Some Pre-Series Thoughts on Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

 Hey everyone! Happy Star Wars Day, I hope all of you Star Wars fans are celebrating with a favourite movie, TV show, video game, comic or novel (or all five options). Right now I just want to give some pre-series thoughts on the upcoming Disney+ series, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi. So let's get right into it.

Unlike with every other Star Wars series that's been made for Disney+ over the last two and a bit years, I'm the most excited about Obi-Wan Kenobi because I went through middle school and high school watching Ewan McGregor play Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Prequel Trilogy and he was the best part of those movies. I also enjoyed Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in those movies too. But I also don't have any particular expectations for this limited series, because I pretty much already know what it's going to be with very few surprises.

Because we're revisiting the character ten years after the end of the Prequel Trilogy (nine years before the original movie), there are certain things that will be done. Like, Obi-Wan isn't going to be leaving Tatooine since he's supposed to be presumed to be dead by most of the Empire, though I'm pretty sure that Vader knows that Obi-Wan is still alive, since Kenobi did have the high ground at the end of their Lightsaber duel in Revenge of the Sith. 

However I do hope that we see why he chose to tell Luke in A New Hope that Darth Vader killed his father instead of that his father became Darth Vader. Because while the novelization of Return of the Jedi tried to justify Obi-Wan and Yoda's decision to do so, that novelization was written in 1982 and published in 1983, before there were prequels or even spin-off TV movies and animated series. And the movies themselves never explained his reasons for doing so. Though based on the trailer that dropped this morning I suspect that Uncle Owen had something to do with it. Especially because in A New Hope Luke believed that Anakin was the navigator on a spice freighter.

The part that concerns me the most about this show, is the Inquisitors. This show takes place only four years before the start of Star Wars Rebels and alot of the stuff with the Inquisitors and the Empire in general  on this series will most likely overlap with what we got on that show. Particularly in the first season. I understand why the Inquisitors are on this show, given the time period it's set in, but personally, I don't care for them that much. Then again, I didn't really care for what we got of them in the Legends continuity either. So maybe it's just a me thing.

My other concern about this show is the same thing that happened with season 2 of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. This show has one less episode than The Book of Boba Fett and two less episodes than season 2 of The Mandalorian (and season 1 but I'm focusing on season 2 only), and a problem that these shows seem to have is that the people writing it and producing it want to go big with it and end up introducing too many elements. As a result, they end up leaving alot of loose threads because they only have six to eight episodes to tell the story that they want to tell. So I'm hoping that these people don't go too big because an Obi-Wan Kenobi series set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope should be a smaller, more intimate, series than something like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett ended up being. But I have this feeling that, just like with the other two shows that I mentioned, as none of the animated shows seem to have this problem, Obi-Wan Kenobi is going to go too big and the audience is going to be left frustrated like we were with The Book of Boba Fett earlier this year. But I have my fingers crossed that that won't be the case and that we'll get a fun, frustration free Star Wars live action Star Wars series.

Despite my concerns with this show, I am really excited about it. I mean, this is an element of the Star Wars Universe that has barely been touched upon before, aside from a couple of Legends novels in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The one question I have about this show is how much, if any, of Obi-Wan's storyline will be taken from John Jackson Miller's 2013 Legends novel, Kenobi? I mean there was also the couple of issues of Jason Aaron's run on the main comic book title, Star Wars, from 2015 that dealt with Obi-Wan's adventures on Tatooine during this time period as well. So definitely lots of inspiration for the writers to pull from. Though I do wish we will have a few surprises along the way.

Alrighty that's going to be it for me for now. I'll be back later with a comic book review where I'll be reviewing a recent addition to my comic book longbox. So stay tuned.