The following contains significant spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi Parts I and II, streaming now on Disney+.
Yoda and Obi-Wan returned to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant to find it in ruins. Murdered Jedi and the corpses of traitorous clones littered the breezeways, private sanctums and sacred spaces of the hallowed ground. Upon examination, Master Yoda uncovered that Anakin Skywalker had led the assault, now going by the name Darth Vader. He tasked Obi-Wan with hunting down his former Padawan while he would confront the newly crowned Emperor Palpatine, the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, whom the Jedi had been searching for since the blockade of Naboo and whose dark plans had finally come to fruition.
Obi-Wan thought he succeeded in his mission of killing Vader, but Yoda fell short in ousting the Emperor from his nascent seat of power. The venerable Jedi Master ordered them both into exile in the hope that one day the children of Anakin Skywalker would be powerful enough to succeed where he had failed. Armed with new teachings bestowed upon him by Qui-Gon Jinn, Yoda gave Obi-Wan a new task, to acquire the secrets of Force immortality and to protect Vader’s son on his homeworld of Tattooine. The new Obi-Wan Kenobi series demonstrates how seriously he took that mission, but it also reveals in contrast how the child on whom they unfairly relied to save the galaxy, was not as resilient as his original master.
Reva, the Third Sister of the Imperial Inquisition, has been hunting Obi-Wan Kenobi for a very long time, seeking clues for his presence within the Force when many have long since given him up for dead. Undeterred, she comes up with a plan to ferret him out from hiding by using the doctrine of the Grand Inquisitor. His counsel in finding rogue Jedi is summarized in patience, allowing the Jedi to reveal themselves by looking for tell-tale signs of mysterious heroics in needy communities. He concludes that by employing patience, Jedi will reveal themselves because of their connection to compassion. As “Part I” of the series plays out, this philosophy seems to bear itself out.
The young Jedi Nari is found in this way, seeking refuge in a saloon on the sun-baked surface of Tattooine when he is discovered. Reva designed a trap for Obi-Wan using Leia Organa as bait, obsessed with capturing him to curry favor with Vader and perhaps for some other unknown purpose. Her gambit proves successful as the princess is smuggled off of Alderaan to the planet Daiyu with Reva laying in wait. Bail Organa sends a risky communiqué to Obi-Wan, pleading with him to rescue his daughter. Kenobi refuses him, citing his responsibilities to Luke as well as a belief that he is currently unfit to undertake the mission Organa has laid out for him.
This is the first hint that Kenobi has potentially severed himself off from the Force, a drastic measure but not entirely unexpected if he is to remain in hiding. Organa does not take no for an answer and shows up unexpectedly in Obi-Wan’s shelter, again making the case for Leia’s recovery. He entreats on behalf of a father’s love but also as a practical matter. Luke is not the only child of Vader, therefore Leia represents the same bastion of hope, given her probable strength in the Force. Eventually, Obi-Wan relents and agreed to undertake this mission, recovering his lightsaber where he buried it in the desert and departing for Daiyu.
The parallels between Obi-Wan at this moment and Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi are profound. Rey comes to Luke, finding him after both the Resistance and the First Order have spent untold resources in trying to locate him. Each believed that he was vital to their interests, either as an ally or as a threat that required elimination. Luke, however, proved steadfastly to be neither. When Rey shows up on Ahch-To to seek instruction as a Jedi Luke stubbornly refuses. At this point, she is not even asking for him to become involved in the larger galactic conflict swirling around his existence, but to simply give her the tools to make a difference.
Luke has become convinced at this point that the Jedi have outlived their usefulness. Much as Obi-Wan imparts to Nari, his counsel is for her to abandon the path she has chosen and seek solace somewhere else. When the stakes rose he was equally unbothered. The scant remnant of the Resistance was being slow-walked to their doom, Leia had already been jettisoned into space and her final death was imminent as the few ships at their disposal took shelter on the planet Crait. Instead of showing up for everyone and everything he believed in, he chose to send a Force hologram of himself to buy them some time. Both Jedi, Obi-Wan and Luke, had resigned themselves to an imposed exile, but where Kenobi was persuadable, Skywalker was not.
Obi-Wan had much more at stake. He was abandoning his post at a dangerous time for Luke. Inquisitors had just killed a Jedi and strung his body up in a public market for display. Owen Lars had been specifically targeted by the Third Sister, threatened with the death of his entire family, all because she rightly discerned that he may have some information about a Jedi in hiding. Despite all of that, Kenobi races off to save Leia because he is bound by something Luke has seemingly discarded. Obi-Wan answered the call of a friend who needed help, to save a child he had only met at the moment of her birth.
Luke refused to help his sister and the Resistance he essentially helped create by defeating the Emperor 30 years before. Both he and Obi-Wan accomplished their tasks and then for their reasons went into a dormant period that weakened their connection to the Force. However, Obi-Wan did so out of responsibility and survival and when the time came to be of help, he did so, much as he would when Leia called on him again to deliver the Death Star plans to Alderaan. Luke proved that he had successfully become something other than a Jedi, revealing that the compassion the Grand Inquisitor used as a lure held no sway with him. In many ways, Obi-Wan Kenobi depicts him protecting a young man destined to kill the Jedi, just in a more introspective way than his father before him.
To see Obi do a better job than Luke as the Jedi recluse, Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming now on Disney+ with new episodes every Wednesday.
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