Hello There.
The highly anticipated Obi-Wan Kenobi finale dropped on Disney+ on 22nd June. In this post, we’re going to be breaking down all the easter eggs, hidden details, and things you missed.
Last week had Roken and the Rebels fleeing into space whilst Reva remained behind to try and strike down Vader. This backfired and she ended up getting stabbed in the stomach similar to how she was when she was a child. This was hinted at back in episode 3 when she ended up getting slammed by Brother 5. She touched the area for a split second, which made us think she may have cybernetic parts in the wound, much like we saw with Fennec Shand. These just being stabbed again would explain how she survived the encounter and they act as somewhat of a means to an end-or (get it?).
This episode really wrestles with whether she’s friend or foe, but by the end of the episode, things are tied up quite nicely without breaking the canon too much.
We open on Tattooine and see two Jawas and a blue astromech droid – that’s the same unit as R5 we see in A New Hope, who would later get a busted motivator. Motivators actually pop up again when we discover that the ship is struggling.
Here we see moisture dealers selling water in the street and Reva ends up intervening on a guy who’s being a bit of a jerk. This subtly hints that she’s turning back to the light as she’s somewhat showing compassion to the locals by helping them out, even if she’s not specifically doing it for their best interests. This was a big part of the Jedi order and maybe getting that Arkham Asylum death screen last week made her restart with a new take on life.
In earlier breakdowns, we talked about how Reva could likely be a play on the name Revan. Revan was a Jedi who ended up turning to the Dark Side much as she did. Similar to that fact Revan also ended up going back to the light in the canonised ending which is what we see happen here.
The episode cuts to the Devastator chasing the Partisan ship which we learn is heading to Tessen. I don’t believe that this planet has featured in the saga before and it’s a refuge that they sadly don’t think they will make it to.
Vader has of course searched near and Musta-far for Obi-Wan and he’s completely obsessed with taking him down and getting his revenge (of the Sith). He’s trying to use the reverse Uno card on him from their battle on Mustafar and we’ve seen this throughout the show and the expanded lore. Episode 3 had him dragging him through fire to burn him. In the comics, we even had a section where he dreamed about killing him on Mustafar during their battle.
He’s so fixated on Obi-Wan that he realises he’ll leave the others alone if it means he gets him and thus he ends up leaving to head to a Moon of Mustafar. This chase scene feels a lot more exciting than the dull one from The Last Jedi and we actually see the struggle that they’re going through and the hopelessness that they feel.
However, it is just the same plan as they have in that so Star Wars is bout to get some s**t.
This episode is very much about Obi-Wan himself intervening to protect people and he really lays his life on the line. We see that Obi-Wan gives Leia Tala’s holster and this may be the one she ended up wearing in Return of The Jedi due to their similar designs.
This also popped up in the Princess Leia Age of Rebellion Comic, showing that, in many ways, Tala might have inspired her.
Cut to Luke and Uncle Owen who we learn as per usual, tired of your s**t Luke mate. He never hits the thumbs up button, always causes trouble and one of these days he’s gonna get his auntie and uncle killed…oh.
Owen learns about Reva and we see that Aunt Beru is played once more by Bonnie Piesse who also played the character in Revenge of The Sith.
Obi-Wan tries to reach out to Qui-Gon but he doesn’t get a response, however, at the end of the episode, they finally reconnect. Probably because the Qui-Gon feels a bit awkward about getting everyone to train the kid who destroyed the Jedi, even though everyone was like, mate don’t do it.
The Grand Inquisitor really wants Vader to focus on the Partisans but as we discovered last week, Vader is often blinded by the thought of victory. Though he managed to sniff out Reva through doing this it was still clearly his downfall, and something that Obi-Wan said would keep him as a Padawan until he overcame it. This could explain why he says in A New Hope that he was only a learner when he and Obi-Wan last met and finally dropping this need makes him become a master. Vader decides to face him alone, but could’ve sent the Devastator after the Partisans and went for Obi-Wan yourself but never mind.
He flies in a shuttle, the same transport that we saw him riding in at the end of Empire and also at the start of Return of The Jedi.
On the farm, Luke says “I’m not afraid”, which is of course a play on him saying it in the Empire Strikes Back.
