Hello there Ewan. We meet again at last
It was one of Lucasfilm’s worst kept secrets. Star Wars News Net published strong rumours in February, Cinelnix broke the story nearly two weeks ago and Disney used this weekend’s D23 convention as the platform to make it official.
A million voices cried out in joy as it was confirmed that Ewan McGregor will return to the role of fan favourite Obi-Wan Kenobi in a Disney+ series set to premiere in 2021.
This is in fact news that began to brew long before even the Star Wars News Net article.
Fans of the Original Trilogy and ‘Prequelists’ alike have craved a film, TV show or comic book charting Kenobi’s life in hiding ever since the Disney buyout back in 2013. In it’s final season, Star Wars Rebels offered a well-received episode “Twin Suns” to wet the appetite – featuring one of the best lightsaber duels in the franchise – but now we know it was just the beginning.
McGregor donning a longer beard in social media posts was enough to stoke the speculation that Kenobi was about to return to live action and the rumour mill hinted that the next anthology movie after Solo: A Star Wars Story would be a Kenobi movie. Stephen Daldry – director of Billy Elliott and the Netflix series The Crown – was supposedly set to direct and there was even suggestions that a script existed.
But when Solo was a relative box office bust, and the anthology films were put on hold, Kathleen Kennedy moved her finger away from the launch button and the Kenobi project was supposedly grounded.
Disney+ likely provided the project a critical lifeline in that it offers a low-risk stage. I have no doubt that a Kenobi film would draw huge box office fanfare if it was theatrically released, and while it’s a story for another time, Solo‘s shortcomings were in no way shape or form indicative of fan fatigue for anthology films in general. However, the fact that Disney is hesitant to roll the dice again is understandable when they are in a position to create easy to market content on it’s own in house streaming platform.
The prospect of a series also provides exiting opportunities to enrich the story. Whether this is six episodes or more, we will effectively have long-form cinema and amazing storytelling scope.
While a film can only cover so much ground, in a TV series we could see Obi-Wan learning to force commune with Qui-Gon Jinn, develop his relationship with the Lars’, interact with the scum and villainy in Mos Eisely and even head off-world meeting bounty hunters and potentially famous faces from the rebel alliance.
I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing Kenobi’s duel with Darth Maul from Rebels portrayed in live action. Too many fans have missed out on what is a key moment in the saga and this series could go some way to correcting that.
We simply wouldn’t have time in a movie, but a series allows the kind of creative flexibility to explore these threads in detail rather than weaving them all into a rushed story. While I’m a huge fan of the film we were delivered, I think Solo could have benefited if it was a series rather than a movie.
Details regarding the Obi-Wan series, including the name of the show, are thin on the ground at the moment, but to have an official announcement means that speculation without a caveat can begin.
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