I remember when the news about Disney purchasing Lucasfilm and Star Wars first surfaced. There was a cautious kind of excitement. A lot of blame had been laid at George Lucas’s feet for the missteps of the prequel trilogy, after all, and there’s fair criticism to be made when it comes to those three movies. So maybe with new blood at the helm, and Lucas reined in or aided in areas he had shown weakness, some new, incredible stories might’ve been told.
This post isn’t about the sequel trilogy, though. The Kenobi show “aired” (feels like the wrong word with a streaming service) its final episode about a month ago, and ultimately my feelings on the show have only soured further with time. Lucky for me, I’ve got the perfect excuse to write about it and pretend that it’s productive! So cue the John Williams and start the title crawl. And, obviously, spoilers ahead.
A Plague of Prequels
There’s a stagnation with Star Wars under Disney that I don’t know anyone expected would come when the buyout broke. The universe is stuck in a bookended era with movies on either side. We know how these stories end. Hell, for Kenobi and the upcoming Andor series, we know how these characters die. When Han Solo’s solo movie released, we knew how he died.
That of course doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a good story. Romeo and Juliet is still being enjoyed today and it tells you how the story ends right at the start. But it’s different in a prequel story. It completely changes the texture of tension. It is a foregone conclusion that anyone who’s had exposure to Star Wars before knows that Kenobi and Darth Vader must survive the show, and that cuts the tension of them battling one another off at the knees. It can still be entertaining and enjoyable, but that genuine worry that something bad might happen to a character you like is absent. We’ve seen old man Kenobi on Tatooine. We’ve seen him die when Luke and Han rescue Princess Leia. The stakes are not that high for a duel between him and Vader alone on a barren rock.
There are avenues to bring that tension back – introduce new likable characters and thrust them into danger. In Better Call Saul (no spoilers), the fate of Nacho Varga and Kim Wexler and other characters can revive that tension, so that while we know Jimmy McGill makes it alive to Walter White’s rise to power, we can be unsure of these other character’s fates.
Kenobi did some of this with the resistance group, the Path, and Indira Varma’s character Tala, but if the final battle between Vader and Kenobi had occurred in some place where other people were in immediate danger if Kenobi didn’t defeat him, that would’ve raised the stakes in a tangible way.
An expansion of a story must justify its own existence. When a sequel or prequel is made, it changes the context of the original work – there must be something driving that decision. In a sequel, the story is at a minimum moving forward, but prequels have predetermined end-points: all they do is add context. When you intend to craft a compelling story, these are important considerations to have in mind. With a show like Kenobi, however, it feels like the intent was merely to cash-in on something the fanbase had thought would be cool to see for a long time with little thought as to how such a project would impact the characters and the universe at large. Speaking of …
Darth Vader Shouldn’t be in This Show
I grew up seeing the prequel movies in theaters. Revenge of the Sith was a movie my mom took me to see on my birthday. I completely understand the desire to see Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen back together on the screen as these characters. Their dialogue in the final episode of the series is legitimately the greatest thing about the show.
But. In that selfsame conversation, Obi-wan accepts that Anakin is truly dead, going so far as to call him “Darth” as he exits (as he will later in A New Hope). So, why doesn’t Obi-wan kill him here? If he hadn’t had the opportunity, that would be one thing, but he bests Vader in one-on-one combat and leaves. I could accept it on Mustafar: he’d sliced up Anakin real good and it was all he could do to keep himself out of the lava. Not being able to strike the killing blow on his one-time padawan and brother made sense then, but it’s been years. Vader has terrorized the galaxy as part of the Empire, and while striking him down wouldn’t end the regime of the Galactic Empire, it would help people, right?
Obi-wan even advocates for Luke to kill Vader, and while Luke’s refusal ultimately brings Anakin back from the darkness to slay Darth Sidious, it isn’t something Obi-wan predicted would happen. But they’re both clearly alive in A New Hope, so this duel can only end with them both walking away. Which is flimsy itself, given that there’s a massive imperial ship in orbit that could and should obliterate Obi-wan’s ship as it leaves the planet after Vader’s failure.
There’s foundational flaws to the whole scene, no matter how great it is. It’s contrivance stacked on top of contrivance to get them both here and then allow them to both leave, and there’s no reason it had to be this way.
Princess Leia Shouldn’t be in This Show
The actress they found for young Leia did an truly good job. Child actors can be really hit-or-miss, but Vivien Blair sold young Leia well. I think, however, if they wanted to include a young Leia in this story, they shouldn’t have made her so entirely precocious. She behaves like an adult Leia shrunken down. Her being a child has almost no bearing on the story, with the exception of being physically picked up throughout the show, and being small enough to fit into a maintenance area that will open the gates for the members of the Path to escape their base toward the latter half of the series. (Which, why wouldn’t that be designed for average sized people to access? Anyway.)
If Leia had to be in this show, she should be a kid with traits we can tell will mature into her personality in A New Hope and onward. The same style of humor? That’s a decent fit. Outrunning adult bounty hunters for several minutes by using knee-high shrubs and bushes? That’s stretching my suspension of disbelief. I understand the idea of her being able to use her size to outmaneuver these guys, but it’s shot in such an unconvincing way with these professional bounty hunters running into chest- or knee-high branches and stopping dead, instead of just … going around, over, or under them.
It’s not impossible that Leia would’ve been an excellent addition to a Kenobi story. I just don’t think the show we got is that story. I’ve seen others online propose having the inquisitor, the Third Sister, Reva, be more friendly with children given her past as a jedi youngling. Her building a friendly rapport with Leia instead of interrogating her and nearly torturing her and getting information that way is an idea I can get behind.
Ultimately, I guess I expected something very different from what we got. I hoped for a story with different stakes than Kenobi being sent to save Leia on a galaxy-trotting adventure. And the story we got might’ve worked, but the execution and writing were flawed. We got a show full of contrivances and problems, with a couple moments of brilliance buried within it. When Star Wars is good, it’s incredible. But that just makes it seem even worse when it falls short of its potential.
The Dark Side of the Fanbase
The worst thing that about this show, though, is that it provided the worst parts of the Star Wars fandom another chance to spew vitriol and hate at a member of the cast for no good reason. Moses Ingram, the actress for the inquisitor Reva, faced a deluge of racist attacks on social media, not dissimilar from what happened to Kelly Marie Tran after her role as Rose Tico in the Last Jedi.
Whatever someone’s reaction to the writing of a character or the plot of a movie or show might be, it is not okay to harass actors or staff online. Whatever criticism someone might have regarding a piece of media, it should not deteriorate into personal attacks. Criticize the writing, the production, the acting itself, sure.
But racism has no place in Star Wars.
As always, for reading, I thank you.
Ben Stovall Blog 
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