Obi-Wan Kenobi finale cements series as precious addition to Star Wars canon.
Unsurprisingly, I loved it.
The Short Take:
The emotionally satisfying finale I never thought we’d actually get, with payoffs that felt earned. At its core, this series was a comeback story for the ages, and only augments Star Wars canon.
[Hello there, SPOILERS.]
The Long Take:
As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, a lot of critics have been wringing their hands over how this series affects franchise continuity; some have been more positive, asking how this new series re-contextualizes other stories we’ve already gotten. Other harsher critics have said that the events of this series taint or violate the Original Trilogy. The harshest podcaster I’ve heard — Jeff Cannata on The Filmcast (a podcast I enjoy even when I don’t agree with some of the takes) — ranted for several minutes about how this show had no right to exist because it diminishes or negates A New Hope. For example, he rhetorically asks, if Vader already faces off with Obi-Wan here, then doesn’t that cheapen the duel between them later on?
I would say no. In fact, all I can think of, especially after this finale, is how this series elevates and enriches what we already knew. There are numerous examples I could cite, but the one that stands out from this final installment is our understanding of Owen and Beru and their relationship with Luke. We, of course, see how much they care about him. Mid-fight, Reva says to Owen, “You really love the boy, like he’s your own.” Owen’s reply is a roaring declaration: “He IS my own.” In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Director Deborah Chow thanked George Lucas for casting Joel Edgerton as Owen back in 2002, and why she said this is apparent in his arresting performance.
I’m equally thankful that Lucas cast Bonnie Piesse as Beru, and I’m so happy she finally gets her moment to shine here. She instantly goes into fight mode when she hears Reva is on her way and pulls out a stash of weapons she’s been saving up. I cheered at her toughness and resolve, which hilariously seemed to surprise Owen a little bit. As an older caretaker doting on Luke in A New Hope, I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of her as a fighter before, but it makes perfect sense that she would Mama Bear it up like this. Piesse, who played Beru in the Prequel Trilogy but hasn’t been very active in Hollywood since then, capitalizes on every second of screen time she has here, with an intensity and command perfectly suited for the occasion. When she tells Owen, “We’re enough. You and me,” the message was clear to me as an audience member as well. These two characters aren’t just ornamental to the story; they are essential players in the Skywalker Saga.
More deeply, what we see in this episode makes Owen and Beru’s deaths in A New Hope infinitely more meaningful because this episode shows that they were always prepared to die for Luke. And we now know that they must have put up a decent fight when the Stormtroopers arrived at their homestead. I previously had assumed they were innocent victims, primarily there to die and, in doing so, push Luke into leaving home and joining the Rebellion. This series says “yes and” to that. They are still part of Luke’s call to adventure, but now they were also his fiercest protectors. And that holds so much more emotional weight.
While what this episode did for Owen and Beru surprised me the most, I would be absurd not to say that the duel between Obi-Wan and Vader was the series’ most emotionally impactful addition to Star Wars canon. It was, of course, full of gorgeous lightsaber pyrotechnics, and the fight choreography was nothing short of spectacular. But this duel, more than the others, activated waterworks for me because it featured a heartbreaking and, at least for Obi-Wan, cathartic conversation between two brothers who tragically became enemies. I had been hoping for this kind of exchange since the series began, but last week I tried to manage my expectations and tell myself that we may not get it.
We got it, and it was huge. Obi-Wan finally got to say I’m sorry to Anakin. The duel is a knock-down, drag-out fight, with both of them escalating their use of the Force, but it’s only when Obi-Wan (in an incredibly cool pounce towards Vader) slices open Vader’s helmet and sees the distorted yet still somewhat recognizable face inside that Obi-Wan lets up and addresses Vader as Anakin. The ferocious “I will do what I must” (another well-timed callback to Revenge of the Sith) with which Obi-Wan begins the duel was easier to utter because Vader’s suit abstracts the idea that it’s Anakin underneath.
Seeing Hayden Christensen’s eyes here, though, very believably stops Obi-Wan in his tracks. Fighting back tears, he says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Anakin. For all of it.” The phrase “all of it” hit hard with me because of all the history these two characters share, between the Prequel Trilogy films, The Clone Wars animated series, and various comics I’ve consumed over the years. This phrase both implies an “I’m sorry for how I had a hand in your fate, and how I failed you as a mentor and friend,” as well as a “I’m just sorry for everything that has happened in your life that has led you to this moment, independent of my complicity in it.” This should be an instant Emmy for Ewan McGregor. As a fan, I feel so fortunate to see him return to this character and deliver a transcendent, character-defining performance (which seems crazy to say because…Alec Guinness).
