Obi-Wan is almost ready. For what, we don’t know. But something, at some point between the events of “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope,” we can tell you that.
The Lucasfilm series will hit Disney+ next year, and as part of the Disney+ Day festivities, we got a better sense of what “Obi-Wan Kenobi” is all about. In the brief presentation Disney debuted concept art, behind-the-scenes footage of star Ewan McGregor doing some fight training, and comments from McGregor and director Deborah Chow (who also helmed some of the very best episodes of “The Mandalorian,” amongst other things) about what we can expect from the limited series.
Don’t look for details about the plot of course. It’s mainly just a sizzle real, some concept are and the principle people talking it up. McGregor said plainly, “there’s a hunger for this character to come back.” (He should know. Seemingly at every press event and red carpet since the release of 2005’s “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” he has been asked about the character and whether or not he’d ever return.) And Chow said McGregor’s return is “something that is extremely exciting.”
What we do know is, the show takes place at some point between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope,” and given what McGregor says — Obi-Wan’s “one task” in the series is to “keep Luke safe” — a lot of it is likely to happen on Tattooine. But Chow says that this is “a starting place for our story,” and that “the interesting thing is where it goes from there.”
And some of that production art really suggests parts of the story will take place elsewhere. For instance, that giant hallway filled for imperial soldiers. Or the crowded market that looks nothing like any settlement on Tattooine we’ve ever seen before. And of course, there are those intriguing glimpses of Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) in his castle on the lava planet of Mustafar.
And one place it is definitely going is a new Obi-Wan-Vader lightsaber duel. “The most beautiful thing of all is it’s brought me back with Hayden,” McGregor said, before adding: “Have another swing at each other might be satisfying for everybody.” Indeed it will.
But, we admit having a difficult time figuring out how it makes sense. In “A New Hope,” Vader says “when I left you, I was but the learner. Now, I am the master.” Kind of hard to imagine he was still “the learner” years after getting chopped up by Obi-Wan. Either way, we’ll find out if it makes any kind of sense at all next year.
You can watch the video at Disney+.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi” is scheduled to debut on Disney+ in 2022. The series also stars Moses Ingram, Kumail Nanjiani, Benny Safdie, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Simone Kessell and Maya Erskine.
