Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) TV Show Review [Spoilers]

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Wednesday morning. Today I'm here to talk about Obi-Wan Kenobi. The series is over, so I will be doing a full spoiler review of the series. So if you haven't completed the show yet, please do so before reading this review. Let's get into it.

This was the only Disney+ Star Wars show that I was excited for following The Mandalorian. I wasn't excited for The Book of Boba Fett or The Bad Batch and I have no plans to watch Andor either. But to see Ewan MacGregor back as Obi-Wan, and Hayden Christensen back as Darth Vader was something I was absolutely excited for. But we got far more than that.

Before I get into specific things that I liked about this show, I do have to say that I'm impressed that they didn't try to do more than the story allowed them to do like what's happened with The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and some of the Marvel Disney+ shows. With many of those stories, six to eight episodes wasn't enough because the writers crammed so much story into the shows that you couldn't possibly wrap everything up in such a short time, but with this show? The story was so simple without too many plot threads that I thought it wrapped up quite nicely.

Matching Obi-Wan with Leia was a stroke of genius. As I mentioned in my review of the first episode, neither the movies nor the Expanded Universe, Legends or Canon, have ever explained why Leia went to Tatooine to get Obi-Wan in A New Hope though the novelization of Return of the Jedi did attempt to explain it in a vague way, there were no details given. This show though gives a much better explanation which is really cool.

Darth Vader is a freaky dude. One of the reasons The Empire Strikes Back was my least favourite Star Wars movie when I was a kid was because of how scary Vader is in that movie. Yeah, compared to this show, Vader is a pussycat in The Empire Strikes Back. Every time he walked on screen, I was like, "everyone is screwed". And I think that's because in this show Vader is more of a loose cannon than he would end up becoming in the Original Trilogy. Which is interesting to see. In a way, this Vader is what people thought we were going to get in the Prequel Trilogy back in 1997 before the trailers for The Phantom Menace came out. 

I find it interesting that how Obi-Wan split Vader's mask and damaged his breathing apparatus in the finale is similar to how it's been done in games like The Force Unleashed (2008) and in other shows like Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018) as well as in comics. It looked really cool, and also REALLY scary to hear his voice half in the mask and half out of it. But that moment where Obi-Wan finally realizes that Anakin was truly gone, and had been replaced with Darth Vader is one of the saddest moments in the series. It's why Obi-Wan told Luke in Return of the Jedi that Vader was, "more machine now than man, twisted and evil". It's also sad that only Luke and Padme could see that Anakin was still there. And you can tell because that's when Obi-Wan calls him Darth, as he did twice in A New Hope. 

I also love how many cameos were in this show. Aside from Obi-Wan, Vader, and Leia, you had Luke, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, Bail Organa and Breha Organa, R2-D2 and C-3PO, Clone Troopers, Jawas, the Emperor, and Qui-Gon Jinn. Yes, my friends, Qui-Gon Jinn, played by Liam Neeson, made his live action return after 23 years at the end of the show's finale. What I liked about him appearing is that he was leading Obi-Wan into the future. And he also did it with a hint of reprimand, because as Qui-Gon said, "I've always been here, you just couldn't see me" implying that Obi-Wan's guilt over what happened with Anakin clouded his ability to learn Yoda's methods for communicating with those who have gone into the Force. Which is very powerful.

Reva got a much better ending than I feared she'd get. I was concerned about having her in here as nothing more than a way to get Obi-Wan to Vader. But she isn't. She has her own story and I am glad we have her and that she wasn't killed. There's potential to explore the character more in other shows, or even other seasons of Obi-Wan Kenobi if they end up making a second season. Moses Ingram did an amazing job as the character.

There were lots of other cool little easter eggs in the show too. Like Quinlan Vos, who was created for the comics back in the 2000s and later referenced in Revenge of the Sith, and the kid that Haja (Kumail Nanjiani) helped escape from Daiyu in Part II was named Corran, a reference to Rogue Squadron pilot, and Jedi Knight, Corran Horn from the Legends continuity.

I do wish we had gotten to see more of The Path though. It's basically a prelude to the Rebel Alliance, similar to the Rebel networks we saw in Rebels. That storyline just kind of ended abruptly with Obi-Wan departing the ship to lure the Empire away from them and Leia. But this is an Obi-Wan show, not Star Wars: The Path. Which I would totally watch if those particular characters came back.

I really enjoyed Obi-Wan Kenobi. It and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are the reasons I come back to both Star Wars and Star Trek. They do prequels right. They're also really good stories too. I hope it gets a second season, but if not, I'm thrilled with what we got. 

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow with another post. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to talk about yet, but I have a couple of ideas. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.