Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Great Disney+ Show That Demonstrates What Might Have Been

 Last week was the final episode of the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi.  It took place about 10 years after Episode III and has Obi-Wan come out of hiding to save a young Princess Leia from pirates and Inquisitors.  For those who watched Rebels, the Inquisitors are Force users who are not full-fledged Siths and work for Vader to help hunt down Jedi.  There's a "Grand" Inquisitor who was killed in the end of the first season of Rebels and a couple of underlings.

Though in this case most of the focus in on the "Third Sister" Reva who became "controversial" because she's black.  Because black people can't exist in Star Wars, right?  Ugh.

Anyway, while this series, like Rogue One, really doesn't need to exist, it was really good.  In the final two episodes of the prequels, Ewan McGregor was the standout as Obi-Wan Kenobi, so it was great to see more of him in the role.

But this Obi-Wan at first is not really the one we remember from the prequels or the very first movie.  This Obi-Wan is hiding in the desert, living in a cave, with his lightsaber buried in the desert and too afraid to use the Force.  He won't even help another Jedi on the run from the Inquisitors.  He justifies this by thinking he's looking after Luke Skywalker, but since Luke's Uncle Own won't let Obi-Wan near Luke it's kind of a dodge.

Then Leia is kidnapped on Alderaan and Bail Organa contacts Obi-Wan to ask for his help to track her down and suddenly Obi-Wan has to get out into the world again.  He goes to some shitty planet where we see a clone soldier begging for money and a dude pretending to be a Jedi to bilk people out of money to escape the planet.  The latter is sort of a Casablanca thing, where unscrupulous people would sell fake travel visas that could wind up getting those holding them jailed or killed.

Obi-Wan clumsily rescues Leia only to have Reva on his tail.  From there we see a sort of Underground Railroad for Jedi or possible Force sensitives, Snowspeeders not on snow, and a couple of epic duels between Obi-Wan and Vader!

In six episodes, some only about 40 minutes, it manages to pack a lot in there.  The actors and director/producer Deborah Chow do such a great job at bringing this universe to life.  You can really feel how broken Obi-Wan is at the beginning.  In the third episode when he's hiding from Vader, you really get a sense of his fear because he knows he's not ready to face the big black killing machine that Anakin has become.  Hayden Christenson redeems himself as Vader/Anakin, though they probably needed some better deepfake stuff when he was out of the armor.  For all the largely racist complaints about Moses Ingram as Reva, her story turned out really well.  She was a bit scene-chewy, especially at first, but she's a villain in a Star Wars show, not part of a Terence Malick movie.  And the young actress playing Leia steals every scene by really not taking any crap from anyone, even the Inquisitors. 

There are a couple of questionable plot moments.  Like in the third episode when Tala rescues Obi-Wan from Vader, why does Vader just let him go?  He could have probably just used the Force and dragged Obi-Wan back.  And in the final episode, if Vader was going to take his shuttle down to face Obi-Wan alone, why didn't he just go take that and let his Star Destroyer chase after the rebels?

But overall my biggest complaint is I wish it could have been longer.  There really wasn't enough time to do a lot with some of the new characters to make them more memorable, though I'm sure many will end up getting action figures made eventually.  Being set between movies this was kind of handcuffed by those movies, or I think they could have done more.  In the end, Obi-Wan's arc seems kind of hollow as he basically goes back to the desert, though I guess a different place in the desert.  It's just that he's now a little less afraid of the Empire and the world around him.

Mostly what this shows is what could have been if George Lucas had hired some competent people to make the prequels instead of insisting on doing so much of it himself.  Like the Clone Wars show before it, this shows there are good pieces of a story in the prequels that Lucas didn't have the vision or skill to really bring together.

It's too bad there can't really be a second season but maybe they can do a Vader series or a young Princess Leia series.

The sad thing, especially given Friday's overturn of Roe v Wade, is  how well the world of this show relates to our current world.  It's a world of fear and cruelty and hatred, persecuting those who are different.  Those who are still good and remember things the way they were struggle against the rising tide of darkness, trying in vain to make an impact.  An especially prescient moment is when Reva describes how she survived the massacre at the Jedi temple, which came only a short time after the real-life story of how a girl survived the massacre in Uvalde.  Sometimes life imitates art, but other times it's art that imitates life.

At least in this show we know Luke, Leia, and the rest are going to destroy the Empire.  In real life we really don't know how long this new Dark Age will last because there probably is no "Chosen One" out there to save us.