What I would not have predicted was Vader’s response to Obi-Wan’s apology. But, now that I’ve seen it, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Vader says, “I am not your failure, Obi-Wan. You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.” The blending of Hayden Christensen’s voice with the James Earl Jones bot vocoder they have been using — to convincingly show that this is still the Darth Vader we know with traces of the Anakin Skywalker we know — was chilling, and I’m pleased they were able to find a way to allow Christensen to emerge more identifiably from the Vader suit. Doing so simultaneously solidifies Anakin and Vader as the same person and shows that he has undergone a transition, past a point of no return from one persona to the other. The series lives in that paradox rather than neatly trying to compartmentalize Vader and Skywalker.
For Obi-Wan, this is the pivot point as well, the one piece of this conversation that allows him to forgive himself and move on. It also very cleanly shows how we get from Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith to the Death Star in A New Hope. As he walks away, Obi-Wan calls Vader “Darth” instead of Anakin for the first time. He says out loud that his friend is truly dead. This fight wisely takes a cue from Star Wars: Rebels’ “Twilight of the Apprentice,” the final two episodes of animated series’ second season, in which Anakin Skywalker’s former Padawan Ahsoka Tano duels Vader. Right down to the helmet-splitting. So if you need more tragic Anakin/Vader drama, I would highly recommend that two-part finale.
Image Credit: Polygon (from Rebels)
I, for one, always want more of this. While I acknowledge that this is a greedy impulse, I would have wanted even more words exchanged between Obi-Wan and Vader in this scene. In particular, as my friend and colleague P.T. McNiff eloquently said in a recent conversation, I likewise would have wanted to hear Obi-Wan try to talk some sense into the man he at that point still believes to be Anakin. I would have liked to see a callback to Padme’s final words, “Obi-Wan, there is good in him. I know there is still” before Vader says that Obi-Wan didn’t actually kill Anakin; he did. But, who am I kidding? What we got was still amazing. This is not me complaining at all. It’s just that if we had had five or ten more minutes, that’s what I would have added into the scene.
I would hesitate to trade that added material for Obi-Wan’s own arc with his connection to the Force, as he has a major breakthrough when Vader traps him under that pile of rubble. On the most recent episode of The Rebel Base Card podcast, my friend Greg (@eyeoncanon) very thoughtfully asked if this series has a stance on attachment, considering the Jedi Order in the prequels discourages all attachment but then Luke in the Original Trilogy chooses attachment by abandoning his training to help his friends and helping his father come back to the Light Side. I think this finale, and in particular this moment where Obi-Wan finds the strength to unbury himself, answers that question loud and clear: healthy attachments, formed with love and light, can make a Jedi more powerful than one who tries to, in a more monk-like fashion, close himself to attachment of any kind. What a huge lesson for Obi-Wan, who always scolded prequel Anakin to be mindful of his feelings and attachments, and who harbored his own shame from the temptation to form a romantic attachment to Duchess Satine in The Clone Wars.
Remember that editing technique that has been nagging me for several episodes now? It turns out it paid off in spades here. We hear the familiar audio clips, predominantly relating to Anakin’s tragedy. Obi-Wan closes his eyes, his thoughts and feelings preoccupied by grief and shame. But then the camera cuts to flashing images of young Luke and Leia, culminating in the adoring gaze Leia gives him as she holds his hand at the end of Part IV. This sparks something inside Obi-Wan and he is able to miraculously Force push the rocks, setting himself free.
My interpretation of this is that he is able to let go of the pain of the past, the unhealthy attachment to Anakin, and then channel the more hopeful love he feels towards Luke and Leia. Only through an attachment to the Skywalker twins, a more positive way of remembering his lost friends, Anakin and Padme, can he connect with the Force, seemingly more fervently than he ever has before. Chow has ingeniously planted the seeds for this moment in earlier episodes, teaching the audience a cinematic language through which to communicate Obi-Wan’s character arc and the thesis on the Force that accompanies it.
Attachment, on the other hand, takes an entirely different turn for Vader in this episode. We see during the duel that Vader still calls Obi-Wan master. After he piles a fatal ton of boulders on him, he says, “You have failed, Master.” But later, Emperor Palpatine accuses him of showing weakness in his inability to detach from Obi-Wan. The Emperor implies that he won’t be able to reach his full potential if he isn’t willing to completely let go of Anakin Skywalker. Vader, in a devastating shift (seriously, this made me so sad), says, “Kenobi means nothing. I serve only you, my Master.” And here is where we finally hear the Imperial March. I’ve been saying this entire series that Deborah Chow has shown so much restraint and has taken her time to tell this story well. She withheld the Imperial March before so that it can help tell the story now, signifying Vader’s commitment to the Empire and the Dark Side. The transformation from Anakin to Vader, a decade later, is now complete.
