Obi-Wan Kenobi Part VI Review (Patreon)

My friend Will Shaw told me I had to start this review with "Obi-Wan said 'hello there', so 10/10, no notes." And he's right. Obi-Wan does enigmatically say "hello there" to a 10-year-old Luke Skywalker. By that metric, this show passes with flying colors.

Moments like this drive Obi-Wan Kenobi. The show relishes contriving fights between Obi-Wan and Vader, or quoting Star Wars, and playing mix-and-match with the movies' tropes. Not that there's anything wrong with that - it's part of what made Hannibal brilliant. But that this show is primarily committed to reliving Star Wars' past glories make its moments of brilliance all the more frustrating.

A spinoff should explore gaps in source material and find interesting stories in them. There's plenty of that here: Obi-Wan's slow return to the fight against the Empire, Leia's friendship with old Ben, Bail Organa's transition to leading the Rebellion, Vader's rise in the Empire, and of course Qui-Gon's last-minute return as a Force ghost. The show's instincts to explore these moments are solid - an inter-trilogy spinoff would have to look at them.

Yet Obi-Wan Kenobi goes for some underwhelming options. It just about drowns Reva's and Obi-Wan's story of refugees and survivors in a soup of iconography. Part of this is a fundamental compromise of the premise - Obi-Wan can't simply be a show about Obi-Wan. But the streaming-afflicted pacing, visual muddiness, and narrative imprecision of this show undercut its better instincts.

Some of it's quite nice. Ewan McGregor's moment of forgiving Anakin after destroying Vader's mask is quite moving. Reva's arc genuinely works, and one hopes they're setting her up for more story in the future. But the way Leia is underserved, Luke is here simply because of his iconographic status, and Vader's presence puts everything in deference to the laughably-named Skywalker Saga. 

Again, the story of refugees fleeing the Empire is quite nice. This is maybe the first bit of Star Wars in the past five years that's seen The Last Jedi. The way prequel actors get to perform some proper dramatic material is a good call. And Ewan McGregor is still perfect in this role. There's a lot to admire here.

I wonder if Star Wars is just ill-suited to streaming. Pitting cinematic characters like Obi-Wan and Vader against each other in a Disney+ show feels odd somehow. Obi-Wan could carry the show on his own, but Vader seems too big for the medium (although he works great in comics). Perhaps a follow-up season could give Obi-Wan more time on his own as a refugee leader.

I hope we get to see that show. On the whole, I've broadly enjoyed Obi-Wan Kenobi while finding it infuriatingly just OK. Maybe Ewan McGregor and Deborah Chow will get to make something better in the future. In the meantime, this is as tolerable as televised Star Wars gets. 

But I've still had too much sex to watch Star Wars Rebels.

Ranking

5 > 3 > 6 > 2 > 1 > 4