Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen's 5 best Star Wars moments

Twenty-five years after first playing the iconic role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Ewan McGregor was deservedly awarded a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame. Over the years, the Scot has worked with a who's who of great directors, starring in movies like Trainspotting, Moulin Rouge!, Cassandra's Dream and Black Hawk Down.

Portraying the younger version of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels, McGregor had huge shoes to fill as he took over the legacy of Alec Guinness. A trilogy later, he had not only lived up to it but became just as synonymous with the legendary Jedi knight as his predecessor.

Despite the harsh backlash the prequel trilogy received at the time, one of the best things to have come out of it was the adorable camaraderie between McGregor and his co-star Hayden Christensen, who portrayed a young Anakin Skywalker (who, SPOILERS, later becomes Darth Vader.) From their onscreen chemistry to the behind-the-scenes bloopers, it was evident that the two were good friends in real life.

More than two decades after their first meeting, Christensen inducted McGregor to the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a heartwarming speech:

McGregor has said on multiple occasions that he is willing and interested in returning for more Star Wars after he reprised his Jedi role for the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi. The show also brought back Christensen as Anakin/Vader, giving the fans peak Star Wars nostalgia. With the series receiving decent feedback, we may see the two together again in the future. Until then, here are some of their best onscreen moments together.

5. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker vs. Count Dooku (Episode III - Revenge of the Sith)

Anakin and Count Dooku's rivalry is not as incendiary as the one between Obi-Wan and Darth Maul. But keeping in mind how Anakin ends up replacing Dooku as Darth Sidious' apprentice, their multiple battles throughout the movies and the Clone Wars TV show become a linear graph of the young Jedi's growing powers as well as his fall to the dark side.

During the first duel against Dooku on Geonosis in Attack of the Clones, an impulsive Anakin jeopardizes the situation and gets hit by a Sith lightning bolt, leaving Obi-Wan alone to fight Dooku. He is soon injured and unable to continue. Anakin recovers and intervenes, fighting Dooku with both his and Obi-Wan's lightsabers but is no match for the Sith Lord. He also loses his right arm in the fight.

In their final battle against Dooku on Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin and Obi-Wan come prepared. In an uncanny parallel with the Geonosis duel, Obi-Wan is left incapacitated by Dooku once again while Anakin fights him solo. To provoke Anakin, Dooku somewhat accurately points out, "I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate. You have anger. But you don't use them."

But this time, Anakin proves to be a different Jedi than the one Dooku fought before. He avenges his loss of limb by cutting off both of Dooku's hands from the wrist. Dooku's weapon lands in Anakin's hands. He holds both his blue lightsaber and Dooku's red one along the Count's neck, prepared to cut it off, hanging on the precipice between Jedi and Sith.

Anakin struggles with this push-and-pull as Palpatine orders him to kill Dooku. The Emperor says "Do it," not knowing it would turn into a viral meme in a decade or so, and Anakin obliges. In doing so, he takes the first obvious step towards turning into a Sith himself. It all happens in front of Obi-Wan, who is unable to stop it, a pattern that repeats itself time and again in the Skywalker saga.

4. Sparring at the Jedi Temple (Obi-Wan Kenobi)

Episode 5 of Obi-Wan Kenobi kicks off with a flashback set around the time of Attack of the Clones when Anakin was still in his Jedi Padawan attire, rocking the braid and wielding a blue lightsaber. He is seen looking out of a window at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Obi-Wan's arrival breaks Anakin's reverie and the two prepare for a sparring session.

Later on in the episode, we see the outcome of the match. Anakin's restlessness and penchant for going for the kill trips him up, and the whole thing feels like a less hostile version of their Mustafar duel. Anakin manages to disarm his master but then loses to Obi-Wan's experience and wits as he uses the Force to seize Anakin's weapon.

Most Disney+ shows have alluded to the prequels era in some way or the other. But to see Obi-Wan and Anakin in their old looks, sparring at the Temple and engaging in their usual banter, was a treat for fans. But there was more to it than that; it also sets up the scene in the present where Obi-Wan outsmarts his former apprentice yet again while escaping with Leia and the rebels from Mapuzo, leaving Darth Vader angry and annoyed. It shows how much of a read Obi-Wan had on his former pupil even after Anakin has turned to the dark side.

During the training session, Anakin shows signs that he's being pulled to the dark side, which sets up a big revelation. In another flashback, set during the execution of Order 66, we see that antagonist Reva Sevander was among the younglings at the Jedi Temple when Anakin attacked it. Reva played dead to save herself and later on became an Inquisitor with the Galactic Empire to get close to Darth Vader and take her revenge.

3. "What took you so long?" (Episode II - Attack of the Clones)

While Attack of the Clones is full of hilarious moments between Obi-Wan and Anakin, the speeder chase through Coruscant takes the top spot. With the stakes not yet that high, the two constantly engage in witty banter. Most of it is about Anakin trying to do something reckless and Obi-Wan saying, 'Anakin, no!' But on this occasion, he counts on his student to come to his rescue.

In this scene, Obi-Wan and Anakin chase after Zam Wesell, a shape-shifting Clawdite assassin from Zolan hired by Jango Fett to assassinate Senator Padme Amidala on the order of Count Dooku. After failing to kill Padme in a starship explosion, Wesell releases poisonous kouhuns into her bed chamber. The two Jedi knights show up in time to save her.

