Deborah Chow serves as the showrunner and primary director for Disney’s latest plundering of the Star Wars galaxy with the miniseries ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi.’ All six episodes are streamed exclusively to the Disney Plus streaming service and take place after ‘Revenge of the Sith,’ but before ‘A New Hope.’

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) is living as “Ben” on the planet Tatooine keeping watch over Luke Skywalker (Grant Feely) against his Uncle Owen’s (Joel Edgerton) wishes. He still has flashbacks of his apprentice Anakin (Hayden Christensen) betraying the Jedi and turning to the dark side of the Force. The Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) arrives with the Third Sister Reva (Moses Ingram) and the Fifth Brother (Sung Kang). Reva believes Obi-Wan is nearby but the Grand Inquisitor dismisses this. Obi-Wan is then contacted by Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) and his wife Breha (Simone Kessell) contacts him, begging him to find their daughter Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) who has vanished. Obi-Wan decides to do so, but destiny puts him on a conclusion course with Darth Vader (James Earl Jones).

The first two episodes of the show were very good. They show us an Obi-Wan who is still struggling with the fall of the Jedi and the outcome of Order 66. Speaking of which, Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen were excellent as they reprised their respective roles. Their flashbacks were an eye in the storm.

Darth Vader. He was the best part of the show. Everyone knows that if you ruin his character, fans will revolt. James Earl Jones is brilliant as the voice with Dmitrious Bistrevsky and Tom O’Connell were imposing as the “man in the suit.”

However, there are issues… a lot of issues. There might be some spoilers from this point on.

First of all, Obi-Wan was a passenger in his own show. It seemed more like Reeva and Leia were the main characters with Kenobi simply there to move the plot along. This could have been done well, except for the fact that the writing was terrible. They introduced a ton of secondary characters but did not give you enough reason to care about them which only made it bloated.

They made Reeva as unlikable as possible. I genuinely felt bad for Ingram as her dialogue and character arc seemed to be designed to make her come off cheesy.

Leia was also a spoiled brat. She gets all of this unearned affirmation despite being totally there just to put down Obi-Wan for the whole show. I love the character of Leia and I was disappointed with how she was handled. Since when did acting bratty become “strong?”

Disney also wrecked the canon several times. I will not go through all of them, but one of the biggest is Obi-Wan not knowing who Darth Vader is. That was totally stupid as it is explicitly stated in Revenge of the Sith… in front of Kenobi.

I also noted while Leia was, despite being bratty, given all of these random skills no child would have, Luke… gets hit with a rock. I do not know why Disney has this agenda to destroy the character of Luke Skywalker. They do not have to do this to lift Leia up, especially since she was already an impressive Star Wars character.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was such a misfire and a missed opportunity. Ever since Disney acquired LucasFilms, they have ignored, condescended to, and even outright mocked the fans. This has caused ill will where projects are being outright rejected. Obi-Wan, Luke, and Leia are all beloved characters that Disney could have wedged into winning back that goodwill. It was a failure on that front and many others.

Check out the trailer below:

PARENTAL CONCERNS: Minor foul language, Rude humor, Violence, Some disturbing images

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