Mini Series How has the Kenobi series affected your viewing of later SW stories?

This is not a speculation thread, this is for those who have actually re-watched films/series that take place after Kenobi...

How has the Kenobi series affected your viewing (or not)?

Did it improve, add or (ahem) awaken the narrative elements? Or did it detract from anything?

(Mods, please do what you need to if this thread exists elsewhere).

 

The finale has, for me, improved both A New Hope and the Revenge of the Sith. That's a real feat.

 

Just watched the OT. The Kenobi series really adds up, and adds to, the OT. Obviously, when Obi-Wan appears, but I think the Kenobi series reinvigorates the whole saga. Wow!

 

I think I’ll have to give ROTS and ANH a rewatch. Will get back to this thread

 

I agreeeee. For me, it connected the PT to the OT in the best possible way, through the relationship between Vader and Obi Wan. If one adds to that seeing Vader in his prime, the amazing job done with Leia, Owen and Beru getting some well deserved attention, the Inquisitorius finally appearing in live action, seeing glimpses of the Jedi purge... it most definitively makes me want to watch again not only ANH, but the entire OT and ROTS.

 

It sets up ANH far better than ROTS does for me.

 

The origin story for Leia adds a lot to her character in the OT and helps make the ROTJ revelation feel more earned and less like a tacked on story point.

 

In some ways, I feel like the climax of OWK is a do-over of the climax of ROTS with a more contemporary acting style, and less clunky dialogue.

I don’t think any new ground was broken between Obi-Wan and Vader.

I felt like it was a more emotionally satisfying re-do of Mustafar. So I don’t know how well watching ROTS and episode 6 of OWK in close succession comes across.

ANH will always have a little awkwardness stemming from it coming first and having to try and reconcile subsequent stories.

Why don’t the Lars change Luke’s name? Why don’t Owen, Beru or Obi-Wan recognize the droids, now why doesn’t Leia’s message acknowledge previously meeting?

In what way was Vader still the learner in OWK? Not only is that a redundant boast, since he already was bested after making a similar boast in OWK, but Vader’s overconfidence was on full display when he attempted to jump over Obi-Wan, against the warnings of his old master. While in OWK he was just soundly defeated.

Why does Obi-Wan think Vader wouldn’t let anyone know he’s Vader? Tarkin clearly knows, especially when TCW is also considered.

The more creators you have working in Star Wars without a Kevin Feige-esque figure to oversee everything means you have a bunch of people with different interpretations, sometimes radically so, adding to the same story.

E.G. OWK pretty explicitly spells it out that Obi-Wan feels that Anakin is dead. While Filoni has in the past stated his view that Obi-Wan had wanted for Luke to redeem Vader but was using a sort of reverse psychology on Luke.

Had someone like Dave Filoni been put in charge of the show, it could have been radically different and impacted our view of the saga in a completely contradictory way.


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Filoni was paraphrasing Lucas:
“A Jedi can’t kill for the sake of killing. The mission isn’t for Luke to go out and kill his father and get rid of him. The issue is, if he confronts his father again, he may, in defending himself, have to kill him, because his father will try to kill him.”—George Lucas

PAUL DUNCAN: Obi-Wan knows more than he lets on.
GEORGE LUCAS: He knows that, eventually, Darth Vader is going to come looking for them. He knows this whole thing is going to blow up into a big war. He knows a confrontation is brewing between Luke and his father. Ben hopes Luke will either save his father or kill him, because whatever extra powers Luke’s got in his lineage, he is the one person that can probably fight his father and win.

