‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Premiere: Obi-Wan Kenobi, You’re Her Only Hope (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi Episodes 1 and 2, “Part I” and “Part II.”]
Who would’ve thought that A New Hope wasn’t the first time Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) was called upon to help a member of the Organa family?
Obi-Wan Kenobi “Part I” and “Part II” give the world-weary former Jedi a new mission in saving 10-year-old Princess Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) from a trio of mysterious kidnappers. The ordeal gives Kenobi and a young, precocious Leia some cute bonding moments and, thank the Maker, gets the Jedi off of Tatooine. But since we know the princess will be fine in the end, at times the first two episodes wind up feeling like a prelude to the “main event”: the inevitable Kenobi vs. Vader (Hayden Christensen) showdown. The ending of “Part II” makes it clear that’s where we’re headed — but first, we take a tour through Kenobi’s incredibly non-glamorous Tatooine life and into his shattered psyche, haunted as he is by the failures in his past. Here’s how it happens.
Part I
“Part I” shows Obi-Wan working at the space equivalent of a meatpacking plant. He has a dirty (you know you reek when a Jawa comments on how you smell), lonely, sandy existence, plagued by nightmares about Anakin and his fall to the Dark Side. When he reaches out through the Force for Qui-Gonn’s (Liam Neeson) guidance, he gets no reply. When a Jedi being hunted by Vader’s Inquisitors begs him for help, he tells the man — once a child who escaped Order 66 — to take his lightsaber, bury it in the desert and lead a normal life. “The fight is over,” the weary former Master tells him. “We lost.” Despite that, he tells Owen (Joel Edgerton) he still intends to train Luke to use the Force (a topic on which he and Owen disagree)… and he trades with the Jawas for trinkets for the kid. So, even though it’s buried as deeply within him as his lightsaber is in the Tatooine sands, Obi-Wan still has hope.
On the subject of the Inquisitors, we get a good look at the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend), the Fifth Brother (Sung Kang), and the Third Sister, Reva (Moses Ingram), in the premiere. The biggest thing to note from their scenes is that the Third Sister is, as the Fifth Brother puts it, “impulsive,” and despite telling her boss otherwise, she’s looking to track down Kenobi. Why? As she says, so she can “get [what] she’s owed.”
Meanwhile, on Alderaan, the real plot of Obi-Wan Kenobi is kicking off. While young Luke grows up on a sand planet in relative poverty, young Leia lives a life of luxury as Bail Organa’s (Jimmy Smits) daughter. Leia, being Leia, has no interest in the posh parties with their rich relatives or even serving in the Senate; she wants to climb trees with her adorable ladybug droid. That gets her into trouble when she sneaks away from a family gathering and is cornered in the woods by some baddies, who kidnap her. Poor Leia! Turns out, as we see through a transmission on the bad guys’ ship, the whole kidnapping is a ploy from the Third Sister to get Kenobi out of hiding so she can hunt him down.
In Obi-Wan’s trunk of things from years past — which holds his Jedi robes — a communicator starts to beep. The message is from Bail, and he wants Obi-Wan’s help finding Leia and returning her home safely. “She needs you, Obi-Wan,” Leia’s adoptive mother says. “We can’t trust anyone else.” Shockingly, Obi-Wan initially refuses the call. “Find someone else,” he tells Leia’s worried parents. “She’ll be better off.”
Obi-Wan has a bad day at work and sees the Jedi who wanted his help hanged in the town square, and then he goes home to find Bail standing in his cave. He implores the former Jedi to forget the past and to go after Leia. “You couldn’t save Anakin,” he says, “but you can save her.” His words do the trick, and as the episode ends, Obi-Wan’s headed off-planet to rescue Leia, his lightsaber on his hip. May the Force be with him!
Part II
The second episode kicks off with a bang as Obi-Wan lands on the crime-ridden Daiyu, where Bail said the ship that took Leia was going. We get a Temuera Morrison cameo right away, as Obi-Wan stumbles on a Clone Trooper begging for food money. A haunted look in his eyes, the Jedi gives him a few coins and continues on his way.
From there, he finds a “Jedi” named Haja (Kumail Nanjiani) who can help him. Jedi is in quotes because, as Obi-Wan finds, the man is no Jedi at all — he’s using magnets and switches to pretend to do Jedi tricks to swindle people out of their money. He does, however, give Kenobi good advice; he tells him to go to what looks like a space meth lab, where, in the back, he runs into the kidnappers whom he incapacitates with some drugs. Then he finds Leia, and he gets her out of her cell.
(Credit: Disney+/Lucasfilm )
The Inquisitors have also shown up on Daiyu, and they’re none too pleased with Reva for going rogue and kidnapping a Senator’s child to draw out Kenobi. (Her angle for doing this was, apparently, to gain favor with Darth Vader by giving him Kenobi.) They tell her to sit out the search so they can deal with her later, but she has no intention of doing so. Instead, she alerts every bounty hunter on Daiyu about Kenobi’s presence, offering a reward and saying to report to her, not the Inquisitors, with him.
Obi-Wan and Leia have some sweet bonding scenes — she calls him old and delivers a profound line about him hiding something, he responds by wondering aloud, “how old are you?” — but it all falls apart when Leia sees a bounty hunter’s communicator with Obi-Wan’s face projecting from it. She assumes that Obi-Wan’s there to kidnap her too and runs off, leaving Kenobi to chase her through the neon streets of Daiyu.
They eventually make it to a rooftop, where Obi-Wan’s cornered by some bounty hunters with Leia seconds away from jumping off the building. Obi-Wan’s able to kill the hunters, but he’s too late to stop the child from leaping. She couldn’t jump far enough to land on the building next to it, so she falls, and Obi-Wan must use the Force to save her. After that, Leia does believe him when he says he’s a Jedi. He made her float, after all!
(Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd./Disney+)
The next hurdle is Daiyu’s transport system, which has been shut down (presumably to keep Obi-Wan on the planet). Thankfully, Haja arrives just in time to guide them to a hangar where they can escape unnoticed. Unfortunately, Haja also arrives just in time for Reva to use the Force to enter his mind and discover those memories for herself. Obi-Wan, Leia, and Reva all wind up in the hangar, where Obi-Wan tells Leia to start the ship while he does his best to avoid Reva. As he hides, she drops a truth that hits Kenobi like a lightsaber blade through the heart: “Anakin Skywalker is alive.”
The arrival of the rest of the Inquisitors ends up saving Obi-Wan, as their fighting gives him an opening to escape with Leia. (Reva also seemingly fatally stabs the Grand Inquisitor, begging the question… how does this guy end up being a main villain in Star Wars: Rebels?) As he and Leia soar away, he’s left reeling from the news that his former Padawan and brother didn’t die on Mustafar. “Anakin,” Obi-Wan whispers, all the noise around him fading to a buzz. And across the galaxy, Lord Vader awakens and seems to sense his former Master through the Force. Dun-dun-dunnnnnnn!
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Wednesdays, Disney+
