With its third episode, Obi-Wan Kenobi answers a lot of questions: how did Obi-Wan and Vader interact for the ‘first’ time? What does the early resistance to the Empire look like? How obtrusive would a Zach Braff cameo be? Keep reading for answers to these and more!
1. A truly broken man
One of my qualms with the end of Revenge of the Sith has long been that Obi-Wan and, to a certain degree, Bail Organa and Yoda, just aren’t distraught enough over the events that conclude the film. Yoda is 900 years old, which means that for at least 800 of those, and likely longer based on Grogu’s timeline, were spent in the Jedi Order, and that has been destroyed, from within, by a presumed long-vanquished foe. The conversation around Luke and Leia isn’t buoyant, but it isn’t as funereal and dejected as it likely should have.
What Obi-Wan Kenobi shows is that, even if it was adrenaline or shock pushing Kenobi through that experience, it has certainly settled into him ten years hence. His disconnection from the Living Force is clear in both his inability to connect with Qui-Gon and how rusty he is at all-things other than slicing meat. His memory is shot, as he fucks up Leia’s fake name about ten seconds after saying it out loud, and he clearly has let his senses and reflexes get rusty.
But most telling is how short he is with Leia. Obi-Wan is the picture of compassion for most of his appearances in Star Wars, but here, he is jagged and sharp. He has forgotten what it is like to think of anyone but himself and live in anything other than fear. In a strange way, Obi-Wan has almost become a Sith: he’s driven by fear, obsessed with protecting his apprentice, and is not thinking of the greater good. This is a man totally detached from his prior life, and it is tough to watch.
2. The Underground Spaceport
One of the best pieces of this episode was the clarity provided for the state of the early Rebellion. We see that there are people all over the galaxy working to protect former Jedi/younglings, as well as Force-sensitive people. While we have no real sense of an organized political arm just yet, it is nice to se that the compassion – a word commonly associated with the Jedi – of the galaxy hasn’t fully left with the arrival of the Empire. This is a rich vein to tap into for future stories, and allows the world of Star Wars to focus on more than just the Skywalkers. I’d love to see a series based on one/some of these Force users who get rescued and set up with new lives.
3. Who’s the Vos?
Speaking of spin-off characters, an interesting name is dropped here, as Obi-Wan says “Quinlan was here?” Quinlan Vos is a Jedi that first appeared, briefly, in The Phantom Menace, who becomes a vital Jedi in The Clone Wars and stars in one of the best Star Wars novels, Dark Disciple, which sees Vos and Asajj Ventress attempt to assassinate Count Dooku. Vos goes to the Dark Side, but comes out the other side and, apparently, rescues younglings now.
We all knew that Order 66 couldn’t have possibly killed off every last Jedi, but with the Inquisitors running around the galaxy, it’s impossible to know exactly what Jedi are still left out there. Knowing that Vos is around is an exciting prospect, both from a pure ‘Yay! A dude we care about survived!’ perspective, and also as a potential piece of future shows/media.
4. Third Sister’s Shooting for First in Command
While Rebels viewers have some context around the various Inquisitors, it is clear that Reva/Third Sister is positioning herself to be the leader of the Inquisitors, or aim even higher within the Empire. While Star Wars has no shortage of motivated individuals, willing to do anything to succeed, the Inquisitors are a different lot. They are Force users, but not Sith, but maybe sort of kind of? There’s still a lot unknown about them, but we can imagine that there is a plan for them after the Jedi are gone, and Reva wants to be at the front of that.
Continued belowBut we still don’t know exactly why Kenobi is so important to her. Sure, she has marching orders from Vader, but it seems like it runs deeper than that. Maybe I’m making too much out of this, but I have to think that this will be related to something we’ve seen Obi-Wan do in the past.
5. The Vader of it all
This episode has a lot of Darth Vader in it, and the character is handled in a way that is a nice blend between the Anakin of the prequels and the Vader of Rogue One and beyond. This is a violent Vader, who snaps necks and doesn’t seem to give too much worry to the lives he’s destroying, and speaks in a manner that has the tremors of Anakin vibrating out of the shell of Vader. When Obi-Wan asks what he’s become, his answer of “I am what you made me” is easily heard in Hayden Christensen’s reedy tenor, but is actually delivered by James Earl Jones’s hollow baritone. While Christensen is performing the actions of the character, Jones’s voice is present, and so this is a true mid-point between the two iterations of the character that we know best, and fits perfectly in the literal halfway point between Vader’s birth and his death.
The confrontation between the two was something I was worried about because, so much of the tension of A New Hope is based around the two meeting for the first time in many, many years. This confrontation is nothing like that one. Obi-Wan is ill-prepared for the emotional or physical toll of this meeting, and Vader clearly has been waiting for this moment for years. Obi-Wan barely survives the encounter, and it is unclear if this is the last time they will meet before A New Hope, or if we will see more of this pairing in the series.
There is one line in A New Hope that I don’t see how they can retcon, which somewhat contradicts this scene: “When I last left you, I was but a learner, but now I am the master.” Unless we will see that Vader still considers himself an apprentice at the foot of Palpatine in Obi-Wan Kenobi, and feels that he has surpassed that by the time of A New Hope, but that seems clunky.
Ultimately, this is the issue with amending a nearly 50 year old story that didn’t have all its backstory figured out when it was filmed. Regardless of whether or not it all fits together super cleanly, I found these scenes thrilling. And that’s coming from a person who didn’t want to see these two interact at all. But it reinforced the theme of this episode, which is that Obi-Wan is not the man he used to be, nor the man we see him become. This is his rock bottom; I’m excited to see his climbing out of his despair to become the confident, galaxy-saving Jedi we see just ten years later.