The Final Showdowns
Vader and Obi-Wan come face to face but he refuses to run away as he did in Episode 3. Interestingly everyone was saying he darted for the high ground. Vader says “have you come to destroy me?”. this could be playing on him saying the opposite to Luke in Empire – “don’t make me destroy you”.
He then tells Obi-Wan: “then you will die”. Which is a line that the character said in Rebels. Similar to the scene from Rebels, his mask gets split open exposing some of his face – finally showing us Hayden in the suit. Through this, we can hear both Hayden and James Earl Jones dubbing the lines over each other, the same as how his dialogue played out in Rebels.
These quotes might not actually be nods to Rebels, but we like a reach here at the Heavy Spoilers so… moving on.
Obi-Wan ends up drawing his lightsaber and he adopts the stance that we’ve seen him take at several points in his life with the blade up by his head whilst he extends his other arm. This has appeared several times throughout the franchise.
The pair duke it out and unlike their last fight, there’s no lava here to fall into. It’s a great battle, with them just going all out and it’s nicely juxtaposed by the more solitary and stealthy scenes that are happening with Reva, where we see Owen holding his own and you can see why Obi-Wan trusted him to raise the child.
This is mirrored in Obi-Wan who still holds back when fighting Vader. Ever since he left him to die on Mustafar he’s shown that he’s actually unable to deal a full killing blow to him and this was of course seen in Episode 3 and A New Hope in which he sacrificed himself.
Obi-Wan gets buried under rocks and making them levitate is one of the first things that a Jedi learns. This shows the very base reaction to him and he ends up burying the character lower than the audience scores for the show on Rotten Tomatoes. He calls him Master which doesn’t break canon as he refers to himself as one in A New Hope.
Now whilst they’re fighting I thought I’d just drop a quick correction on last week’s post. We said that we thought this took place after Attack of The Clones because Anakin was looking at Padme’s penthouse which he wouldn’t know belonged to her unless they met. However, due to the lightsaber that he carries here being destroyed in the factor and also the fact that he still has his hand, it’s set either early on in Attack of The Clones or just before it. Still can’t explain why he looks like a 45-year-old man but there was also a hidden Mickey Mouse head in the scene. Those summmsoffbiches at Disney, I’ll never forgive ’em!
Back on the farm Reva badly busts up Owen and Beru which makes Luke flee into the desert. He never actually sees the Lightsaber in the episode and this keeps up the canon as Obi-Wan had to explain to him what one was in A New Hope. Later on, he gets knocked out so he’s unconscious when she draws it and this was something I theorised they had to do to not mess up a New Hope.
Back to Obi-Wan. While under the rocks, we hear lines of dialogue from their previous battles and initially it seems like these somewhat push him into fuelling his anger.
However, he ends up channelling his thoughts of Luke and Leia which empowers him to finally concentrate and lift the rocks. He later on builds up an array of these that he fires like bullets. Lots of flashes again of the ending of Last Jedi here and again this calls back to basic Jedi training in which they used their feelings.
This helps him overpower Vader and it leaves him breathing heavily like how he was when he was wounded in Return Of The Jedi.
After his helmet is split he ends up denying that he’s Anakin. Obi-Wan described him as being more machine than man now and this voice distortion and machinery that surrounds him adds to why Obi-Wan felt this way.
Obi-Wan apologises for letting him down but Vader says that he himself had killed Anakin. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan told Luke that his father was killed by Darth Vader and he later explained this as being the case, from a certain point of view. This line very much adds to this notion that it was Vader who killed Anakin and was unable to deal the killing blow once more.
Not gonna lie, it did feel like fan fiction at points where they over-explained things and I think the writing is what really let this show down.
As he leaves the planet he senses that Luke is in danger and we cut to Reva standing over him about to strike him down. However, she very much sees herself in him and refuses to cut him down. Obi-Wan arrives and mentions the Dune Sea, a location that was brought up in A New Hope.
Reva returns with the boy and turns out she’s redeemed herself. Spent several years cutting down kids but just like how Vader murdered millions but then turned against the Emperor now, all is forgiven, Space Hitler.
