The unspectacular failure of "Obi-Wan Kenobi"

At least people remember the sand monologue.

It’s truly horrendous, but most of my friends can recite it by heart. “Sith lords are our speciality” is corny as all hell, but I remember how well the perfectly debonair Ewan McGregor sold that line. Hayden Christensen wasn’t up to the task of playing the iconic Anakin Skywalker, but I saw a lot of people absolutely thrilled, myself included, that he was set to reprise the role for Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Well, I feel bad that he spent so much time day after day donning that costume, because Kenobi isn’t even the enjoyable kind of faceplant. Kenobi has two characters discussing how they’re going to infiltrate an imperial base in a room full of imperial officers without a single one of them hearing what’s going on. Kenobi has a grizzled, disillusioned Obi-Wan setting off on a mission to rescue a 10-year-old Princess Leia after she’s kidnapped for…. reasons. Kenobi has an uber-powerful Inquisitor yelling “I hope you like pain!” at 10-year-old Princess Leia before she’s carried off for a forceful interrogation. As overused as the word is, at least the prequels had some kind of camp sensibility that makes them fun to revisit. Kenobi is failed seriousness with none of the fun.

Kenobi expects us to care, but it does nothing to earn the audience’s attention or emotion. It has no stakes because the audience, being completely versed in everything Star Wars, has seen A New Hope and knows that Leia will be fine, and that Obi-Wan will eventually overcome his ennui and help Luke when the time comes. Knowing what happens isn’t itself a death knell—some of my favorite stories are so effective precisely because we know how it’s going to end, but either we want to know how it happened (The Social Network) or we desperately hope it’ll be different this time (Hadestown… and also The Social Network). Neither of these is true for Kenobi.

The prequels had contrivance after contrivance after bad line after bad line, but looking back, there’s an endearing quality to how hard they try and faceplant so powerfully. And while we knew that the Republic would fall and that Anakin would become Darth Vader, when the prequels worked (which, very occasionally, they did!) you wanted to know how it happened and you hoped that it wouldn’t happen at all.

The worst thing that can happen to Star Wars is not failing like the prequels. The worst thing that can happen to Star Wars is failing like Kenobi: becoming a boring, unmemorable obligation.

I haven’t been paying much attention to what’s been going on in the outskirts of the Star Wars canon since I finished season 1 of The Mandalorian, back when we got new Star Wars every few years, so an entire TV series felt like an embarrassment of riches. I fell off after that season, I never watched The Book of Boba Fett, but when I saw the announcement that Obi-Wan was getting his due, I was ready. 

Kenobi is the kind of failure that makes me tell myself I should have known better. I know in my head that we’ve probably seen the end of where any Star Wars can wildly succeed and avoid eating its own tail. Star Wars is not a renewable resource. Small Leia is clearly an attempt to capitalize on the gangbusters success of Baby Yoda while keeping the series centered on the iconic Skywalkers. The Jedi “tomb” at the end of the most recent episode is clearly meant for viewers at home to pause on every frame and go “that’s Blorbo from my shows!” It’s craven. It’s exactly what I should have expected. And I feel like I let myself get duped for thinking otherwise.

But if Kenobi was always doomed to fail, I just wish it could have gone up in flames instead of sputtering out.

This isn’t the first time a boring, craven failure like Kenobi or The Rise of Skywalker left me questioning why I even still care about Star Wars at all. The answer, besides how my monkey brain likes laser swords going swoosh, is my dad. My father loves everything Star Wars. He dresses as Chewbacca every year for Halloween and May the 4th. He’s dressed the dog up as Han Solo. He has multiple light sabers in his office and uses them to duel coworkers and his children. (I’ve beaten him once or twice.) I saw all three sequel trilogy installments with him, and he loved them all, even The Rise of Skywalker. The value of Star Wars isn’t Star Wars. It’s sharing Star Wars with someone I love so much.

My dad hasn’t seen Obi-Wan Kenobi. Part of me hopes he doesn’t, but the part of me that knows him best knows that he’ll find something to enjoy in it. Even if he doesn’t, we’ll always have those lightsabers in his office, the times we went to Disneyland for Galaxy’s Edge, the times we watched Return of the Jedi in our old house. We’ll always have the past if the present fails us.

That said, though I should know better, there’s a part of me that still thinks that maybe we haven’t seen the end of exciting, big-hearted Star Wars. In some distant land, there’s a scrappy storyteller champing at the bit to write their favorite childhood story, armed with the guts, know-how, and luck to navigate the Disney Empire and deliver something brave and earnest. Maybe it’s Rian Johnson, or maybe it’s someone whose name I won’t learn for years. Or maybe I’m setting myself up to be disappointed again. But I hope there’s someone out there who will make me feel, “now this is podracing.”