of his inquisitorial hunters.
Lindbergh, Ben. “‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Part 5 Breakdown: No Lightsaber, No Problem.” The Ringer. 15 June 2022. https://www.theringer.com/star-wars/2022/6/15/23169852/obi-wan-kenobi-part-5-recap.
Rudoy, Matthew. “Obi-Wan Kenobi: The Third Sister's Best Quotes.” Screen Rant. 15 June 2022. https://screenrant.com/obi-wan-kenobi-third-sister-best-quotes-star-wars/.
Sanders, Savannah. “Obi-Wan Kenobi: The Hidden Truth Behind That Order 66 Flashback.” The Direct. https://thedirect.com/article/obi-wan-kenobi-order-66-flashback-episode-1.
ibid.