She knows the secret of Luke and for some reason, Obi-Wan decides to take the chance of letting her live after she drops her lightsaber. This idea of burying it in the sand was very much seen as a way of shutting oneself off from the force. Obi-Wan dug his up earlier in the season and Rey of course did it for Luke and Leia at the end of Rise of Skywalker.
From here we cut to Mustafar and get a cameo by Ian Mcdermott who is once more reprising his role as Palpatine. He questions whether his feelings are clear on the matter and if he’s potentially returned to serving Obi-Wan. The Sith were notorious for back and front stabbing each other so him overthrowing Palps would be a big worry. This was of course his plan the entire time and just like how Reva wanted to kill her master in Vader, Vader also wanted to oust the Emporer with his son.
This kinda leads me into the next point with Palps and I also think he’s probe droiding to see if he knows about his children.
Now Vader was completely unaware that he had kids at this point as Palpatine told him that they’d died along with Padme. It was something that pushed him further down the dark path he was on but he did eventually learn that Luke was his son after the events of a New Hope.
Leia Returns Home
We cut to Leia’s home and see All-ders right instead of All-ders wrong and f**k me that has to be the s**test pun we’ve ever dropped. Just unsubscribe mate, I don’t even blame you.
Anyway, she gets herself ready this time instead of the servants doing it like how they would have in Episode 1 and shows her independence. She knows how she wants to lead from now on and as we saw in the Sequel trilogy she became a fearless leader. Obi-Wan says he will help the Organas again if they need it and this would of course be why Leia reaches out to him.
Really nice goodbye between Leia and Obi-Wan, just a shame she never remembers this and was like, you served my dad mate but I never met you, you chump.
Obi-Wan brings up her parents and says that she carries the best qualities of both Anakin and Padme. In episode 3 we did discuss how he acknowledged the similarities with Padme but I also said a lot of her qualities were down to Anakin too. It’s nice that they acknowledged there was good in him and this would of course lead to his redemption.
Obi-Wan’s Goodbye
Back Home Obi-Wan ends up donning the original white robes that he had in the original and prequel trilogy. Later on, he puts a coat over this and this is actually what he wore in Star Wars Issue 15 which centred around his adventures on the planet. This series has cherrypicked moments from that including the gift he gave to Luke being destroyed by Owen and also the fact that he watched over the boy.
He ends up letting Luke grow up as a normal boy that works 80 hours a week doing back-breaking farm work and he lets him stay with Owen who’s become a powerful mentor. He’s very much like a Johnathan Kent-type figure who wants what’s best for the boy but he doesn’t want to force him to become Superman.
At this point, Luke is given the t-16 toy which Owen ended up breaking in Episode 1. This toy also appeared in A New Hope when we could see Luke playing with it during his time with the droids in the first act.
There’s very much this hopeful feeling to the ending and we know from the Path and the lightsabers that we saw last week that the Jedi weren’t completely wiped out after the events of Order 66. We’re yet to meet them all but the names on the wall made it clear that several survived and are out there in the Galaxy.
Obi-Wan also drops Hello There.
Better Late Than Never
As Obi-Wan leaves, out in the desert, the ghost of Qui-Gon begins to form and I love how he’s just kinda mosying about.
Now, Qui-Gon is attached to the living Force and this is how he was able to come back and communicate with the Jedi. Force Ghosts were never really in the prequel trilogy which seemed a bit off as there were thousands and thousands of dead Jedi but absolutely none of them reached out to any of the others.
Looking at the bigger story of Qui-Gon, he was someone that understood that the Force went past life and death and that it existed inside everything and everyone. Upon death, he came to realise that he didn’t have an individual existence and instead he just became part of the Force. Though he thought this was a better kind of existence due to the petty squabbles that the living had, he did still will to return to the living world. After death, he started to train his consciousness to return there and he managed to leave the unity of the force to commune with the living.
He actually guided Yoda on Dagobah and helped him to gain his own form of immortality through becoming one with the living Force; as he had. In the expanded lore, Qui-Gon initially only existed as a voice, however as he drew on memories of his life his robes started to form around him and he eventually took shape, appearing like the body that he once had.
He says he’s always been there Obi-Wan just wasn’t ready to see and he will help further train him to master his abilities and become a ghost as he did.
