Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi tripped up by frustrating plotholes in “Part V”

While the Force may not be with some of Obi-Wan’s Rebel buddies, it’s most certainly with us this week as we watch the penultimate episode of the latest Star Wars limited series on Disney+. Things are ramping up as Obi-Wan Kenobi speeds toward the finish, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite power through events as well as last week’s underwater rescue mission.

Beyond this point there will be SPOILERS for this week’s episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Warned, you have been.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 5 review

Hard to believe, but we’re almost at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s been quite a ride, with some excellent highs and disappointing lows. In many ways, “Part V” is the perfect microcosm for the good and bad of this series. It had some cool action, including the best lightsaber sequences of the series to date, but was handicapped by frustrating writing decisions.

This episode is all about the siege on Jabiim, which takes up around 90% of the episode. But before we get there, we open with a beautiful shot of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) as a padawan on Coruscant. Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) pops up, and the two begin their training after trading a few snarky remarks. This flashback sequence was like a blast of fresh air; I doubt I’m alone in saying that I’ve been waiting for a sequence like this ever since it was first announced that Christensen and McGregor were reprising their prequel roles for the series.

From there we flash to Vader in the present. He’s fast approaching the planet Jabiim thanks to the tracker that Reva (Moses Ingram) planted on young Princess Leia’s faithful droid Lola. The flashback training duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin continues throughout the episode, and it does a really great job of driving home the emotional weight of the confrontation for Obi-Wan and Anakin.

Unfortunately, things start to go off the rails a bit once the battle actually starts.

The siege of Jabiim

While the Rebels try to get all the Force-sensitives and their families off the planet,  Lola locks down their hidden base so that they’re all trapped there until the Empire arrives. It’s not long before Vader’s forces show up…but rather than have Lola just open the doors back up for them, they set up shop outside and start blasting at a side entrance. It’s the first of many weird choices. It feels like the writers intentionally pulled punches for the sake of drama. Sure, that happens all the time in television; the problem is it’s very noticeable in this episode.

Obi-Wan senses that something is amiss outside, and goes to the door so he can have a whispery conversation with Reva. Finally, we get her backstory, and it’s pretty much what I’ve expected from the beginning: Reva was a youngling on Coruscant during Order 66. She survived the massacre by hiding among the dead (brutal), and then went on to join the Empire in hopes of one day killing Darth Vader. That last part is a pretty cool twist. Combined with Obi-Wan and Anakin’s game of mental chess, it forms the spine of the episode.

Obi-Wan tries to convince Reva that they can take down Vader together — which sounds suspiciously like a Dark Side argument, if you ask me — but she refuses by pointing out that there’s no way Obi-Wan actually wants to murder his old student. Instead, she uses her lightsaber to slice open the blast doors, and stormtroopers flood the base. Why she didn’t just do that in first place is a question the show doesn’t want you to think too hard about, I guess.

The battle itself is decent; stormtroopers are characteristically ineffective except when there are a whole lot of them, Obi-Wan has some great lightsaber work, and most everyone involved gets an exciting moment or two. The best is when Tala (Indira Varma) and the trusty loader droid from Mapuzo bite the dust. Varma’s performance has been my favorite on this show, and she really sold it right down to her final moments. Very sad to see her go, but she went out with a bang.

Revenge of the youngling

Meanwhile, Leia (Viven Lyra Blair) climbs up into the vents, removes the tracker that was corrupting Lola, and manages to get the entrance to the port open so that the ships can escape. But since the Rebels are already surrounded, Obi-Wan does the only reasonable thing he can think of: he turns himself in to lure Vader, hoping that Reva can kill him.

Why didn’t they just bring Obi-Wan up to Vader’s ship? Why on earth would Reva capture Obi-Wan only to then send him out of sight with a handful of stormtroopers to await Vader’s arrival instead of keeping him surrounded? And how messed up is it that Obi-Wan would use Reva as cannon fodder? It feels like a huge stretch to think he wouldn’t know she had no chance at defeating Vader; Obi-Wan more than anyone knows how powerful Anakin is. It just feels out of character for him to use her in this way.

Questions, questions. I believe the idea the show is trying to get across is that Reva was convinced to help Obi-Wan so she sent him out of sight so he could escape and Vader would follow on his own. Unfortunately it’s just not clear enough in the moment, so it feels less like a clever plot twist and more like a contradiction.

Anyway, a ship tries to take off, but Vader stops it with the Force and tears it to smithereens. But lo! The Rebels were on another ship just behind that one. Again, the logic here feels a little weird, but at this point in the episode you just have to go with it.

But the final showdown, where Reva makes her move and Vader gives her a firm butt-kicking, was pretty great. One trademark of Lucas’ Star Wars films (especially the prequels) that Disney hasn’t always nailed is making lightsaber duels feel different and exciting from other lightsaber duels. Obi-Wan Kenobi gets that, and this fight with Reva is a great example. For most of it, Vader just dodges and uses the Force to toy with her, before taking her spinning lightsaber, splitting it into two separate blades, giving her one of them, and then trouncing her a second time.

By the time Vader stabs Reva through the stomach, it’s abundantly clear that she never had even the slightest chance against him. He literally doesn’t even draw his own weapon. The way the show drives this home in the fight is terrifying, and the choreography and performances from Ingram and Christensen were excellent.

It all leads up to a pair of twists that cap off the episode. The first is that the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) is still alive, and showed up just long enough to scoff at Reva before the Empire abandons her on Jabiim. The second is that Reva finds a communicator hologram that got dropped in the chaos which has a recording of Bail Organa talking about how Vader can’t find out about Leia and Luke Skywalker. He also conveniently mentions Luke is on Tatooine, and the episode ends with a final shot of the boy sleeping. The finale will be a showdown in the desert.

Bullet Points Kenobi

• It was great to see Kumail Nanjiani return in this episode. He elevates the fun level immediately and had great chemistry with Vivien Lyra Blair.
• The music in this show continues to be fantastic, easily on par with any of the Star Wars films.
• Vader was once again terrifying in this episode. This series is selling Darth Vader at the height of his power better than any other Star Wars project that Disney has made, period.
• RIP Tala. Indira Varma added an awful lot to this show, and will be missed.
• The return of the Grand Inquisitor was interesting. On the one hand, it probably laid a lot of fears to rest that Lucasfilm was throwing out the canon from Star Wars Rebels, and Rupert Friend really sold his scene in this episode. On the other, if you do a fake-out death and the primary reaction is relief that you’re not tanking an already established plot, I’m not sure how well it worked.
• The decision to leave Reva alive on Jabiim is baffling. The entire point of this show has been that the Empire is hunting down Force-sensitive people before they can one day become enemies to Imperial control. So why would Vader and the Grand Inquisitor leave Reva, a trained, dangerous Force-sensitive with a grudge and in-depth knowledge of the Empire’s inner-workings, alive? It makes no sense.
• A final shoutout to that flashback sequence with Obi-Wan and Anakin. Yes, I know I’m biased because of nostalgia for the prequels, but man was it good to see those two hanging out and quipping with each other in the Jedi Temple again. The lightsaber work was really great in those scenes as well. They’ve still got it!

Verdict

“Part V” had some high highs and some low lows. It wasn’t as consistent as last week’s episode, or as outright shocking as Obi-Wan and Vader’s duel on Mapuzo, but it set the stage for next week’s finale with some cool developments. Every actor in the main cast turned in a great performance, and the flashback sequence between Obi-Wan and Anakin was a straight-up jolt of nostalgic joy. It’s unfortunate that sloppy decisions and plotholes handicapped what could have been one of the best episodes of the series.

Episode Grade: B-

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