Created by Joby Harold and Hossein Amini
1.01 - 1.03 “Part I,” “Part II,” & “Part III”

(1.01) Story by  Stuart Beattie and Hossein Amini with a Teleplay by  Joby Harold and Hossein Amini and Stuart Beattie,  (1.02) Story by Stuart Beattie and Hossein Amini with a Teleplay by Joby Harold, and (1.03) Written by Joby Harold & Hannah Friedman and Hossein Amini and Stuart Beattie

Directed by Deborah Chow 
Starring Ewan MacGregor, Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Vivien Lyra Blair
New episodes airing Wednesdays on Disney+

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

I love this show. Sorry, Grogu, but this is the best Star Wars since The Last Jedi. I’ll save my The Mandalorian critiques for another time (a show I like a lot, but rarely love it), but I am absolutely on the same wavelength as the show creators and the director, Deborah Chow, with Obi-Wan Kenobi. The combination of emotion and unexpected ties to other parts of the franchise have really drawn me in completely. 

May 3, 1999, the clock strikes midnight and my father, brother, and I walk into Toys “R” Us for the release of the first Episode I toys (not counting a couple of ‘sneak peak’ figures released in the months prior). I grab an Obi-Wan Kenobi, looking at his funny braid and short haircut. Ben was always a character that appealed to me, and being able to see him in his prime as a Jedi Knight was more exciting to me than the origin of Darth Vader, since we had never seen a “real” Jedi in action before. Then came the prequel backlash. Ewan MacGregor’s Obi-Wan and John Williams’s music may be the only two things all Star Wars fans seemed to agree were good about those movies. And now here we are. The prequels have been reclaimed. I’ve preordered an Obi-Wan action figure based on this show. The circle is now complete.

Twenty years ago, many people missed some of the key messages of the prequels: the fall of the Jedi due to their own hubris. In an effort to be as pure with the light as possible—to let go of trying to control—they abandoned attachment and emotion. Three of them, who survived Order 66, were considered the greatest Jedi of all. Yoda, who came to understand what was happening too late to stop it. Anakin Skywalker, who chose love over the Jedi Order and was manipulated into believing the Dark Side was the only path forward. And Obi-Wan Kenobi, perhaps the textbook example of what a Jedi Knight was at the time, also failed to save the Republic and the Jedi Order. Because of that, he had to kill his brother, Anakin. His failure, even more personal than Yoda’s, drove him to exile himself to the harsh desert to watch over Anakin and Padme’s son, Luke. 

Here, we finally get more of that story, and it goes to places we don’t expect. I’ll be honest and say that I would be perfectly happy if this were six hours of rock bottom Obi-Wan, with Ewan MacGregor being a desert sad boy, feeding his eopie and getting yelled at by Owen Lars (Joel Edgarton). And while we do get Ben working at a butcher shop cut into the side of a dead creature living the mundane life we saw Rey, Luke, Yoda, and Luke (again) living, we also get so much more. But how does Ben go from leaving Anakin for dead on the side of a lava river to “there are all alternatives to fighting” and becoming one with The Force in A New Hope?

The answer is on Alderaan. First, a moment to celebrate! We get Alderaan! After only getting a glimpse at the end of Revenge of the Sith, we finally get some honest-to-goodness time with Alderaan on screen. And not only do we get Princess Leia’s adopted home planet, we get 10-year-old Leia, herself. If you had told me that the second most important character in the Obi-Wan Kenobi show would be a child, I would be skeptical. The last time we had a kid at the center of a Star Wars movie it was The Phantom Menace, and that aspect isn’t my favorite part of that movie. But Vivien Lyra Blair is incredible at bringing this Leia to life. Not only is the character perfectly written as a kid too smart for her age, but as someone who is emotionally perceptive, that clearly shows how she taps into The Force (whether she knows she is doing it or not). 

But this swerve (we’d naturally expect more lil Luke in this show) also led to one of my favorite lines in all of Star Wars. Obi-Wan initially rejects the call of Bail Organa (Space Jimmy Smits) to leave his exile and locate his kidnapped daughter, protesting that he has to stay and protect the boy. Bail urges him on by saying, “she is just as important as he is.” 

Since George Lucas didn’t figure out that Luke and Leia were siblings until the third entry in the series, the whole thing has always felt a little lopsided in favor of Luke, at least in retrospect. Leia at least gets almost equal time with Luke in the sequel trilogy, and has been the subject of two excellent novels, Leia, Princess of Alderaan and Bloodline, both by actual Star Wars genius, Claudia Gray. But to have that stated on screen—in something that will get the most attention from even the most casual of Star Wars fans—feels like a course correction. And for Leia to be at least part of the reason why Ben does everything he does in the original trilogy, allowing himself to accept his mission to protect the twins from Vader? It just feels correct. 

And speaking of Vader, he has become one of my favorite characters over the last few years, thanks in part to several great comics series over at Marvel. They have largely focused on Vader as yes, an unstoppable force of the Dark Side, but also as a fundamentally sad man. Years later, he is still mourning Padme. It is the great tragedy of his life, and it dominates his destiny, until he finally turns back towards the light due to the love of his son (and daughter). So, we see Vader here, still angry at Obi-Wan, wanting to repay him for the suffering he caused him (it is very possible he blames Kenobi for Padme’s death) with the fury that can only come from a man who would rather be dead. Even if they never cross lightsabers again, the emotional tension between these two men in Part III, where every word they utter to each other conveying several different kinds of pain, will have been enough for me. 

But of course we have to talk about Reva. Played with amazing control by Moses Ingram, she fixes the biggest problem with the Inquisitors. Up until this point, they’ve been visually cool, but kind of boring. But now that we have Reva as a rogue Inquisitor, a loose cannon who will stir shit up in the name of flushing out Jedi? She’s instantly a favorite. She’s a perfect middle point between Vader and Obi-Wan, as well. Vader is on the hunt for vengeance, Obi-Wan doesn’t want to let go of his guilt, and Reva is after… something. We don’t know exactly what yet, but it seems personal. There’s a lot of small details referring to her origin and class, and I feel like we will get more flashbacks in the back half of the series. 

For a show that had such high expectations in my mind, Obi-Wan Kenobi has completely subverted what I thought I wanted from this show in the best of ways. I can’t wait to see where it goes, and I’ll be back to try and summarize my thoughts again after the finale!