Obi-Wan rides off on the back of his Eiope, as the twin suns of Tattooine bear down on him we’ve seen this iconography throughout the saga.
Titled Binary Sunset it’s something that Lucas and co used to show everything is wrapped up. Luke first looked over the sunset back in A New Hope and then Owen and Beru did it at the end of Revenge Of The Sith. This was then carried out by Rey at the end of Rise of Skywalker and it’s used here to bring this series to a close.
Pretty solid episode I just felt the writing let it down a bit but these closing scenes really elevated it for me. Lots of powerful and impactful moments, and great goodbyes that tease what could come down the line.
Thoughts on the Series
Now as for my thoughts on the series, I am a bit torn on it in all honesty. I feel that there are a lot of great moments in it but there are also some really stupid character choices and things that they do at certain points in the series that knock it down a couple of notches. Every episode has had its strong points but I feel that the true conflict of the show should’ve been between Vader and Obi-Wan which wasn’t really explored all that in-depth until episode 5. I think the marketing for the series knew that that was what people wanted to see in the show the most as well too which is why Hayden and Ewan were both heavily featured in interviews for the series. Their relationship, the fact Obi-Wan is protecting his kids and in some ways now their father figure would’ve added more interesting dynamics to it but instead their fight feels like a footnote.
Now I do feel that Moses Ingram was a good villain and her story was clearly given the most thought throughout the series. However, even then I feel like a lot of the more interesting things got left out and with them going in the direction of putting her as the main bad guy I think we should’ve had more focus on her backstory, seeing how she survived the temple, her training with the inquisitors and so on. Like I said I think the focus should’ve been Vader and Obi-Wan but considering they didn’t do that I also don’t think they really knocked it out of the park either with who they chose to put the focus on.
I think the 6 episode format Disney seem to be stuck on has a lot of issues in general and it doesn’t really give us enough time to properly explore everything like a ten-episode tv show would.
We have a pretty similar plot to A New Hope here where we’re basically getting a rescue mission on Leia, meeting a scoundrel that turns good, breaking into an Imperial fortress to save her, escaping, getting tracked by the Empire and having a big battle. However, it feels like they do less than a two-hour movie even though they have more time. If you watch a tv show like The Boys and see what they do in six episodes, how many characters they fully develop and where they take them and then compare it to this it seems really simplistic.
Now as for the good, I think Ewan really nailed it in terms of doing the old weathered, out the game, character that we’ve seen become a motif in the last couple of decades. Unforgiven and Logan both handled it really well and though the Last Jedi failed in it, I think Obi-Wan was done really well as they showed him growing as a character throughout it.
There were also some of the big action set pieces that I think worked really well such as the fight in episode 3 and all the scenes with Vader really captured how threatening of a villain he is. I’ve talked about this in-depth and I think for all the hangups I have with Disney’s handling of Star Wars that they’ve at least nailed their most important character in him. Whether it’s Rogue One, him dragging people along the street or just dangling Reva in the air, I think Vader has been really strong in this series and again, would’ve loved to have spent more time with him.
I also really liked Tala and the Inquisitors, especially Brother 5, again, I just wish that we had more.
Overall I think the show is good, it’s just not great and for a property like Obi-Wan Kenobi that’s what I was hoping for.
With a second season potentially in the works, I’d love to see Lucasfilm take a look at what worked and what didn’t give the show the space it needs to develop storylines and plot points.
In the end, I don’t hate what we got, I just wanted a little bit more and that’s why it gets a…
7/10
Excuse me there kind sir, perhaps you could spare a minute to talk about our intergalactic lord and saviour Obi-Wan Kenobi. Just saying mate, our pals over at Epic Hero Shop have a Kenobi Collection going on right now with lots of t-shirts, art prints and more on the character.
I’m not getting paid for this, just wanna show some love to them as they’ve been big supporters of the channel and I wear their stuff a lot and this is really the last chance you have to get your hands on some merch from them.
They’ve got great ones like a lightsaber schematic t-shirt, a Nasa Space wars Hoodie that has a translation of Nasa in Aurbesh, and lots of other stuff.
Head over to them chumps punk at Epicheroshop.com that’s epicheroshop.com you damn chump.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.