But the show was written so, so, so dumb. He just leaves. He acknowledged Anakin is dead, and he just leaves him.
It in a way reminded me of The Force Unleashed II, when you beat Vader, and you can either execute him, or spare him:

But the actual difference is that you spare him so that you could interrogate him and put him to trial. Nobody in their right mind would just leave Vader be. He is the second man in the Empire. This is just so stupid, and the show did not even build up to that moment in any way. If the show had been about Obi-Wan talking to Qui-Gon (instead of wasting him on a last-minute quip cameo), and, say, Obi-Wan would have gotten an epiphany, kind of like Yoda in TCW during his Force Priestesses trials, than Obi-Wan could potentially leave him be, trusting in the Force, or something like that. But as we have it, he just utterly demolished him into submission, and then just left him be to his own evil, after acknowledging that "Anakin Skywalker is truly dead." I don't know how can anyone like Obi-Wan's character anymore. He was kind of entitled and arrogant before, but him leaving in RotS was understandable. But here, he literally stoned him, beat the hell out of him, and just walked off. And yes, nothing really changed since RotS. The status quo is pretty much the same and we didn't learn anything new (besides Reva character). It feels like the entire show was built around the scene they ripped off from Rebels, but it's not nearly as good (writing wise, performances from Hayden and Ewan were good).
And that's not even counting the rest of the dumb stuff with Reva and everything else, which I will not bother getting into. This show definitely did not affect my viewing of Star Wars in any positive way, more so, it detracted from it. I really don't like the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi now.

 

I have mixed feelings about Obi-Wan. I really like the way it bridges Anakin and Vader as I've always had a hard time seeing the two as the same person. It's hard to imagine Hayden Christensen as a 7 foot-tall man with James Earl Jones' voice. The second duel was amazing if only for the way it allowed me to suspend belief and see Vader and Anakin as being the same person. This is the first time I've viewed Vader as being Anakin trapped beneath the suit. That alone made the show worth it.

On the flip side, I found the overall plot to be somewhat awkward and I'm still having a hard time with some aspects of the story. I liked the idea of Reva but her motivations and storyline were all over the place. I'm still confused as to how she got back to Tatooine so quickly or why she wanted to kill Luke. I really wanted to like her character but her motivations and actions seem absolutely off-the-wall. I have a similar issue with her abducting Leia as it seems to create more problems than anything else. Given that abducting Leia is such an easy way to draw out Obi-Wan from hiding you'd think that the Empire would simply do it again in order to eliminate him. I really wish that Leia's abduction wasn't orchestrated by Reva because as it stands, it seems like going after the Organa Family would be an incredibly easy way to draw out Obi-Wan.

At the end of the day I found Obi-Wan to be a series that had great moments but was lacking overall. I don't think it detracts from my overall viewing of the OT or PT but the inconsistencies and clumsiness of the series don't really improve the original material beyond giving me a way of bridging Anakin and Vader together. The series is not what I was expecting but it did give me a few truly enjoyable moments. I think that for me, Obi-Wan is one of those shows where select parts are great but the overall package just didn't do it.

 

All of the above for me, obviously including kid Leia.

Also, from 2016 to 2022, I guess I kind of considered Rogue One the unofficial "Episode III.V"
Now it is clear that this role belongs to "Obi-Wan Kenobi". Rogue One has now been classified as an Anthology movie, as intended I suppose.

 

I'll tell you what. It makes seeing Anakin and Obi-Wan reunited at the end of ROTJ all the more emotional.

 

At this point I can't really appreciate it alongside the Lucas canon. Some parts of the show are good, but mostly it feels like a fan film that somehow wrangled Ewan and Hayden into it. Certainly doesn't make the OT any worse, but doesn't really improve it either. Rogue One and Solo did make the OT somewhat better imo, so it wasn't an impossible task, they just didn't get it done this time.

Edit: on second thought, one thing it does pretty well is make Alderaan more tangible, that does make ANH a bit better.

 

I'd be able to line it up next to Lucas canon if the Reva aspect of the story wasn't such an issue for me and didn't have to try and overlook that part. The series meshes well with the emotional feeling I always get from watching the Lucas films. Especially with the Obi Wan/Anakin relationship.

For me, little Leia just reinforces what I loved about Leia the first time I saw her.

 

Kenobi, Rogue One, and Rebels are great bridging stories between ROTS and ANH.
Bad Batch could be added, but want to see what S2 does first.
I expect Andor will be added quite easily, but would love to see more Rebellion/Senate stuff in the years immediately after ROTS. Not in the Rebels time period like it looks to be at the moment.

