CT Did Obi-Wan Always Intend to Die?

It has always bothered me that despite being as close to Anakin as Padme, Obi-Wan's broken heart was not enough to kill him as hers was, presenting something of a double standard.

However, it recently dawned on me that maybe Obi-Wan did indeed lose the will to live. Maybe the loss of Anakin and his own heartbreak regarding his best friend as well as torturing himself about what he could have done wrong to cause the tragedy that befell (not that he did per se).

Was Obi-Wan simply waiting for Luke to seize his destiny before dying? How soon did he decide to become one with the Force? It seems as though Obi-Wan planned his death as soon as he knew Vader was on the Death Star, saying that Luke's path laid upon a different path from his own, but even that is ambiguous.

When Obi-Wan says, "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing," it sounds as though he does not intend to actively fight for the Republic or the Jedi anymore, despite being called upon by Leia, and by extension his old friend Bail Organa. Maybe he was resigned to living and dying with his own failures by this time, save for watching over Luke until he came of age?

Otherwise, why would he, only in his fifties, not see a role for himself in the Galactic Civil War once Luke was ready to join the cause and would need a mentor to train him in the ways of the Force? Was he relying on Yoda for this job all along?

A lot of mind-boggling questions can be raised from this, some that even disturb me a little to be honest. I'm curious about what others think about this idea.

 

Reading the prequels into the OT, it would make sense. As Vader says in the first film, "Escape is not his plan."

Realistically, we might say that Obi-Wan knew that once he joined the fight against the Empire, his days were numbered. He probably didn't plan to die so soon, and wanted to teach Luke as much as possible before that happened, but it does seem likely that his actions were tempered with a sense of fatalism.

Militating against that, of course, is the real-world knowledge that George Lucas killed off Obi-Wan only because he needed to show that the Empire was really dangerous, in what had become an otherwise bloodless, danger-free Saturday-matinee flick. And by the time filming began, Lucas was pessimistic about the odds of making the sequels he'd already begun to envision, so it didn't seem like too great a narrative risk to kill off the story's mentor figure.

In-universe, there's also the fact that Obi-Wan doesn't mention Yoda to Luke while he's still alive. "If anything ever happens to me, seek out Yoda on the planet Dagobah." Which would be an extremely prudent course of action if he were really planning to die on the Death Star.

 

That's one mightily big stretch if there ever was one. In no way, shape or from was Obi Wan as close to Anakin as Padme. Their relationships were completely different and work on completely different levels. Thus there is no double standard at all. No matter how close you are to someone, or how long you have known someone, a friend is still "just" a friend, but husband and wife, or partners in general, have a much deeper and more intimate connection than that. Doesn't mean that someone cannot have life-long friends while the partners never last nearly that long, but if you have found the "love of your life" the effects are clearly having a bigger impact than any friend does.

If you look at actual medical history, spouses dying of this effect is rather well known. It also has been encountered among close relatives. But there is little word about it happening among friends, even close ones.

Then you have to take into consideration that Obi Wan was a Jedi, and thus trained to not let his emotions get to him. That obviously has its limits, as he clearly was affected by what happened, but he would be a whole lot less prone to it than a regular person.


I don't see anything that would suggest that Obi Wan lost the will to live. You don't live another ~20 years if that happens. It seems more likely that he acknowledged that death might happen if he picked up the fight again. He knew how important Luke was, and that his life must never stand in the way of Luke escaping from the Death Star. It's not like they expected or planned to encounter the DS in the first place, their goal was Alderaan. It just happened that they ended up upon the Death Star, and once Vader felt his presence, or Obi Wan felt Vader's, it seemed rather clear that he couldn't stay out of his way. Thus he opted for an approach that kept Vader from interfering with the escape of Luke and the others. From that point on escape wasn't possible anymore, so he accepted his fate and choose to become one with the force, because that was the best way for him to help Luke in the following time.

In short: he didn't seek death, but he readily accepted it when he situation required it.

 

I have not read the new canon novelization of ANH. The older novel by Lucas/Foster it was a surprise encounter for Kenobi.

But the indication in the film was that Vader just senses his old master's presence first and awaits in anticipation around in the corridors for Kenobi to walk in his direction. Presumably Kenobi was evading detection from Imperial troops the entire time like kinda like we saw with the generator scene . Vader says to Tarkin that he must face him alone, so I assume Vader and Tarkin pulled back all the troops to some other location while Vader sought him out . Perhaps around that time Vader was talking to Kenobi through the Force and arranging the confrontation. Vader in the film obviously detected Kenobi early with the scanning crew scene.

By the time Kenobi probably senses Vader, the two of them would've felt their intentions through the Force. But the old novel pretty much had Kenobi directly stumble right into Vader just standing there. Vader's machine body also making it kinda hard to detect or identify him or something too from what I remember.

Anyway, in the movie Kenobi does throw the fight and lets himself get cut in half so Luke and his friends could escape. Kenobi and Yoda's plan was to have Luke or Leia kill Vader and the Emperor, they were too old. Lucas pitched that duel's lack of energy to the fact they were two old guys and one was a cripple. And this was carried over to canon.



