WHY DO I GET THE FEELING SPOILERS ARE GOING TO BE THE DEATH OF ME?
Before I share a coherent response to the episode… imagine that I am pointing at the television, silent-screaming, with my hand over my mouth, jumping up and down in place. That could also be considered my reaction to this episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And now…
“You can’t win, but there are alternatives to fighting.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, Judo Master
Obi-Wan Kenobi has been focused on the question of why. Why would Ben abandon his post on Tatooine? Why should he trust others after being betrayed by his closest friend? Why keep fighting when the fight is done?
In Part 5, Darth Vader and Reva close in on Obi-Wan and Jedi Underground Railroad. Our heroes must stand against an overwhelming force and survive. The series shifts its focus from the question of why to fight to the question of how to fight.
How Obi-Wan Kenobi fights is not simply a matter of choreography, it’s essential to understanding his character. From his youthful confrontation with Darth Maul on Naboo to his final confrontation with Darth Vader on the Death Star, Obi-Wan Kenobi matures to embody the principle espoused by Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back: “A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never attack.”
(It’s also a fascinating journey from a creative perspective. The first ever lightsaber duel put on film is a static affair. When George Lucas showed the Jedi at the height of their power, it was suddenly Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That sparked the creative question of how to take Obi-Wan, as a warrior, back to the future.)
This episode illustrates how Obi-Wan approaches fighting with a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one: the return of Anakin Skywalker.
For the first time in twenty years, we’re treated to the version of Anakin Skywalker originated by Hayden Christensen in Episode II. It’s a beautiful reunion between Ewan and Hayden; Hayden and Anakin; and between Hayden and the audience. It’s kismet that this was released on the heels of the twenty year anniversary of Attack of the Clones.
Watching Christensen turn to the camera, decked out in his Padawan garb, was a magical moment. It made me wish I was watching in a crowded theater surrounded by cheering fans, instead of bleary-eyed on a Wednesday morning with my coffee cooling in a mug. Take note Lucasfilm: this would have played like gangbusters on the big screen.
It would have been enough to see Hayden again, but they don’t settle for a cameo. We’re shown an expertly staged flashback, a friendly duel with callbacks aplenty, including to Vader’s overhand strikes that bring Obi-Wan into a defensive crouch during their encounter on Mapuzo. This teachable moment is woven throughout Part 5 to underscore the characters’ choices, like an episode of Lost.
On Jabiim, we watch the rematch of the ‘rematch of the century’ playing out without Vader or Kenobi ever crossing swords. From Obi-Wan’s stalling for time (hey, another parallel with Future Luke), to his uncovering the mystery of the Third Sister, Ben looks for ways to parry and dodge until Vader’s lack of patience trips him up. The sleight-of-spaceship maneuver is particularly satisfying. Obi-Wan uses his knowledge of Darth Vader’s bias towards action against him.
In a story rife with rebels, this is how Obi-Wan Kenobi stands apart. He is completely orthodox, a paragon of the Jedi way. To the Jedi, aggression is a weakness. Kenobi uses his foes’ strength against them. It’s why he spends the entire duel at Mustafar backing up, until he finds the high ground. It’s why he comes away from this encounter on Jabiim with his life.
There is another contrast at play in this episode, beyond Ben and Anakin. That’s the difference between Ben and Reva.
I think lots of fans believed that Reva would be revealed as a Padawan that survived Order 66. I’d suspected she came to the Empire willingly, furious that the Jedi had failed to protect her. The actual answer makes so much more sense. She’s after Kenobi because she’s pursuing Vader himself. She wants revenge.
Which means, in some sense, Reva and Ben share a goal. They both want to defeat Darth Vader. The difference is, again, how they choose to fight. Reva’s story is devastating. It’s driven her to justify leaving a trail of suffering in her wake. In Star Wars, revenge is never the same thing as justice. “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
When Reva engages Darth Vader in a, I think the technical term is, f*cking cool lightsaber duel? She’s done terrible things to get to that point. Her reward is reliving the trauma she was trying to heal with violence. Her rage has been exploited, her passion turned into poison.
