Obi-Wan Kenobi: Review

While I don't think anyone is oblivious to the fact that Disney is milking the proverbial cash cow with Star Wars, I think it's fair to say we've all become a little complacent.

The Mandalorian hit our screens in 2019 to much cynicism. Heavily marketed as the reason you MUST subscribe to Disney+, banking on heavy handed classic era Star Wars nostalgia and involving a character that was made to sell merchandise, it's easy to forget how many fans were prepared to boycott the show, especially after the underwhelming sequel series of films. However, The Mandalorian defied all expectations by actually being... good. Great even. The characters were well written, the series and episode structure was tight and playful. There was a solid dose of humour and most importantly new elements about the Star Wars universe to keep us engaged. It wasn't a simple spin off, it was a story "in the universe of" similar to the wealth of books, comics and more that came out of the original trilogy and have become as beloved to fans as the films that started it all.

I'm so annoyed that it's good.

Following on from Mando's success a flurry of further titles were announced. Book of Boba Fett, Ashoka, Andor (Which for a split second made me think we were getting an Ewok series but alas they are from Endor... silly me) and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

People forget that Star Wars has been doing this extended universe stuff since the 80's and there has always been a demand for it. I haven't got a problem with these series existing but the more of them I watch the more hallow they feel. As a child growing up on Clone Wars, I know what good Star Wars telly looks like, and folks this ain't it.

So today we're going to take a deep dive into one of the franchises most anticipated series and the one I was most looking forward to out of the bunch, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

After the events of Revenge of the Sith, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi has retreated to Tatooine, living as a hermit in the desert, working as some sort of butcher and keeping an eye on a young Luke Skywalker who is under the care of his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. He's resigned to a hidden life and won't even help other Jedi passing through for fear of being caught by the Inquisitors, Jedi hunters. One day he receives a call from his longtime friend Bail Organa telling him that Darth Vader's other child, Princess Leia, has gone missing and he might be the only one capable of bringing her back.

There's a few things to unpack here but before I dive into the nitty gritty of what this show is, I need to spend a moment mourning what it isn't and could have been.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is my favourite Star Wars character. Even from A New Hope, there was a twinkle in this character's eye and a dry wit that has always appealed to me and intrigued me. To be fair it's very difficult to make a "dessert space wizard with a mysterious past" uninteresting... not that this show doesn't give it a good shot.

Across the prequels and the Clone Wars show he remained one of my favourites. He was always given the funniest lines, often undermining Anakin's teen angst and I think part of his appeal was just how wonderfully chilled out he was. In a world where the hero is always the one who can punch the hardest, it's nice having a hero who won battles with a wave of his hand and winning the day by just being a bit smarter than everyone else.

Back in high school I found a paperback book in a charity shop called Kenobi. I read it cover to cover twice and then went on to read several other Star Wars novels from the 90's. That book is a gem and it's what this show should have been.

The Kenobi book is a slow burner about a broken man trying to build a normal life for himself after everything he's ever known since he was a child is destroyed. Like a cult survivor, Kenobi is forced to distance himself from the "jedi way" as he's challenged emotionally to his limits both by his isolation and the guilt that he feels for "killing" his padawan. The book never leaves Tatooine and plays with Kenobi's moral dilemmas as he becomes a bounty hunter of sorts for petty cash. I feel like a story along these lines would have made more logical sense IF Disney hadn't made Book of Boba Fett first which was another Tatooine, bounty hunter based affair.

One of the joys of the book were the side characters who would act as a foil to Kenobi's self deprecating ways, helping him adjust to a simple life away from the battle ground. I felt like some of this was attempted with Leia in the series which provided some cute moments but unfortunately fell short of the character arc I needed to see from him. As a writer you have so much to play with here. He's a war vet in hiding from the army he once used to serve. A religious and dedicated man whose faith led to the apparent death of his best friend and apprentice. Shove him into the "biggest hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy" and you could do literally anything. Instead we're saving the Princess from a castle surrounded by lava... again.

As frustrating as it is, there is some merit to what we got. A lot of the new characters I thoroughly enjoyed. Tala was one of my favourites and I liked the idea of an underground group smuggling Jedi. I also loved Haja, a con man pretending to be a Jedi to exploit vulnerable people. I even liked Reva as Darth Vader's right hand woman and felt like her backstory was an interesting one, her allegiance kept me guessing and I almost wish the final showdown had been between her and Obi-Wan instead of Obi-Wan and Vader.

Talking of Vader... sigh... listen...

We've been here before lads. You two duling it out with a dramatic choir in the background, we did it, we've done it, and the fact that you're going to do it again in another 10 years means you both make it out of this mediocre action scene alive, right? So we can chill?

These fights don't achieve anything for either character. There's one cool moment when Vader is temporarily de-masked and Obi-Wan gets a moment to truly come to terms with what Anakin has become... but guess what... this played out BEAT BY BEAT the same with Ahsoka in another show. A cartoon show. And it's not even the good cartoon show!

Despite Hayden Christensen coming back to reprise his role as Anakin, he is criminally underused in flashbacks. Instead we get way too much Darth Vader with no consequence.

I think the thing that upsets me the most is the fact that this series is just "fine". It is an Obi-Wan Kenobi side story with just enough links to everything else in the universe for you to play cameo Where's Wally and for Disney, that's all it has to be.

The success of The Mandalorian has essentially given Disney a sandpit of mediocrity to play around in and there's not much point in them going outside that when they have a dedicated fan base ready to gobble up any lightsaber battle with a shaky-cam effect on it.

Maybe i'm not giving it enough credit. There were some episodes I genuinely really enjoyed and maybe I set the bar too high hoping for a Star Wars lone ranger narrative but I've read fanfictions with more character than this. Fans and book writers for the Star Wars universe show a deep respect and most importantly CURIOSITY for these characters which the shows simply do not. They're not interested in showing us anything new, no "new sides" no growth, just what we think we want to see with as many bright lights as possible.

As long as these shows perform reasonably well, they're going to keep churning them out and I don't want to discourage people from seeing them either because it's not like they're terrible. If nothing else we're at least getting some diversity in-front and behind the camera in big profile shows (big up director Deborah Chow for example) and much like soaps used to be, Star Wars and Marvel have very much become the water cooler melodramas of our time with surprise father reveals to match.

The one thing I would like to encourage though is that people reach outside of Disney for some of their Star Wars related content. There is a wealth of stuff out there old and new made by people with a real passion for the universe and by supporting their comics, games, fanzines, videos, animations you're supporting the next generation of independent creatives and who knows you might find your new favourites in the process.

6/10