Obi-Wan Kenobi Part V Review (Patreon)

There's something to the way this show keeps threatening to be interesting and then  beats that impulse into submission. The show's instincts to tell a story about Obi-Wan's failures and his attempt to rectify them are solid. So is this show's non-allegorical take on the struggles of refugees. Reva, Haja, and Tala, despite their dangerously-close-to-homophonous names are compelling characters. But all of this quails under the fact it's all in service to a confused, paradoxical romp devoted to trad aesthetics.

From the show's opening, a weirdly cheap flashback to an obviously-20-years-older Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen training in the Jedi Temple, it's clear what this is all for. Give Christensen a chance, get the gang back together, have a new angle on the old stuff. The sequence looks dreadful, and cuts to the show's most tedious instincts.

Yet it also delineates that this is Obi-Wan Kenobi's most dramatic and narratively concise episode to date. The episode is structured around Obi-Wan and Vader's evolving relationship across time and space. It has clear beats for its characters - Tala comes to terms with her past and sacrifices herself for the cause, Haja joins the rebels, and Reva's career with the Empire ends (for now). This all makes sense when you find out that Andrew Stanton co-wrote the script, because apparently Star Wars needs Pixar's help these days.

There are some properly brilliant moments in this. Moses Ingram performs a surprisingly realistic PTSD flashback to Order 66, and Ewan McGregor becomes chilling when he plays the kind of "come to my side" seduction scene usually allotted to Sith characters. Reva and Vader's duel at the end is brilliant, uniting startling character beats with well-done swashbuckling (lightsaber as lighting makes for the best Star Wars duels).

Pleasantly, this show has finally remembered that The Last Jedi exists. It has an almost beat-for-beat replica of Luke distracting the Empire while the rebels escape, with Obi-Wan filling Luke's role in a nice bit of "ah yes, we're coming full circle here." This has nothing resembling Rian Johnson's flare for suspense and misdirection, but it's a little thing.

Speaking of dialoguing with other Star Wars media, this takes after Kieron Gillen's Darth Vader comics in how it tries to make Vader and Anakin feel like the same character. A genuinely well-executed bit involves Vader brutally dismembering a rebel ship, only to see the ship he really wants fly away, recalling both Anakin's impulsiveness and Vader's apoplectic bloodthirst. Vader is served quite well here.

It's still a mess, of course. They have to bring back the cartoon villain from Episode 1 for continuity reasons, I guess, and Tala's impactful death is a somewhat cynical ending to an arc that could have lasted longer. Princess Leia has largely been forgotten at this point, and the show's 40 minutes underrun. And the way this is leading to a climax centering Luke shows once again what a dreary, conservative, patriarchal project this story is at its core.

The best episode to date.