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When the not-so-old Ben Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) met young Luke Skywalker (Grant Feely) in the final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi in 2022, the Disney+ series ended with a kind of mic drop. Obi-Wan uttered a self-referential “Hello there,” met-up with the spirit of Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), and that was that. The gap between the Obi-Wan of the prequels and the desert rat of A New Hope was closed.
But not really. While there’s a lot to love about Obi-Wan season 1, nearly everything about it was a kind of canonical side quest, and it was only at the end of a galaxy-spanning adventure involving young Princess Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) that Old Ben returned to his rightful place and timeline-appropriate activities of hanging out in the desert and keeping an eye on Luke.
Even if we set the Rebels Obi-Wan-centric episode “Twin Suns” to the side, there are a lot more of Obi-Wan’s in-between years to explore here. And, those stories would have to be even more grounded than what the series gave us in 2022. Unsurprisingly, Ewan McGregor agrees. While being interviewed at LA Comic-Con, McGregor expressed enthusiasm for the possibility of Obi-Wan Kenobi season 2, and even hinted that he and Lucasfilm are currently “exploring” ideas for what a continuation could look like.
“Obviously between the end of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series and when Alec Guinness is Obi-Wan Kenobi, there’s got to be another few stories in there,” McGregor said recently. But what would those stories be?
Ben Kenobi of Tatooine
For one thing, a hypothetical Obi-Wan season 2 should take a page from The Book of Boba Fett and actually keep all the action grounded on Tatooine. Why a TV series about Boba Fett didn’t let its titular character leave and why a TV series about Obi-Wan—whose job it was to stay—was allowed to go galivanting around the cosmos is confusing. Regardless of what Old Ben is doing in season 2, it seems keeping him hanging around Tatooine is key.
This approach wouldn’t be unprecedented—there’s even a roadmap on the page. In the past, Star Wars has been able to tell impactful stories about the Jedi Master on Tatooine in books such as John Jackson Miller’s Legends novel Kenobi and in the “Journals of Obi-Wan Kenobi” interludes of the Marvel comics. A new season could cover Obi-Wan’s dealings with other factions on Tatooine, as the aforementioned book did, as well as his efforts to protect Luke from behind the scenes, as he chronicled in his comic book journals. Plus, some of Andor’s most impactful moments were when Cassian (Diego Luna) spent time in his hometown. Obi-Wan Kenobi could replicate that grounded aspect but apply it to the kind of “desert frontier” Tatooine that we know and love. Basically, the goal should be more womp rats and less gangs of young cyborgs on colorful speeder bikes.
Overall, if Obi-Wan season 2 happens, it shouldn’t just be a show that subverts expectations by having Old Ben take off on another adventure while Owen and Beru watch young Luke. If anything, the continuation of Ben’s stories on Tatooine is bolstered by its own canon limitations. We know that Obi-Wan Kenobi eventually has a kind of personality change and becomes a quirky hermit who calls himself “Ben.” This transformation arguably doesn’t really happen in Obi-Wan season 1 at all, which is essentially what Ewan McGregor was saying. The eponymous man in the title was not transformed into the man he becomes in A New Hope. So, maybe, to really get that idea of transformation across, Season 2 of Obi-Wan Kenobi needs to be called Old Ben Kenobi.
Obi-Wan Once Thought as You Do
Obviously, a new Star Wars midquel story can’t just be about one person. Obi-Wan grew and changed a little bit in season 1 of the series, but another good portion of the story was also about Darth Vader. Should Vader be in a hypothetical season 2? The answer is almost certainly yes. Because even if Vader and Obi-Wan never physically meet again before A New Hope, one aspect of their story still doesn’t completely make sense. In Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader tells Luke Skywalker, “Obi-Wan once thought as you do…” in regards to his son’s belief that he can turn his father back to the light side. This implies that Obi-Wan still had some strong feelings about saving Vader, even after their encounter in the first season.
In the final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1, Ben slices open Anakin’s helmet, and the show delivers what is arguably its best moment. Ben tries to apologize to Anakin, but Anakin responds, “I am not your failure Obi-Wan, you didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did.”
This is the moment when a switch seems to flip in Obi-Wan’s head that Vader has truly subsumed Anakin Skywalker. However, at no point does Obi-Wan say something to the effect of “Let’s turn you away from the Dark Side. There’s still good in you.” Instead, Obi-Wan just says, “Then my friend is truly dead.”
The scene is magnificent, and played perfectly by Hayden Christensen and McGregor. But, sadly, it doesn’t quite match-up with what Vader alludes to in Return of the Jedi. Obi-Wan saying “sorry” doesn’t feel as powerful as Obi-Wan actually trying to turn Vader back to the good side of the Force.
Recently, Stuart Beattie, the writer who worked on the scrapped Obi-Wan movie before it became a TV series, revealed that he felt that line in Return of the Jedi allowed for more story and interaction between Obi-Wan and Vader. Much of Beattie’s basic story outline was used to form the bones of series (including the Inquisitors!), though Joby Harold’s rewrites obviously changed the tenor and direction of the story.
Obi-Wan season 2 would not necessarily need to rescue the first Beattie script, but instead, capture the spirit of Darth Vader’s line in Return of the Jedi, as well as the aesthetic of Alec Guinness in A New Hope. Vader and Obi-Wan don’t need to even meet again in order to create tension between them. In fact, they shouldn’t. We already know that the Force allows communication over great distances, almost instantaneously. While Obi-Wan is toiling in the sand of Tatooine, he could be having telepathic mind-chat arguments with Vader over the nature of good and evil. Who wouldn’t want to watch them battle each other via long-distance Force magic?
Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming now on Disney+.
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