"While Vader wanted revenge, Obi-Wan was focused on buying time for his friends -including Luke Skywalker. Their duel was careful and measured compared to their previous meeting. Obi-Wan's movements were slowed by age and lack of practice; Darth Vader - recalling the grievous injuries he suffered during their last encounter - fought his former master with apprehension, while his cybernetic body reduced his actions. Ultimately, Obi-Wan deliberately dropped his defenses, and Darth Vader cut through him, but the Jedi Master mysteriously vanished into the Force."- Star Wars Lightsabers: A Guide to Weapons of the Force

The duels in ANH and TPM were little more formal and ritualistic. Like when Maul cuts off the Jedi off in the palace by waiting by the doors by anticipating their move and making a challenge. Vader would do this to Kenobi in ANH onboard the Death Star.

It is very likely Kenobi may of wanted to stay behind on the Death Star and destroy it and himself along with it had that encounter with Vader not occurred. He was too old and his powers were weak. So perhaps that is what Vader meant by "escape is not his plan".

 

Relationship between friends are not on the same level as with a spouse. Did he have some measure of guilt and self-blame? Sure, but he wasn’t Anakin’s spouse. He wasn't intimately close to him.

The thing with Padmé is that in the span of maybe five minutes she learnt that her lover, her hubby, the man she was gonna grow old with, joined the Dark Side, enslaved the Republic, and killed all the Jedi including children. And he did it in her name.

When he realized he couldn’t escape, that’s when he accepted he would die. Otherwise, he’d be right with them on the ramp. He's a Jedi, he's prepared to lay down his life for the greater good -- always had been.

It’s because he’s literally an old man by this point. The energy and resilience of his youth is no longer present — he can’t be the galaxy’s sole savior. He's long since lost the one and only chance to end the Empire so there's really no way he can take them on now.

He probably would've helped had a certain charred-up man with breathing problems didn't stop him in the hallway.

 

Nah. Ben fully intended to escape the Death Star, but when he saw that his escape route was cut-off, he allowed himself to be killed so Luke and co. would escape rather than engage in a futile attempt to rescue him.

 

Agreed.

And I will add that Kenobi really half-***ed the fight because he knew it was futile in the physical realm. Vader has the luxury of good reflexes from finely honed machinery, and uber force powers. Kenobi, though powerful in the force, was aged and didn’t have endurance on his side. I think he was okay with living on, but content enough with the cause and how long he had lived to sacrifice himself. I don’t think he could have survived another war...or wanted to.

As for Padme, dying of a broken heart is crap. She was strangled, fell, and had a trauma induced labor. A number of things could go horribly wrong under those circumstances... when a pregnant body needs to be handled gently. She died of internal complications...no one can convince me otherwise.

 

If you take the events of RoTS into account, Obi-Wan knew of Qui-Gon's discovery of returning from death and Yoda's teaching him about it. So perhaps he knew death wouldn't be the end of him.

 

I thought it was rather obvious he was ready to meet his maker so to speak

 

Ben was clearly surprised to see Vader, I would say no. He planned to escape like Han and Luke, but when he sees Vader and he understands that there is no escape, he changes his plan.

 

The ANH script says Obi-Wan is "at least seventy years old". His being younger is the result of a) making Anakin and Vader the same person and b) having Anakin be roughly the same age as Luke in the OT when he turns to the Dark Side.

 

And the dude’s been living on a desert planet for 19 years. That’s bound to make you look older than you really are.

 

I think he intended or at least was willing to die. I mean, if he could have escaped he would have, but he seemed to realize once they were captured that his role was to help them escape.

 

I didn't want to believe my theory. As I said, it actually kind of disturbed me that Obi-Wan would have such a mindset, so I appreciate everyone who has said otherwise.

To make my own viewpoint clearer, I think that Obi-Wan knew that Vader was on the Death Star as soon as he realized that it was "no moon." He had no fear of dying obviously, he knew that he would have a role in Luke's development as a Jedi beyond his death, and must have somehow known that Yoda was still alive in his exile.
I think that as soon as he sensed Vader's presence, he knew that a confrontation was inevitable, and that he would be a liability to the group. Not because of his age, but because of the extended time that the duel with Vader would take. Hence, he raised his blade to sacrifice himself as soon as Luke was distracted from his own purpose on Obi-Wan's account.

On the other hand, Obi-Wan's age may have had to do with the in-universe reason his duel with Vader appeared relatively tame compared to other lightsaber battles (even in the OT). That isn't clear either, considering that he was far from the oldest person to partake in a lightsaber duel.

 

The ANH radio adaptation expands on this. There, just after they get out of the Falcon's smuggling compartments, Kenobi tells Luke that he sensed a familiar presence nearby. He doesn't say who it is, but he says, "his presence here explains a great deal". By that reckoning, Kenobi knew that there was a very good chance that he'd encounter Vader, and that he needed to be prepared for whatever he needed to do.

 

That makes sense. After all, Vader can sense Kenobi.

 

I don't see Kenobi's smile just before Vader cuts him down as one of, "Thank the Force! I'm finally going to be put out of my misery." It looks to me more like, "Thank the Force! My friends will escape, and I'm going to pull off a trick the Sith will never suspect."

 

I’m glad to read posts such as this, since I didn’t want to believe that Obi-Wan was on a suicide mission.

 

Out-of-universe, it also wasn't a prudent plan, because Lucas didn't know how he would continue the story should a sequel be made...

 

Forgot to add this:

 

I thought he was 900 years old?

 

I took Ben's smile as one of acceptance. Vader is now more powerful due to Ben's age and he accepts the fact that Vader will not allow him to escape but he can help them escape another way.