Obi-Wan Kenobi Part V: the tragedy of two brothers.
Masterful editing says there is no Obi-Wan without Anakin.
The Short Take:
Part V reaps the rewards of thoughtful choices made in past episodes, and is a testament to Deborah Chow’s bold vision for this series. Some twists, some turns, and some tears (namely mine).
[I dare not utter a sentence more without a SPOILER WARNING.]
The Long Take:
Obi-Wan strategizing and leading again made me cheer. Haja’s delightful reappearance made me laugh. Young Leia made me smile, as she always does.
The reveal about Reva hunting Vader surprised me. The reveal that Vader knew all along that Reva was hunting him flabbergasted me.
NED-B nobly shielding Tala from Storm Trooper fire and Tala’s ultimate sacrifice to save everyone else made me burst into tears (which, if you don’t know me, doesn’t happen all that often).
When I step back to consider how all those impactful moments fit together into one cohesive story, I would say that, above all else, this series has now made it clear that you cannot tell a story about Obi-Wan Kenobi at this time in his life without telling a story about Obi-Wan and Anakin as tragic brothers turned enemies. That’s the through-line.
Deborah Chow has consistently positioned the two iconic characters in tandem. The opening scene of Part III intercuts Obi-Wan meditating with images of Vader donning his cybernetic armor. Meanwhile, we hear snippets of dialogue from other characters past and present. We hear Anakin’s rage from the prequels and Reva’s reveal that Vader survived Mustafar. In Part IV, shots feverishly alternate between Obi-Wan in a Bacta tank on Jabiim and Vader in his own. Their burnt skin doesn’t look all that different now. We hear a similar series of sound bites, both from the depths of Obi-Wan’s memories and the events of previous episodes.
I have been scratching my head (in a good way) over this editing technique since I first saw Part III. I talked about it a little bit on the Rebel Base Card Podcast insert series, Leave the Breakfast, Take the Kenobi, when we discussed the twin Bacta tank scene in Part IV. Then, when The Wampa’s Lair invited me to come on their podcast to discuss Part III and IV together, I went back and rewatched both opening scenes back to back. I discovered that the film form of these scenes are far more similar than I had remembered; they are almost identical. In addition to giving us a window into Obi-Wan’s psychological state, they clearly establish a connection between Obi-Wan and Vader.
But the nature of that connection was open to interpretation. Was the intercutting purely for the audience’s benefit? Were we witnessing former Master and Padawan sensing each other through The Force? I leaned more towards the former than the latter, but thought there was room for both.
The climactic, dam-bursting Part V kicks off with a variation — nay, an evolution — of that same editing technique. This time, we begin with a flashback of a mullet-sporting Obi-Wan and Padawan-braided Anakin, training with their lightsabers. And then, once fans of the Prequel Trilogy stop losing their minds over the fact that Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen have finally returned to these now beloved roles, we interrupt the scene to cut to a close-up of Vader, in pursuit of Obi-Wan in the series’ present timeline.
Rather than quickly intercutting between Vader and Obi-Wan, though, the scene continues as he gives Reva her coveted Grand Inquisitor merit badge. We, in a more conventional way, cut to “Meanwhile, Obi-Wan on Jabiiim…” We don’t return to the lightsaber training flashback until nearly 8 minutes into the episode. But, crucially, we still always alternate between Vader, Obi-Wan, and the flashback of them both. So, in a sense, we can think of this entire episode as a magnified version of the opening montages of the previous two episodes.
Does the intercutting imply that Obi-Wan and Vader share the same flashback? Are they both coincidentally remembering the same exact afternoon in Coruscant at the same time? I don’t think so. I did not view this flashback as a memory for anyone, but, instead, pure subtext for the benefit of the story and the audience experiencing that story.
