Mini Series Obi-Wan Kenobi - Part 4 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Obviously you are a misogynist.

 

Yes, I hate women. I don't know why I still tolerate my wife and my mother to be honest. I would be gay, if I didn't hate homosexuals as well.

 

Reva is unlikeable, but she presents a friendly face to Leia in an attempt to have her reveal the location of the Path.

 

I think that’s pretty obvious no?

 

Really? Her first words to Leia are "You have no rights here Princess! The Empire doesn't take kindly to Jedi sympathisers". Leia says "He will come for me!" Then Reva says "Obi-Wan is dead. Nobody is coming for you." That does not seem a very good way to present a friendly face.

 

Watch the rest of it.

 

Extract all the Reva/Leia scenes, package them together and you have yourself a perfectly serviceable shallow Rebels arc.

But here, it just feels like it’s distracting from the character work begging to be done with Obi-wan.

This is evident nowhere more than when the Vader/Obiwan duel kept cutting back to Leia escaping Reva. I almost never notice or complain about two conflicts being edited together in a scene (like the climax of ROTS), but here I was so annoyed, because I don’t care at all about this other story.

 

I did. It is a little hard to present a friendly face after you threaten them and tell them you (as in the Empire) have killed their friend.

 

No, it's not. What's hard is being a friendly face. She acts friendly after a while and thinks it's working until it becomes apparent that Leia won't be fooled.

 

Which just makes Reva incompetent, because why would anyone believe in the friendly act, if you have already shown your true colors?

 

"Unlikable" is another weird thing to say about her.
She is the villain of the story, to be taken with all what her role will imply.

And as a villain I don't find her particularly unlikable either, as I would rather say for I dunno someone like Geoffry Lannister.
She looks fairly intimidating and badass to me.

It seems to me that some of the complaints against her come from the fact that people feel like she is somehow stealing screentime from Vader?

We should rather be glad to get new characters to speculate about.

 

Not for me. I think the show still needs to better sell the idea of more confrontations between Obi-Wan and Vader between ROTS and ANH. Episode 4 did very little in this respect. If it cannot sell that idea other than with a lot of spectacle, I would rather not have Vader at all.

However, more importantly the show should write such an interesting character in Reva, that we want to see more of her in stead of Vader. However, to do that the character would have to be new in many respects: her history, her relationship to the heroes, her motivations, etc, etc.

 

Every Inquisitor in canon and legends ever since their first appearance has been described in media exactly with that word: unlikable. They are not meant to be charismatic, or cool in essence; they are meant to be people devoted to hunting and torturing others. And even then, some of them were said to present themselves as allies of the prisoner, so they can obtain the information they seek. This is nothing new, and there is nothing ridiculous about it: it's straight out of some real life interrogators´ modus operandi.

 

I found the Grand Inquisitor to be quite charismatic both in Rebels and in this show. If the villain lacks charisma or screen presence, they should be background characters. A main antagonist should be memorable beyond the characteristics you describe above in my view.

 

So incompetent she managed to place a tracker that the heroes are unaware of

 

I have the impression that there tends to be a double standard when evaluating Reva with respect to all the other characters.

 

There absolutely is.

 

Only after she failed to get information from a 10 year old, and almost gets the base destroyed. Why plant a tracker, if you don't expect a rescue? If as she says Kenobi is all that matters, why wasn't she prepared for Kenobi's arrival? It seems to me the whole tracker business is more yet another hommage to better stories from the past, than any logical follow up of this story.

 

There's a double standard, because she is presented as one of the main characters. There should be a higher standard for main characters than for side characters. Anakin was widely criticized for his "unlikable" characterization being one of the main protagonists. Why should Reva be treated any differently?

 

I don't see her characterization to be of lower quality than the one of most tv show characters who received a comparable screentime, yet for some reason there seems to be an unusually high backlash toward her specifically.
And the things said about her are often generic enough to be applicable to anyone else in SW tv shows, yet they are said about her with particular emphasis.

 

Oh, I liked him too, certainly. But I understand why they have made he Reva character as they have. Not even her colleagues seem to endure her.

I do hope, as we are getting close to the end, that they present her backstory with enough time to allow development from it. I thought it would a good idea for the Grand Inquisitor to return no later than chapter 5 and force Reva out of the Empire and into being hunted herself; it would have been given her reason to desperately hunt Kenobi (her only way to redeem herself) and given her a fate akin to what she hoped for Kenobi, in the end. Chapter 4 made me doubt this is the direction they are taking her, but the return of the Grand Inquisitor and him (possibly) dealing with Reva´s betrayal hopefully won't be restricted to one short, final scene, as it was with Bib Fortuna´s demise.

 

I do think Reva is a goner.

 

This. There is a difference between Denzel in Training Day "I hate him" and Moses Ingram in Kenobi "I hate her"

 

I think her character is great but that might just be me

 

The Grand Inquisitor, Seventh Sister and Second Sister were all introduced as cool charismatic and competent in there first appearances.

Now with Seven she devolved into a jobber goon alongside Five almost immediately, but GI and Second stayed charismatic actual threats until there deaths.

There clearly trying to set Reva in that GI/Second tier of actual consistent threat, but the writing is letting down the wonderful actress and not selling it.

Also I feel bad for Fourth Sister, great design that works in live action unliked Fifth, but she doesn't do anything.

Such a shame, really feel like this is the weakest on screen showing for the Inqusitors so far. Rebels, the Vader Comic, and especially Fallen Order did so much good work with them.