Brace yourselves Jedi: The premiere date for Disney+’s “Star Wars” show “Obi Wan Kenobi” has been delayed. The good news: Only by a couple of days. The better news: The show will premiere with both its first and second episodes on the same night.
Originally set to premiere Wednesday, May 25, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” will now launch Friday, May 27th on Disney+. With, as we said, the first two episodes rather than just the first one.
Star Ewan McGregor made the announcement in a video posted on the official “Star Wars” Twitter account Thursday. And while he doesn’t say anything different from what we described above, who doesn’t love hearing that handsome man talk? We know we sure want to. So watch for yourself below:
The upshot is, what this change means for you is that instead of staying up until 4 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday (1 a.m. Pacific) to watch one episode, now you’ll stay up until 5 a.m. Eastern (2 a.m. Pacific) on Friday morning instead. Thanks, annoying streaming convention of not just launching the episodes during the actual daytime.
Set at about 10 years before the original “Star Wars” — look pedants, it only got that “A New Hope” subtitle in 1981, a full 4 years after its original release and one year after “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” — “Obi-Wan Kenobi” features the doomed ex-Jedi (played by McGregor) keeping watch over Luke Skywalker from a distance, only to get roped into some damn fool adventure of his own.
Alongside McGregor in the title role, it also features the return of Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, though how the hell that’s even going to work is beyond our force powers. All we know is that if Darth (quiet, Obi-Wan called him that) and Kenobi end up having a duel during the events of the show, it’s going to cause mind-exploding problems with continuity. But we’re here for it regardless.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi” also stars a lot of other people, including the always awesome Sung Kang as one of the dorkier villains introduced in the animated series “Star Wars: Rebels,” the Sith inquisitor named Fifth Brother. No seriously, check out how dorky it is. Luckily, there isn’t a movie or TV show in existence that hasn’t been improved by even 5 minutes of Kang’s time, so we’re optimistic he’ll manage to save this character too.
We’re just hoping “Obi-Wan Kenobi” marks the launch of the Meegal cinematic universe. Yes, only about 15 people will get that joke, but if this show goes where we hope it goes, we promise it’s going to make hilarious sense for the rest of you once it comes out.