George Lucas originally planned to kill Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Ready to get your mind blown on this Friday? Think back to 1999, when Star Wars: The Phantom Menace landed in theaters. This was the big return to the Star Wars universe after 16 years away, and it was a big deal. The movie famously received a lot of backlash from fans, but there were things people liked about it, including the casting of Liam Neeson as seasoned Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn and Ewan McGregor as his padawan learner Obi-Wan Kenobi.

At the end of The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon is killed fighting against the wicked Darth Maul, and Obi-Wan Kenobi continues as a fully fledged Jedi, eventually becoming the old man we remember from the original Star Wars trilogy, played by Alec Guinness. Now, a quarter century later, concept and storyboard artist Iain McCaig is here to blow up everything we thought we knew about this story. Apparently, director George Lucas had a big twist planned for these two characters that he went back on at the last minute.

“For a time, the older Jedi was named Obi-Wan and the younger Jedi was named Qui-Gon,” McCaig revealed to StarWars.com. “It was very poignant that at the end, as Obi-Wan dies and Qui-Gon defeats Darth Maul and stays with his Master as he passes away, he not only takes on his Master’s quest, but he takes on his name. Qui-Gon becomes Obi-Wan.”

"That’s why when you see Alec Guinness in ‘A New Hope,’ he puts his hood down and goes, ‘Obi-Wan? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard…' Because he’s not Obi-Wan, he’s Qui-Gon. And right at the end, George changed it."

So in the original version of the story, a young Qui-Gon Jinn was going to adopt the name "Obi-Wan Kenobi" from his dead master after he died. I have so many questions. First, is that a thing he can just do? Adopt someone else's identity? I assume he would do this out in the open rather than pass himself off as though he'd always been Obi-Wan Kenobi, which I think would qualify as identity theft.

It sounds like the point of this twist was to explain why Obi-Wan tells Luke, "Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time," in the original trilogy. But I don't think that was a moment that needed explaining, and in any case it raises more questions than it answers. For instance: why did older Obi-Wan never mention that he wasn't actually Obi-Wan during that original movie? I think abandoning this twist was the right call. It's weird.

Anyway, Ewan McGregor returned to the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi — the real one — in a TV show that aired on Disney+ in 2022. There's no word on whether it'll get a second season, but McGregor says that Disney is "exploring ideas." In the meantime, Disney is readying a new Star Wars show called Skeleton Crew to premiere on December 3.

Skeleton Crew is about a group of kids who find themselves lost in space. They have to get home with a mysterious Jedi-type figure played by Jude Law. Can they trust he is who he says he is? I don't know anymore. I DON'T KNOW.

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