Again, this enhances my understanding and appreciation of the trilogies that chronologically precede and follow this series, making Star Wars canon richer and more textured. But, of course, maintaining continuity creates parameters and limitations. The creators of Obi-Wan Kenobi were always going to paint within certain lines because the series falls in between two preexisting trilogies. Do certain plot points, as a result, if I think about them for too long, start to not make that much sense? Sure. I had a moment at the end of the Vader/Kenobi duel where I asked my screen why Obi-Wan wouldn’t just kill Vader when he had the chance…again. Vader is too great a threat to the galaxy, and Obi-Wan had the chance to eliminate that threat. But for any fictional narrative, getting hung up on the “this person would never do that in this situation” kind of logic is just going to ruin my enjoyment of almost everything. So instead the key question for me is can I find a character-driven, emotional rationale for what happens? And here I would say 100%.
Take Obi-Wan says to Reva about mercy and choice. She hasn’t become like Vader because she has chosen not to — she has chosen to show Luke mercy and refuses to let her grief consume her. To me, this explains why Obi-Wan does not finish the job on that unknown rocky planet. His main goal was to buy Roken and the others time to fix their ship, to protect Leia, and disabling Vader accomplishes that. And even though he has accepted that Anakin is dead and Vader is too far gone, he still chooses to show mercy because that is what keeps him on the Light Side. He cannot bring himself to kill his brother, even if he thinks that brother is lost forever. Strategically, was this a mistake? Probably. But spiritually it was the better choice.
Obi-Wan does a lot of unburdening in this episode. He unburdens himself of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side. And he unburdens himself of hiding that he knows Leia’s biological parents from Leia. Several times, in previous episodes, Leia sensed that Obi-Wan was not being truthful with her and called him out on it, so it was comforting, satisfying, tear-jerking even to see him say, “Leia, when I said before that I didn’t know your parents...Princess Leia Organa, you are wise, discerning, kindhearted. These are qualities that came from your mother. But you are also passionate, and fearless. Forthright. And these are gifts from your father. Both were exceptional people who bore an exceptional daughter.” The idea of honoring Anakin and Padme by protecting Leia and recognizing how she is like them is so powerful.
An entirely new character, Tala Durith, has become a part of Leia’s proverbial DNA too. The loss of Tala last week just destroyed me, and I was, frankly, very unhappy that she did not survive to be in future series like the upcoming Andor. Last week her death seemed like a dramatically potent and poetic waste. But now I see that the purpose of her character was to influence young Leia and mold her into the iconic hero we know and love, to pour a little bit of Tala into the magical Leia elixir. Obi-Wan giving Tala’s holster to Leia is a beautiful gesture, and makes me feel a lot better about the character’s premature death. Bail and Breha Organa, meanwhile, deserve parent of the year awards for being so supportive of their daughter. I loved seeing Breha’s reaction, saying, “I love it” and Bail’s reaction that referenced his earlier conversation with Leia about there being many ways to lead. These final scenes on Alderan could have very easily been more superficial in tying a bow on the series, but, as past episodes have already shown, this series misses no opportunity to build narrative layers.
I don’t have an elegant segue for this, but I can’t close out this review with out mentioning the long-awaited, brief yet satisfying Qui-Gon Jinn cameo at the end of the episode. I have, after all, used the online avatar “QuiGonJen” ever since I had AOL Instant Messenger in high school (AIM for those old enough to remember). This reminded me that the nickname was not just for the sake of a good pun; I love this character because he’s one of the least uptight and most subversive Jedi. These few minutes with him have a HIGH volume of sass, heckling Obi-Wan, who has always been relatively more self-serious.
And, of course, what Qui-Gon says bookends the series and marks the conclusion of Obi-Wan’s arc perfectly. Obi-Wan has been calling out to Qui-Gon the entire series, with no response. When he says, “I was beginning to think you’d never come,” Qui-Gon says, “I was always here, Obi-Wan. You were just not ready to see.” So, of course, we weren’t going to see Qui-Gon until Obi-Wan, on his own, worked through his trauma and grief.
How satisfying it has been to see Obi-Wan go from broken and lost to genuinely happy. Seeing him smiling and laughing with Leia and then beaming when Owen finally asks if he’d like to meet Luke made me, by proxy, so happy and demonstrates just how far he and the story have come.
Now Obi-Wan is ready to advance his knowledge of the Force and learn from Qui-Gon in a way that will prepare him to “become more powerful than you could possibly imagine” when he deliberately succumbs to Vader in A New Hope. In this context, the entire series has told a complete and full story, a critical chapter in Obi-Wan’s life. I’m overjoyed that I could bear witness to it.