This wild story beat was wisely jettisoned from the film’s final cut (after all, what could it have possibly added to the emotional stakes of Episode VI?) but it lived on in the film’s 1983 novelization by James Kahn. A long time ago, the original screenplay for The Return of the Jedi contained a tantalizing Obi-morsel: The Jedi hermit did have a brother, and his name was Owen Lars (once Phil Brown, now Joel Edgerton). ( And the Rey Kenobi theorists shall continue to lament.) And if it is a signal that neo-Kenobi stories are on their way, then it should be asked: Does this further the Star Wars saga in any substantial way? Beyond the financial incentives to introduce another sandy-haired Scot with a winning smile into the saga, how does this inform the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi? Does this help him or hurt him? If this line is meant to bear storytelling fruit, then Lucasfilm’s ambitions to turn Obi-Wan Kenobi, a co-lead of the prequel trilogy and a supporting mentor figure from the OT, into a legacy character have been secured. (Listen, as absurd as it sounds, a tiny, chaotic part of myself prays to the dark angel it worships that Disney just goes for it and produces Baby Kenobi Adventures.) Or it could be the next 20 or so years’ worth of Star Wars stories. And last week presented yet another distressing (and potentially story-breaking) addition to the Kenobi lore, a left-field reveal made by Old Ben himself, where Ewan McGregor wrinkled his weary brow at the cherubic Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) and uttered this potentially game-changing line: “I still have glimpses, flashes really… My mother’s shawl, my father’s hands. Kenobi met Darth Vader for the first time since that fateful duel last week, and from the look of things they’ll be swinging sticks at each other again. One of the show’s biggest swings to date is the assertion that the last time Obi-Wan and his former apprentice (Hayden Christensen) crossed lightsabers was not, in fact, at the raging fire pits of Mustafar. Finding something new to say about a character we have already seen fight, fail, and die was always going to be the show’s biggest gamble, but Kenobi has kicked over the dejarik table and expanded on the space between episodes III and IV as far as it can go before it breaks the immutable laws of A New Hope. Unlike The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett (which featured blank-slate antihero types) Kenobi is hamstrung by the well-documented legend of its leading man, the eponymous exiled Jedi Knight (Ewan McGregor). That brings us to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the latest in an ever-growing line of Star Wars television to find itself navigating this exact storytelling binary. What is truly the way: retroactively welding heretofore unrevealed story beats onto their lore, or exploring the uncharted cosmic expanses of this galaxy far, far away? Play the hits or gently remix them? Yet, for Lucasfilm and its parent company, Disney, keeping the nearly 50-year-old series feeling fresh has become a circuitous, Kessel Run kind of quagmire. For a franchise as huge as Star Wars, finding new ways to thrill audiences isn’t so much an obligation as it is smart business.
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