[ad_1]
For a franchise as enormous as Star Wars, discovering new methods to thrill audiences isn’t a lot an obligation as it’s sensible enterprise. But, for Lucasfilm and its mother or father firm, Disney, retaining the practically 50-year-old sequence feeling contemporary has change into a circuitous, Kessel Run form of quagmire. What is actually the best way: retroactively welding heretofore unrevealed story beats onto their lore, or exploring the uncharted cosmic expanses of this galaxy far, far-off? Play the hits or gently remix them?
That brings us to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the most recent in an ever-growing line of Star Wars tv to seek out itself navigating this precise storytelling binary. Not like The Mandalorian or The E book of Boba Fett (which featured blank-slate antihero sorts) Kenobi is hamstrung by the well-documented legend of its main man, the eponymous exiled Jedi Knight (Ewan McGregor). Discovering one thing new to say a few character now we have already seen struggle, fail, and die was all the time going to be the present’s largest gamble, however Kenobi has kicked over the dejarik desk and expanded on the house between episodes III and IV so far as it might probably go earlier than it breaks the immutable legal guidelines of A New Hope.
One of many present’s largest swings to this point is the assertion that the final time Obi-Wan and his former apprentice (Hayden Christensen) crossed lightsabers was not, in truth, on the raging hearth pits of Mustafar. Kenobi met Darth Vader for the primary time since that fateful duel final week, and from the look of issues they’ll be swinging sticks at one another once more. And final week offered yet one more distressing (and doubtlessly story-breaking) addition to the Kenobi lore, a left-field reveal made by Previous Ben himself, the place Ewan McGregor wrinkled his weary forehead on the cherubic Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) and uttered this doubtlessly game-changing line: “I nonetheless have glimpses, flashes actually… My mom’s scarf, my father’s arms. I keep in mind a child. […] I believe I had a brother. Actually don’t keep in mind him. I needed I did.”
Photograph: Disney
There’s one other. A bit of Kenobi brother. It might be nothing. A throwaway line. Or it might be the subsequent 20 or so years’ value of Star Wars tales. Who can say. (Pay attention, as absurd because it sounds, a tiny, chaotic a part of myself prays to the darkish angel it worships that Disney simply goes for it and produces Child Kenobi Adventures.)
If this line is supposed to bear storytelling fruit, then Lucasfilm’s ambitions to show Obi-Wan Kenobi, a co-lead of the prequel trilogy and a supporting mentor determine from the OT, right into a legacy character have been secured. (And the Rey Kenobi theorists shall proceed to lament.) And if it’s a sign that neo-Kenobi tales are on their approach, then it must be requested: Does this additional the Star Wars saga in any substantial approach? Past the monetary incentives to introduce one other sandy-haired Scot with a successful smile into the saga, how does this inform the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi? Does this assist him or damage him?
Historical past may present a solution. A very long time in the past, the unique screenplay for The Return of the Jedi contained a tantalizing Obi-morsel: The Jedi hermit did have a brother, and his title was Owen Lars (as soon as Phil Brown, now Joel Edgerton). This wild story beat was correctly jettisoned from the movie’s last reduce (in any case, what may it have presumably added to the emotional stakes of Episode VI?) nevertheless it lived on within the movie’s 1983 novelization by James Kahn. It might need been a seemingly innocent line — “Your mom and I knew [Vader] would discover out finally, however we needed to maintain you each as secure as potential, for so long as potential […] [so] I took you to stay with my brother Owen, on Tatooine…” — nevertheless it whipped up a canonical mess, and has since been consigned to the Star Wars Legends scrapheap.
For a time, nevertheless, this cleaning soap operatic Kenobi household reveal was repeated many times: It merited point out within the 1995 Star Wars Customizable Card Recreation, and Obi-Wan’s desires of a brother named Owen discovered a house in a 1999 novel titled Jedi Apprentice: The Hidden Previous. A dozen years later, Abel G. Peña would retcon the entire long-lost Kenobi kerfuffle in a Star Wars quick story titled “Lone Wolf: A Story of Obi-Wan and Luke.” There, grateful readers would uncover that Obi-Wan’s visions of Owen Lars got here from his post-Clone Wars future, not his distant previous, successfully eradicating the burden of legacy from Obi-Wan’s shoulders and permitting the character to freely mature into the older-brother position in Anakin Skywalker’s life.
Photograph: Disney
Photograph: Disney
So Kenobi has reintroduced this dusty legacy trope, and it’s value exploring, not simply to ascertain what we find out about Obi-Wan’s familial historical past however to think about what it provides to the character — or doesn’t. We all know that he no less than had a father and a mom, and that his residence world known as Stewjon. (And if that title sounds ridiculous even by Star Wars requirements, know that “Stewjon” is a mix of comic Jon Stewart’s title, made up on the fly by George Lucas himself throughout an on-air interview with the previous Day by day Present host. Completely severe.) Extra crucially, there are no less than two extra issues we find out about Obi-Wan Kenobi.
We all know that Obi-Wan held his Jedi mentor, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) in excessive esteem. We additionally know Ben’s continued non secular pursuit of his fallen Grasp, first launched on the very finish of Revenge of the Sith, is supposed to clarify Ben’s sudden bodily dissipation upon his loss of life throughout that lethal reunion with Vader in A New Hope. Nevertheless it’s additionally a transparent indicator of how Qui-Gon matches in Obi-Wan’s life; greater than a instructor, Qui-Gon was a father. The person who sired Ben on Stewjon not issues. We don’t even know his title. However we all know who Qui-Gon was. We had been there with Obi-Wan the day he died. And if Ben is lastly reunited with Qui-Gon within the latter half of Kenobi, we’ll be there, too.
We additionally know who Anakin Skywalker is and what he meant to Obi-Wan: how issues had been once they first met (“The boy is harmful,” Obi as soon as mentioned to his Grasp); how they clashed throughout Anakin’s adolescence; how likelihood and conflict cast one thing highly effective between these two Jedi Knights; and the way eons of belief and reliance finally resulted in betrayal. The rupture between Anakin and Obi-Wan left behind the form of devastation that may solely be felt by those that had been household and at the moment are household no extra.
As for Obi-Wan Kenobi’s household, we all know the issues that matter. We all know that the Jedi observe takes kids away from their households and that these kids develop to change into heroes, or villains. Their tales are nice, not due to the trivia of their lives, however by their deeds and their failures. Star Wars is grand opera, and miring within the minute particulars of titanic figures similar to Obi-Wan Kenobi solely dilutes their efficiency. Take Rey: Did changing into a Skywalker outline who she was or what she achieved? No approach. Would being a Kenobi have made her story richer? Completely not. So what does realizing Obi-Wan had a youthful brother do for his story, aside from clumsily imbuing the character of his brotherhood with Anakin Skywalker with further which means?
For now, Obi-Wan’s recollections of his child brother are simply that. How a lot emotion and which means we’re presupposed to glean from this line stays to be seen, however there’s trigger for wariness; historical past has confirmed that when it’s utilized haphazardly, any enlargement within the Star Wars canon can simply change into a bug, not a characteristic. (Howdy, Solo.) The bounds of the Skywalker saga have lastly been reached, but Luke, Leia, and their cyborg-fascist outdated man nonetheless loom over all. The place does Star Wars go from right here? It appears that evidently, for proper now no less than, Lucasfilm and Disney imagine that if this saga goes to have something to supply within the generations to come back, then each character in its orbit should contribute their very own distinctive value to the trigger. Legacy in perpetuity.
[ad_2]