As Anakin slices the worms, Obi-Wan leaps out of the window to catch the levitating droid that released the kouhuns, a perfect example of how well they work together. He gets dragged through the skyline of Coruscant hanging from the droid as it rushes dips and dives between skyscrapers. Zam shoots the droid and Obi-Wan starts falling. Just when it seems like he may hit the ground, Anakin swoops in under him in a speeder.

Disarrayed but calm as ever, Obi-Wan asks Anakin, "What took you so long?" The two then continue to quip at each other while chasing Wesell's speeder until Anakin jumps out of the speeder to confront the assassin. When they meet back at the pub where Zam takes refuge, an exasperated Obi-Wan tells Anakin, "Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me?" Anakin quite adorably responds, "Don't say that, Master. You're the closest thing I have to a father." The moment can be easily overlooked amid the thick of the chase. But Anakin's acknowledgment makes their journey in the next movie even more heartbreaking.

McGregor and Christensen's offscreen camaraderie shines through in their back-and-forth here. Despite his concerns about Anakin, Obi-Wan blindly trusts him with his life. It is not known how much a Jedi can beat gravity, but Obi-Wan gladly risking what could've been a really bad fall expecting Anakin to show up on time. That says a lot about their relationship early on in the movie.

2. Obi-Wan breaks Vader's mask in half (Obi-Wan Kenobi)

For years, fans wondered if Obi-Wan and Anakin met between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The Obi-Wan Kenobi series finally gave us an answer. The show had not one but two separate duels between the former master and the apprentice, first on a planet called Mapuzo and later on a deserted rocky moon. The latter was the true rematch after their epic Revenge of the Sith battle, with Obi-Wan regaining his full grasp over the Force and swinging his lightsaber like the good old days.

Despite Anakin burying him under a pile of rocks, Obi-Wan finds new purpose as he remembers Luke and Leia and ends up not only going toe to toe with the Sith Lord but eventually overwhelming him. The sleek moves with the lightsabers clashing against the dark backdrop of the moon is reminiscence of their fight on Mustafar and truly put the last nail in Anakin Skywalker's coffin; he's fully Darth Vader now.

The sequence is incredibly cool to watch, as well as remarkably melancholic. In the end, Obi-Wan slices off the left side of Vader's mechanical mask, revealing the scarred and disfigured face of Anakin underneath. The moment gets bleaker if you remember how Ahsoka slashes off the right side of the helmet in Star Wars: Rebels. It is Luke, Anakin's son, who eventually gets to take the whole thing off.

It is in these little things that remind us why Star Wars has the legacy that it does.

Through the mask, in a mix of Christensen's and James Earl Jones' voices, Vader says, "Anakin is dead. I am what remains." A teary-eyed Obi-Wan apologizes, but the defeated Sith morosely reassures that his former master did not kill Anakin Skywalker, he himself did.

This scene also happens to be Christensen's favorite from the show. "It’s just a great bit of Star Wars – and a really important scene. I’m very, very proud of that scene," he said at the 2023 Star Wars Celebration. McGregor added that they both became quite emotional while filming the sequence.

1. The lightsaber duel on Mustafar (Episode III - Revenge of the Sith)

Obi-Wan and Anakin's legendary duel on Mustafar is not only the most important lightsaber battle in Star Wars history but also the best choreographed one. It is even more impressive given McGregor and Christensen did their own stunts and it was not sped up in any way, as the latter confirmed in a GQ AMA this past June.

Shortly after the execution of Order 66, Obi-Wan and Padme follow Anakin to Mustafar where he was sent by Palpatine to finish off the remaining Separatist leaders. Anakin, with his turn to the dark side almost complete, chokes his pregnant wife unconscious and battles his Jedi master in a nearly 10-minute-long death match. The seamless flair of the fight made it evident that the two knew each other's best moves, having spent years fighting alongside each other for the Republic.

Anakin has an upper hand in the fight while Obi-Wan focuses on defense and trying to talk Anakin off the path he's on. Eventually, Obi-Wan manages to get to higher ground (again, paving the way for a million memes) and it takes only a moment for him to mince Anakin's arrogance as well as his limbs, leaving him defeated and debilitated along a river of red-hot lava.

Obi-Wan picks up Anakin's lightsaber and yells, "You were the Chosen One." McGregor does a brilliant job of bringing forth all the emotions of the past few years that he spent training Anakin and fighting alongside him, only for them to arrive at this point. Maybe he wonders what he could've done differently.

Anakin yells back, with all the bitterness in the world, "I hate you." "You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you." Those were Obi-Wan's last words to Anakin till they met again in the events of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Anakin, as we know, survives the ordeal. Palpatine swoops in, pretending to "save" him and turning him into a cybernetic Sith Lord, completing Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader.

Thus, the battle of Mustafar becomes the pivotal event that could've swayed the winds of destiny one way or another, with the future of the Galaxy at stake. Obi-Wan, in some sense, failed Anakin. So did the rest of the Jedi Council. Obi-Wan carries that burden with him and perhaps is only relieved of it when he sacrifices himself for the sake of Luke and Leia in A New Hope.

Which is your favorite Star Wars moment between Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen? Let us know in the comments below!

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