Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi gets off to a bland, rocky start

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi: “Part 2”

While Obi-Wan Kenobi’s premiere told stories on Tatooine and Alderaan concurrently, the second episode focuses entirely on Obi-Wan’s mission to rescue young Leia. The show is addressing one of the original trilogy’s lingering questions: when did Leia and Obi-Wan actually meet? They clearly crossed paths before, since she thought to ask for his help when she was taken by Darth Vader in A New Hope.

Apparently, it was on the planet Daiyu, which is a hive of scum and villainy every bit as nasty as anything we’ve seen in Star Wars to date. Drug dealers try to sell Obi-Wan spice, a con man named Haja Estree (Kumail Nanjiani) pretends to be a Jedi in order to dupe people out of their credits, and the Inquisitors are on the hunt. This planet feels like a walking powder keg.

Unfortunately, there were too many sloppy continuity issues for me to really get invested in this episode. Obi-Wan eventually tracks down Leia’s captors (who, it turns out, are led by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers); they catch him and punch him once in the stomach and then complain about him bleeding on their floor…despite the fact that he’s literally not bleeding at all. This might seem like a nitpick, but this episode is littered with these kinds of lazy continuity problems to the point that it becomes distracting.

Reva has lured Obi-Wan to this planet by kidnapping Princess Leia, but not because she knows Leia is Anakin’s daughter. It’s just because she discovered Obi-Wan and Leia’s father Bail worked together in the past. This feels like a contrivance to me; Obi-Wan was a prominent Jedi diplomat and there are a large number of people he worked with back in the day. And the one Reva picks just happens to be Leia’s father? Not saying it doesn’t work, but it feels a little too much like plot pieces being pushed around on a board as opposed to something that feels really justified. Even a few lines about how they were extremely close or whatever would have helped sell this turn more.

Speaking of Reva, the Inquisitors were absolutely baffling this episode. Ingram is doing a solid job of fleshing out Third Sister, who is our new main villain of the moment. But it’s exhausting how after she successfully lures Obi-Wan to this planet, the bickering between her, the Grand Inquisitor and the rest of the team starts up as soon as they arrive. I was so intrigued by the Inquisitors’ infighting last episode, but by about halfway into Episode 2 it just starts to make them feel really ineffective. Literally any time Reva does anything, some other Inquisitor pops up to tell her she’s wrong and causes problems. She’s a loose canon, fine, but it feels a little one note. And of course, it leads into a clumsy climax, which we’ll address in a second.

Princess Leia continues to steal all the scenes

That’s not to say that Episode 2 of Obi-Wan Kenobi is all bad. Young Princess Leia continues to be a standout, especially as she pals around with Obi-Wan and peppers him with inconvenient questions. After Reva puts out a bounty on Obi-Wan’s head, all the criminals start coming after them. It leads to a chase scene that has great moments mixed with awkward ones, including a couple of lines that made me outright groan, such as when Obi-Wan informs Leia that he’s “let her parents know she’s safe” while they are very much still in danger. When did he make this call?

Then Leia sees a picture of the bounty on Obi-Wan’s head and immediately deduces that her kidnapping was solely done to lure him to the planet. It feels like one stretch after another to hold the plot together, and the show is just hoping you won’t think too hard about it.

Anyway, Leia comes to rely on Obi-Wan and he uses the Force for the first time in the show, so we’ll take it. There’s one scene near the end where Obi-Wan reflects on how she reminds him of Padmé that is a total punch to the feels.

Haja pops back up to let us know he’s actually a good guy underneath his criminal exterior by directing Obi-Wan and Leia to a cargo ship they can use to escape, which leads to a confrontation with Reva that is both one of the strongest and most baffling moments of the series yet. As Reva rages and tries to find Obi-Wan amid the cargo crates, the Grand Inquisitor shows up one more time to gloat about stuff…and Reva seemingly kills him.

If the Grand Inquisitor is actually dead, the internet is going to be mad. I’m just saying. Obi-Wan Kenobi went through the effort to introduce a villain from Star Wars Rebels who is an already established part of the canon and then kills him off four years before Rebels takes place, opening up a whole can of continuity worms. Why? It just makes no sense. The only caveat here is that maybe the Grand Inquisitor survived that lightsaber to the chest, but I’m not counting on it.

The grand reveal is that Reva tells Obi-Wan that Darth Vader wants to see him. Obi-Wan apparently thought Darth Vader was dead after Revenge of the Sith, which is a very cool idea but not one the show took the time to establish before this moment. As such, what should have been an utterly breathtaking character moment for Obi-Wan falls totally flat. At least the final scene of a scarred up Hayden Christensen in the bacta tank is creepy enough to build the anticipation for their eventual meeting.

All in all, these first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi got the series off to a rocky start. I want so much to like this show; I am a prequel trilogy defender and have been really looking forward to Lucasfilm revisiting these characters. Unfortunately, there was too much clumsy writing, too many moments where I had to suspend my disbelief or groan at the television for me to totally get invested. I’m really hoping Obi-Wan Kenobi picks up steam as it heads into its third episode, because right now my impression of why Disney chose to release two episodes at once (with a third less than a week away) is because the show gets off to such a weak start that they needed to rush to what is hopefully the good stuff.

Bullet Points Kenobi

• Temeura Morrison had a pretty cool cameo in this episode as a clone trooper. It was a great way to show how the storm troopers (which aren’t clones) have risen to replace the old clone troopers.
• Flea distracted me so much. His bright yellow shirt looks like it literally could be from a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, with just a Star Wars jacket thrown over the top. I wish costuming had done a little more there.
• It is cool to hear so many of the classic Star Wars beast noises, but am I the only one who was a little jarred by the fact that they’re coming from different animals? It’s nice to hear the sounds, sure, but does it make sense that so many anatomically different Star Wars creatures make these exact same noises?
• I’m so curious to see what the response to the Grand Inquisitor is. We saw his spinning lightsaber once this episode, mainly just as a way to look cool as he killed Flea’s bounty hunter. It was not a great use of the weapon; it didn’t serve drama like when it’s revealed that the saber spins on Rebels or when Darth Maul whips out his double-bladed saber for the final battle of The Phantom Menace. The saber, like everything else with the Grand Inquisitor, feels like a wasted opportunity.
• The score is absolutely a movie quality Star Wars score, right on par with the prequels, but the sets seem small. Even when the show uses sweeping shots to make the environments feel big, when it goes back to the actors everything feels like it’s being done on smaller sets. I’m not sure what the solution is here, but it was noticeable enough that it knocked me out of the episode several times.

Episode Grade: C

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels