‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Writer Teases the Series’ Bleak Tone and Transition into Hopefulness
We know for a fact things in a galaxy far, far away got pretty dark after Order 66 and until Luke Skywalker joined the Rebellion, but it appears the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series will paint an even bleaker picture than many fans anticipated. Or at least that’s what screenwriter Joby Harold is teasing.
In one of the many interviews Entertainment Weekly has put out as part of the ongoing Obi-Wan Kenobi coverage, the series’ head writer and executive producer had plenty to say about the state of the galaxy ten years after the events of Revenge of the Sith and where we’ll find Obi-Wan, who is far from the person we met in A New Hope. In fact, it appears the show’s main objective is to tell the story of how the fallen Jedi master regained hope.
Here’s what Harold gave away as a general overview of the state of the galaxy:
“It takes place 10 years after Revenge of the Sith, in a time of darkness in the galaxy… The Empire is in the ascendancy. And all the horrors that come with the Empire are being made manifest throughout the galaxy. And the Jedi Order as we know them are being all but wiped out. So everything that was in the prequels has crumbled.”
This falls in line with what we saw in Solo: A Star Wars Story and the video game Jedi: Fallen Order — the Empire didn’t gain control of almost the entire galaxy overnight, and terror reigned over many worlds as the Imperial troops rooted out pockets of resistance. Something that Fallen Order directly dealt with was the Inquisitors and how they relentlessly hunted down the remaining Jedi across the galaxy. We know they play a huge role in the upcoming series, and Harold doubles down on that idea:
“Those surviving Jedi, those that do survive, are on the run… and they’re in hiding. And Vader and his Inquisitors are chasing them to the end of the galaxy.”
For Kenobi, it’s also hard to deal with his own failures both as a teacher and as a friend, so he’s facing some serious difficulties and pondering what his place in the galaxy is when the story kicks off.
“Within that hopeless fatalistic world, we find possibly the most famous of all our surviving Jedi in hiding struggling with that faith that defines the Jedi, and wanting to hold onto it and hoping to regain that faith within that sort of hopeless world… Within that environment and that galaxy, his faith is tested… And he goes on a journey that allows him to travel from that character that we saw in the last of the prequels, where [McGregor] really felt like he was embodying Obi-Wan Kenobi to a pretty extraordinary degree, and ends with him as the more finished article that Sir Alec Guinness gave to the world in A New Hope. And so in this very specific time in the history of Star Wars, when the Jedi are on run, we get to sort of stand next to and watch Obi-Wan as he runs the gauntlet and has to survive a pretty extraordinary experience.”
Perhaps the most interesting bit of the interview comes at the very end, where Harold teases Obi-Wan’s journey is inevitably tied to Anakin’s and their past together, something the series will tackle head-on:
“Obi-Wan is defined by his past to a pretty great degree… I mean, Obi-Wan and Anakin [Hayden Christensen] share so much screen time together. They’re so close that everything that he’s experienced and everything that happened with Anakin cannot help but define him. And we meet a man who’s very much defined by that history, whether he wants to be or not… Part of the journey of what he goes through is reconciling that past and coming to understand it and coming to understand his place in it… And that journey and the places he has to go emotionally as well as physically, and some of those battles he has to fight, are very much to do with facing that past and understanding who he was, his part in his own history, in the history of others.”
With each new bit of info, Obi-Wan Kenobi sounds more and more exciting and emotional. And it seems like this will be quite the ride for fans who enjoyed Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen’s chemistry together, bringing back their shared story and fleshing out who they are during these difficult times before their final showdown aboard the Death Star.
Obi-Wan Kenobi will debut on Disney Plus with two episodes on May 27. Look forward to our extensive coverage of the series and reviews of each episode.
Francisco J. Ruiz is that guy who has watched Jurassic Park a thousand times and loves Star Wars. His hunger for movies is only matched by his love for video games. He graduated in English Studies from the University of Malaga, in Spain. As he keeps writing about what he enjoys (and doesn’t) for websites all over, he’s continuing his studies.