 

In regards to that second quote. I always agreed with that insofar as Ben believed only Luke could defeat Vader.

That Obi-Wan defeated him once (ROTS) assumed he was dead. Then he went into hiding, got old and weaker, and that Luke was the only one who could defeat Vader.

This show blows that wide open by showing that Obi-Wan not only defeated Vader in a close contest on Mustafar, but absolutely owned him a second time after that. Then spared him, went into hiding again and pinned all of his hopes on Luke.

Again, which I just feel is really messed up. It’s ond thing if Luke has to carry the burden because nobody else gas the strength to do so. It’s a different thing entirely if Obi-Wan in passing the burden onto Luke needlessly.


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This show to me will be greatly rewarded when rewatches PT and OT. Obi wan Kenobi and his relationship to Darth Vader in OT.

 

I'll always have love for Revenge of the Sith, but I won't deny it left some nagging connectivity issues dangling in relation to Obi-Wan's and Anakin's relationship with each other. Weren't dealbreakers but I had to work a little head canon to reconcile them.

Also it hasn't changed my thoughts on Kylo Ren but the fact that Leia named him Ben hits different now. Before, it felt kinda Easter Egg'ish. Now it feels like a testament to how deeply she cared about Obi-Wan. Even though of course she didn't shed a damn tear in ANH. I'll have to work a little head canon that she probably tried to keep a strong face but went somewhere private to grieve over Obi-Wan and her step-parents.

 

I think the disconnect has a lot to do with the directorial approach. I mean OWK begins with Obi-Wan suffering emotional trauma and guilt, which is something that the Lucas films really didn’t dwell too much on, particularly in the OT.

When Obi-Wan is apologizing to Vader in OWK, it feels like real emotion. Like the performance could just as easily have come from any other film or tv series dealing with a broken family. Meanwhile in ANH, the dialogue is corny, based more off of the serials that Lucas was into. It’s like the type of dialogue you might find in a 1960s superhero comic.

So there’s a weird juxtaposition where Obi-Wan is struggling with internal turmoil over Anakin. While Leia loses her family and entire planet and her next lines are “aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” Or where Luke doesn’t shed a tear for his aunt and uncle.


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To me the Kenobi series serves more as a follow up to ROTS than a lead up to ANH (Rogue One does that for me). It helps me enjoy the climax of ROTS a bit more, cos the Kenobi series kind of gives me things I wanted to see that we didn't see in ROTS. So it feels like less of a missed opportunity and more of just a natural progression of the story. Because of this, ROTS feels more "complete" to me now.

I suppose it also helps me see ANH differently in a good way too; Clearly Leia knew Obi-Wan-it's not just assumed now. Also the same with Luke. There's more of a sense of clarity also with the way Obi-Wan talks about Owen as well. Then of course there's his duel with Darth Vader. It all seems to fit pretty well. I did get quite a kick out of being able to recall instead the Kenobi series when they are talking at the beginning of their duel, rather than thinking back to ROTS like before. It really changes the perspective in a good way IMO-the fact that still this is 10 years later so still a long time, Vader acknowledging being the "learner" last time they left, Vader saying he hasn't sensed Obi-Wan since (but conveniently not finishing that sentence). Even the fact that Obi-Wan seems resigned to the idea by the point of ANH that Anakin is truly gone. Obi-Wan also has this kind of "next level" understanding of the power of the Force compared to the Kenobi series, since he's now mastered the understanding of the whole Force ghost thing.

So for me, it is like a continuation from some "unfinished business" we saw in ROTS, but it caused me to see specific scenes in ANH in a different light. I love that. And IMO it works well.

 

Seeing Luke and Leia as kids--Leia in particular--was wonderful; it's something that really helps to tie the whole saga together. I suspect that will also be the case for first-time viewers who are watching it al in chronological order.

 

Alot of people have described the show as a love letter to the PT fans. And yeah i can see that.