The best thing about Obi-Wan Kenobi is its secret second lead character

Star Wars:The Empire Strikes BackLuke Skywalker hears Jedi Master Yoda telling him not to judge people on their looks. It’s a rich statement from a man who spends his first hour pretending he is a senile hobbit. The premiere of Obi Wan KenobiViewers might feel a similar mixture of emotions.

The show was marketed as yet another desert-set Disney Plus offering, a solo adventure for Ewan McGregor’s defeated Jedi master, who would struggle to watch over a young Luke Skywalker while he evaded the operatives of the Dark Side, culminating in a confrontation with Hayden Christensen’s Darth Vader himself. Its first episode, which consists of two episodes premiered. Obi Wan KenobiIt is quite something else.

It’s a great reveal, well crafted, smartly executed, and full of promise! The Jedi that Luke sent will likely be found by viewers, and they will feel excited, just like Luke. But it does raise the question of why the show’s marketing feinted in the first place.

[Ed. note: The rest of this piece contains a significant spoiler for the first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi.]

Lucasfilm

The premiere Obi Wan KenobiIntroduces Vivien Lira Blair, a 10-year old Princess Leia Organa. Old Ben Kenobi is her only hope. You could make a joke out of this as the future Star Wars television. MandalorianAdventure ensues when a jaded outcast meets an adorable child. Except for the careless specificity Obi-Wan’s exploration of Leia, and Blair’s exceptional performance of it, immediately speak for themselves.

This is a cinematic exploration of young Leia that parts of the Star Wars fandom have desired for years, an establishment of her dreams, her abilities, and her upbringing to stand beside the films’ focus on Luke. Obi-Wan doesn’t have to say “Well, this is what you get when the daughter of a woman who was elected president of an entire planet at the age of 14 has light Force sensitivity and is raised as a princess.” It Shows that development, as the script makes Leia not just a precocious little “smart kid on TV,” but more emotionally savvy than most of the adults around her. Blair’s delivery alternates smoothly between age-appropriate naïveté and the sureness of the leader of a hard-core national student protest movement — which is, of course, what her character will essentially be in just a few years.

It’s not the only way that Obi-WanIt is the second episode of its first season, at most, and it focuses on showing rather than telling. The series appears to be deftly building a bridge from Lucas’ prequel trilogy, with deliberate selectivity of its best aspects: McGregor’s performance as Obi-Wan, Sith ominousness, and the tragedy of a golden age proven to be just patina. A nearly wordless scene between Obi-Wan, a street beggar, and a pair of patrolling storm troopers says as much about the hubris of the Jedi, the passing of an age, and the false dream of a “just war” as the entirety of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Ewan McGregor is Deborah Chow’s ally during these fleeting moments.

McGregor is less like a working horse with a pack and more like a monarch with a crown when he carries these episodes. He’s not alone in his efforts; he and Blair play off each other delightfully, waking fonder memories of Obi-Wan’s dry wit coming to bear against Anakin’s moody sarcasm. Jimmy Smits — reprising his role as Bail Organa, the only plain good dad in Star Wars — shows that he’s always been great at this job, even if he’s only gotten to do it for 70 seconds at a time every three to 11 years. Kumail Nanjiani expertly walks the fine line between humor, sympathy and making the viewers laugh without ever feeling slighted.

Chow will hold McGregor’s camera and allow him to portray Obi Wan Kenobi as a disheartened, disappointed, or betrayed Obi Wan Kenobi using only his face. It’s a far cry from screaming “I loved you!” in the middle of a lightsaber fight on a planet made entirely of lava to a full John Williams orchestra (although John Williams DidReturn to this page and complete the theme.

The show has its weaknesses so far — the editing of every chase scene with little Leia strains suspension of disbelief as she seems to evade grown adults over open ground at the speed of a jog. Reva Savander, the inquisitor, remains one-sided. However this will change in the next four episodes. Disney Plus projects tend to be weak and start strong but end up failing. They lose the promise of what they have created for lack of execution. We don’t know if Obi-Wan will give Leia to Bail in Episode 3 or if he will head back to Tatooine in order to solve his inquisitor issue.

But I fervently hope it doesn’t: It’s the most interesting thing about the show. If, after The Book of Boba FettWe are making another Star Wars series featuring established characters. Let it be done well. But it certainly does beg the question of why Leia’s central role was kept a secret. To illustrate with a brief moment of personal experience, it’s a flabbergasting shift in expectations.

Mandalorian set the example for a huge first episode reveal in Star Wars TV — something the Western monthly-publishing comics industry has embraced as simply the best way to start a serial story — and also did so by introducing a tiny version of a character from the original trilogy. But it’s obvious why the presence of “Yoda, but a cutie-wutie-pie baby baby crib baby” was not a part of the series’ marketing.

Mandalorian had a specific tone and introduction that sold that character’s burgeoning relationship with an isolated bounty hunter, and established, without a doubt, that the crew was committed to honoring the beloved iconography with which they were playing. The trailer would have made the revelation seem like an unintentional nostalgia sale, just in time for the largest toy-buying event of the year. Grogu, aside from his obvious inspiration was something that the Star Wars universe hadn’t seen before. Leia is one of the Star Wars universe’s founding heroes.

Obi-Wan’s scenario recalls The Force Awakens, in which Rey’s status as the Jedi hero of the new trilogy was kept so under wraps that you couldn’t find toys of her with a lightsaber until months afterwards. Even then, one might blame J.J. Abrams’ obsession with obfuscation. It boggles the mind that Lucasfilm and Disney teased Luke’s appearance in Obi-Wan rather than Leia’s. Unless, of course, they thought the audience was more interested in Luke for … some reason …

But I digress. What do we now know? At its inception, at the very least. Obi Wan KenobiThe Ben and Leia show. Lucasfilm might finally be able to produce a quality successor if they can keep up their current standards of excellence. Mandalorian On its hands.

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