Obi-Wan, by contrast, has no interest in proving his mettle. Obi-Wan’s isn’t trying to destroy his enemies. He is a protector. His victories are measured in lives saved.
It's worth mentioning that Reva’s story has some very uncomfortable echoes in the light of recent events. I imagine there are those who will question Lucasfilm’s decision to release a story that feels so close to a real-life tragedy. After Uvalde, the story of a young woman laying on the floor and playing dead to avoid harm is eerily, painfully close to today’s headlines.
In my view, the problem is not that these stories hew too close to reality. The problem is, frankly, what we’ve come to accept as reality.
Art and stories have always showed us a perilous world. Children in danger has been a part of fiction and fable for as long as they have existed. We use fiction to examine the unsafe, safely.
Storytellers are not meant to avoid parallels between their work and the world. Sometimes storytellers find those parallels purposefully. Sometimes those parallels are discovered. The power of stories is they outlast the present moment. Their resonances change.
The prequels were released in 1999, 2002 and 2005. They were written and had their theatrical runs during the Bush Administration. During that time, President Bush lied to the public in order to justify the war in Iraq. He used that war to gather political power, to receive overbroad authorization from Congress, and to convince Americans to surrender some of their privacy and freedom. The war in Iraq caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and harmed the image of the US at home and abroad.
Any audience member watching those films at the time would have heard the implicit criticism of the Bush Administration. Most of the children watching those films, I’m sure, entirely missed those references. Now, years later, those references seem quaint.
I hope that eventually Reva’s story will seem quaint, too. If we want that outcome, we’ll have to do more than put up content warnings. We’ll need to move beyond the question of why this keeps happening. If we want to stop it from happening again, the most important question to answer is how?
To bring this back to Star Wars (this is about Star Wars!), for all the darkness of Reva’s story, I’ve loved watching her performance emerge and deepen. Moses Ingram is a force of nature, no pun intended, and the Third Sister is going to be discussed, celebrated and debated for years to come.
Part 5 was so full of events it’s hard to talk about them all concisely. I’m not here to recap or review, just respond, so I hope you’ll forgive how much I don’t address. I haven’t even touched on how affecting Tala and her trusty droid were in their demise or the adorably threatening Dark LOLA.
What I keep coming back to, though, is how jump-out-of-your-seat happy I was to see Anakin and Obi-Wan’s training together at the Jedi Temple. The creative team got every detail right, from the part in Obi-Wan’s mullet to Anakin’s pouty determination. When the press tour promised Hayden Christensen was back, I fully expected what we’d seen so far: Hayden behind the mask. I didn’t expect this. Even after all these years, it’s wonderful that Star Wars can catch me off guard.
I can’t believe we’re about to finish out this story. It seems like we’ve traveled through hyperspace to the finish. The final shot indicated that a young Luke Skywalker will be front and center, but frankly, I’m expecting a different visit from a beloved character. I’ll be surprised if we don’t hear from a certain proponent in The Living Force before the credits roll - if he’s not too busy making Taken 4.
I remember, years ago, when a three or four year old Emma- having gotten intrigued by the character dictionary you got her, as well as finding some other Star Wars books and ephemera in the house- decided she wanted to hear the whole saga to that point by talking it out question by question. Hearing the whole thing like it was a big fairy tale, and wanting to get at the motivation of every character, but she seemed particularly driven to understand how a good guy could become a bad guy. Not something that I think was showing up much in Daniel Tiger, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, or Blues Clues.
And what I finally landed on as my best explanation- and so much of that process of talking the movies out with Emma made me appreciate the structure and moral universe of the whole thing, especially the prequels, more- is that Anakin made the decision to listen to the wrong teacher. He went with the teacher he wanted to hear, and therefore chose Sidious over Obi-Wan and Yoda. That came to my mind watching this one-- I thought using that duel, and that lesson that Anakin still has not learned, but Obi-Wan is even learning more from on reflection-- as the spine of the episode was great. Felt very Star Wars. I feel like everyone was anxiously anticipating what flashbacks there might be, and I loved that, instead of some new secret, or some big, splashy Clone Wars fan service sequence, we instead actually could see something that might not have seemed like a big moment, but made all the difference to the plot in front of them.