Image Source: Disney Plus
Obi-Wan Kenobi—the latest Disney+ Star Wars thing, starring Ewan McGregor as the eponymous Jedi master—is really just a bunch of different Star Wars bits and pieces rearranged into a new whole. That’s what every Star Wars is, and what sometimes makes the franchise so great.In its current state, Star Wars feels more like a Dungeons and Dragons setting than a long-term piece of storytelling. After the Skywalker trilogy, a set of kinda-sorta remakes that also served as sequels to George Lucas’s original works from the 1970s, left a lot of people with a sour taste, the franchise has regained some of its appeal on television, especially in the form of The Mandalorian. That show takes some of the pieces that Lucas originally put together to make the original Star Wars universe—a little bit of samurai cinema, a little bit of Westerns, cool cars—and arranges them in a different order. Instead of The Hidden Fortress, The Mandalorian was more like Lone Wolf and Cub, but in space.Obi-Wan Kenobi is also a little bit Lone Wolf and Cub, but in a different way than The Mandalorian was. Instead of a new hero who doesn’t know he’s a hero yet, this show stars Obi-Wan as a disgraced hero who has to relearn how to be one. And instead of a tiny, adorable, pre-verbal Grogu to carry around, Obi-Wan is saddled with a 10-year-old Princess Leia, who is at once wise beyond her years and also realistically 10 years old. When Obi-Wan picks out a mild green cloak for Leia to wear while undercover, she eyes a much louder, sparklier dress and says, “Can I try this one?” before silently and picking up a pair of gloves and putting them on, forcing Obi-Wan to pay for them.Watching this show is like eating milk and cookies. It’s simple, but the classics are classics for a reason. Ewan McGregor, who played Obi-Wan in the prequel trilogy, seems incapable of not delivering a grounded, empathetic portrayal of the character despite his mixed feelings on the character and franchise. As the star of the show, he more or less holds the whole thing together, though his chemistry with the young Vivien Lyra Blair, who plays Princess Leia quite capably, is also a delight to watch.Having Leia as a central character in this show actually has some weight to it, despite knowing that Leia is never truly in peril and will grow up to become Carrie Fisher. Obi-Wan starts right on the heels of where Revenge of the Sith left off, meaning that Jedi are being persecuted by the empire, including the young padawans (or for non-nerds, children). There’s a scene of Stormtroopers shooting at children early on in the show, which has caused some furor online given that this show premiered shortly after a deadly school shooting. Out of context, this does feel a little too much for what’s basically a kids’ show. But in context, the tone is clear; this is a child’s adventure serial, about a kid and their mentor making it against the odds. There has to be a little bit of danger.That danger is key to all the influences that this show, which is made up of bits and pieces of other things, wears proudly on its sleeve. This is Obi Wan as a disgraced ronin, but also as a drifter on the frontier, but also as a space wizard with a laser sword, but also as the Wolf in the Lone Wolf and Cub scenario. All stories are bits and pieces of the things that have influenced them, and it’s much more interesting when a piece of fiction isn’t ashamed of that. As a piece of Star Wars, it’s also wearing bits and pieces of itself in this new tapestry, by serving as a reunion for the prequel actors and an opportunity to revisit the work they did together. But it’s not like using a multiverse as an opportunity to cram in new characters in new costumes, or remaking the original Star Wars trilogy while not exactly doing so; it’s revisiting Obi-Wan, by now as iconic a figure as Mickey Mouse, as a specific character, at a particular time in his life when he had a great adventure.