Sometimes editing is not about reconstructing reality through film. Sometimes, it’s less about how images cut together in a realistic way and more about the ideas they create together. In the 1920s, Sergei Eisenstein developed a theory of montage, classifying all different types. But he’s most known for what’s called intellectual montage, which takes two seemingly separate images, and, through film editing, creates a third idea that would not have existed without juxtaposing the two. He had more extreme and abstract examples in mind, and I’m sure my understanding of intellectual montage is at best rudimentary, but ever since I learned about it, this theory of montage has guided my understanding of what sophisticated editing might be able to achieve from a storytelling perspective. How it can transcend the literal.
So, what we see here in the periodic returns to this earlier, happier time in Obi-Wan and Anakin’s lives, is not about how Obi-Wan and Vader directly relate to each other in the episode. It’s not about them sensing each other through the Force in the Bacta tanks. It’s not about them both sharing the same memory, through the Force or otherwise. It’s about Deborah Chow, Joby Harold, and company sharing their ideas about Obi-Wan and Vader’s relationship, and the bearing those ideas have on their encounters in this series more broadly, and, in Part V, the showdown between them on Jabiim specifically.
To me, their prevailing idea is that the story of Obi-Wan and Anakin is one of ill-fated tragedy. In this seemingly innocuous flashback duel, we see all the complexities of their relationship, which was defined by Obi-Wan having to take Anakin on as his Padawan too soon after Qui-Gon’s unexpected death.
A paradoxical combination of tenderness and tension permeate the flashback. They are playful, smiling at one another as they engage us some friendly competition. Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen did such a great job capturing this dynamic that I didn’t even mind that they looked visibly older. I was just so happy to see them together again; they seemed happy too.
Yet Obi-Wan lectures Anakin. Even later in their history, Obi-Wan and Anakin become so close and bond as friends, as equals once Anakin becomes a Jedi Knight. When fear, love, and sadness begin to consume Anakin, Obi-Wan, rather than level with him and say I know how you feel, I know what it’s like to be where you are, always goes for the more patronizing, didactic response because he feels like he has to be his teacher first and his friend second. Little does he know this is what will make him fail in his mentorship, pushing Anakin away from the Jedi Order. We see the start of that here.
Anakin, of course, resents being called out. His face sours in a way that portends the Dark Side hate and rage to come. The flashback shows that even in a training session with no stakes, he becomes violent and relentless as he repeatedly swings his lightsaber down at Obi-Wan. (If you need more on this complicated and tragic relationship, by the way, I recommend Mike Chen’s novel, Brotherhood. It’s very much on Deborah Chow’s wavelength here.)
All this becomes even more tragic now, with Vader hunting down Obi-Wan years later. All that history and baggage between them looms over the events of this series for operatic, epic, but most importantly character-driven storytelling. The creators behind the show made sure of that.
I don’t want to proceed without acknowledging that the events of the episode also unequivocally say, “Do not mess with Vader.” The way he uses the Force to pull down the ship as it tries to fly away was the most thrilling, but essentially everything he does in this episode — from retorting “I am not interested in civilities” to snapping Reva’s dual lightsaber in half (Not even concerned enough to take out his own! What a boss.) and handily besting her. We need a Vader-centric series, Disney+. Hayden has said he would do it. We have loads of Vader Vaderin’ stories from the Marvel Comics. Make it happen.
Obi-Wan echoes the series’ sentiment that Vader is unstoppable when he says as much to The Path refugees and volunteers; if they fight Vader, they will die, but that there are other ways to beat him.
And here is where Chow employs montage so elegantly, creating so much richer a text — frankly — than she needed to in order for this series to be a success with fans. The training duel with Anakin, juxtaposed with what’s happening on Jabiim, shows why Obi-Wan, despite being weaker, despite being the weakest he’s ever been, can still claim a victory over Vader.
Anakin, in many ways, was always more powerful. He always had more raw talent in fighting, piloting, and in his ability to draw strength from The Force. But, as Obi-Wan says at the end, “You’re a great warrior, Anakin, but your need to prove yourself is your undoing.” His impatience, his fury, and his ego always get in the way. On Jabiim, Obi-Wan essentially leverages his familiarity with Anakin’s strengths and weaknesses — his brotherhood —to come up with a winning strategy, just as he does in the flashback duel.
