‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Still Struggling To Justify Its Existence Four Episodes In

Another episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi debuted alongside the premiere of Ms. Marvel today.

It was…fine.

So far, there’s nothing like explicitly bad about Obi-Wan Kenobi as a series, maybe just a few weird editing decisions, but four episodes into a six episode run, there’s just nothing terribly compelling about it either.

Today’s episode had Obi-Wan and his spy friend Tala infiltrating Fortress Inquisitorious to save Leia, which…they did. It played like a somewhat close parallel to the original trilogy where Han, Luke, Chewie and Obi-Wan save Leia in the Death Star, albeit less memorable. There’s one cool moment where Obi-Wan discovers a cache of preserved, dead Jedi, but overall, the plan is pretty bland. Tala creates a distraction, Obi-Wan slips in to get Leia and lightsabers a few dudes (oh and uh, drowns a room full of Stormtroopers), and then they leave. But they’re being tracked.

This entire series seems to have been founded with the premise “wouldn’t it be cool to see Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan again?” And well yes, it is cool, simply building a series around that concept has not really gone great so far. Obi-Wan is in hiding, Leia is kidnapped, obviously we know she will eventually be returned home safe, and Obi-Wan will go back into hiding. The only real “development” here is that Obi-Wan discovers Anakin is alive and has become Darth Vader.

That’s the other strange part here, a very meta thing where fans are supposed to be thrilled that they know it’s actor Hayden Christensen under the armor as Vader (with James Earl Jones still doing the voice, of course), but again, we’re four episodes in and we haven’t seen Christensen utter a word himself, not in a flashback, not as a force projection, nothing. It seems like the show will probably build up to a single scene like that in the finale, but that’s about it.

Ewan McGregor again, is doing as good a job as he can manage, but there’s just not a whole lot to work with here. The same goes for young Leia, but I’m not sure if this “ah so this is why Leia really hates the Empire” angle is necessary or answering any real questions anyone had before this.

Is it enough to conceive and execute a series based almost entirely around fan service? Because that’s what it seems like we’re doing here, a return to the prequels because now those have come back into fashion through nostalgia. But the actual product here just isn’t meaningful or impactful. So little of new era Disney Star Wars has been, minus The Mandalorian, I’d argue.

We’ll see where things go in the final two episodes but I mean, we already know where they go, don’t we?

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.