The first time we return to the flashback, the cut acts as a direct response to the dialogue in the present timeline. On Jabiim, Obi-Wan says, “He’ll attack next. He hasn’t the patience for a siege.” When Roken asks, “How do you know?” Obi-Wan doesn’t have to answer because the show answers for us, by cutting to the flashback again.
This makes for not only effective and efficient storytelling in the moment; it very cleverly side-steps the problem of how do you tell a story of Vader vs. Obi-Wan at this point in time without physically placing them together (because doing so would likely end with Vader killing Obi-Wan).
Some fans, as each part of the series unfolded each week, began to question how this would re-contextualize or, from a less generous perspective, undermine the events of A New Hope. So much so that Joby Harold had to say in an interview that he and the other creators behind the series are well aware of Star Wars canon and are always mindful and respectful of that canon. The montages of Obi-Wan and Anakin in this episode, for me, have the added bonus of explaining why this series doesn’t negate one of the lines that Vader says to Obi-Wan in A New Hope. The quote from flashback Obi-Wan that I cited earlier ends with Obi-Wan saying “Until you overcome it, a Padawan you will still be.” And that’s why Vader in A New Hope saying, “When I left you, I was but the learner” still holds after this episode. Hopefully that will still be true next week when the series concludes as well.
I am trying to prepare myself for this to be the last time we see Vader in this series. I was really hoping they would square off face-to-face one more time, to have a conversation that would try and inevitably fail to reconcile the emotional baggage between them. But I’m trying to manage my expectations after this episode because the way that the real Grand Inquisitor (oof, sorry, Reva; I was really rooting for you) returns in a gotcha moment with Vader makes it feel like the conclusion of their arc. Reva, after all, has the new information about Luke and Leia; Vader is still in the dark. So, according to him Obi-Wan got away, but he can always continue that hunt and fight another day. He can go regroup. Reva, on the other hand, needs to respond to her new information. I hope I’m wrong.
The casualty of this extended, sometimes remote and sometimes non-diegetic duel between Obi-Wan and Vader is, unfortunately, Reva. I found her backstory reveal unsurprising based on what the interrogation scenes with Leia last week implied, but it was still powerful to watch. After my friend Greg (@eyeoncanon) predicted on the Rebel Base Card Podcast (gold star for responsible speculation!), that Reva might know that Vader was once Anakin Skywalker because she actually witnessed him slaughtering younglings in the Jedi Temple during Revenge of the Sith, I had considered the possibility that she then might also have a secret vendetta against Vader. I certainly didn’t think that was the likeliest scenario, though. As my other friend Jordan pointed out, the promotional poster of Reva with Vader literally in her eye certainly seems like a hint in retrospect.
Many fans, critics, and podcasters predicted a heel turn in which Reva would switch sides and possibly even join The Path. And while I was surprised by the reveal that she had her sights set on Vader, this was far from a heel turn. I would, based on her conversations with Obi-Wan in this episode, still classify her as a dark side villain. Her hate and rage seem to blind her to helping others. She’s only out for her own vengeance and, in the episode, her goals just happen to align with Obi-Wan. Their respective motivations for those goals are completely different. She is obsessed with taking down Vader, and that’s not necessarily the same thing as sympathizing with Obi-Wan and those who use or facilitate The Path. For me, all this makes Reva a fascinatingly complex villain.
I’d love to see more of Reva in another series, but, unfortunately, her new-found knowledge makes her a narrative target. Obi-Wan cannot let her live because the true identities of Luke and Leia are at risk. I suspect we may see Reva go to Tatooine in the finale and face-off against Obi-Wan in a lightsaber duel that will end with her demise and, finally, restore the safety of the galaxy’s most valuable twins.
My friend and colleague P.T. McNiff floated the possibility that if there’s a second season of the series in the works, Chow and Harold may delay Obi-Wan’s defeat of Reva until next season. I like that idea but am not willing to bet on it just yet. I think a duel between Reva and Obi-Wan is a lot fairer a match and, if we can’t get a realistic rematch between Vader and Obi-Wan, it may be the next best thing to close out this series.