“Whether he dies or I do, this ends today.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi drops that little quote early on in the sixth and final episode of his titular series. Of course, as we all know from a tale from a long time ago—1977, specifically—he’s not entirely correct. Neither Obi-Wan nor Darth Vader are dying today. But yes, this series does end today.
With a caveat. We’ll get to that, though.
We start instead with the show’s most needlessly recurring theme: needlessly recurring beats.
Near the end of last week’s episode, Obi-Wan already did the whole deal of, “I should leave; it’s me Vader wants.”
But as shown by his spartan cave lifestyle, Obi-Wan is the sort of guy who’s going to cheap out and take the subway home right up until you’re taking a car, when suddenly his Jedi senses perk up and he’s like, “Oh, well, maybe I could just take your ride partway if you’re already heading that way…”
So when that Rebel transport left, you’d better believe he was on it.
Not long after, he’s already back on his “I should leave; it’s me Vader wants” bullshit.
With Vader’s Star Destroyer in pursuit of the transport, and Ice Cube Jr. unable to speed repairs to the hyperdrive, Obi-Wan again decides he should just get out early.
Before his departure, Obi-Wan gives Leia a holster. It seems like it’s meant to be a nod to something, but god knows what. Just that she’ll soon need such a thing when she’s wielding a blaster in A New Hope? If she needs anything there, it’s not a holster—it’s a bra.
Having unloaded that holster himself, Obi-Wan shoots out of the craft in a shuttle, no doubt with the unfulfilled implication that he’ll Venmo Maya Erskine some credits for his part of the ride.
Unsurprisingly, Vader catches on to the lure and, just as unsurprisingly, bites.
Dark City Inquisitor is back at Vader’s side, and though he tries to dissuade him from stopping their pursuit for a single Jedi, he’s unsuccessful. And why wouldn’t he be!?
Honestly, wasn’t the entire job of the Inquisitors to hunt down these pesky stray Jedi—most importantly, Obi-Wan Kenobi? But now the guy headed up with that is like, “No, but we could kill roughly 35 mostly-nameless characters who will never come up again!”
It’s like not killing Osama bin Laden to instead focus on an al-Qaeda pottery class. Get a grip, Dark City.
So Kenobi and Vader land on this barren planet, clearly knowing they’re heading into their pandering Big Fight to please people who loved that painful CGI edit of their Episode IV square-off. Everyone who thought Star Wars was about fast-paced sword-fights is in luck.
Though, for once to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s credit, at least it cuts to the chase with it. There isn’t a whole rehashing of there still being good in Anakin or whatever. First, Vader asks, “Have you come to destroy me?” And it’s like, look, who’s desperately chasing who here? But then they pretty quickly get to swinging at each other with lightsabers.
Anyway, over on Tatooine, we’re still dealing with Third Sister’s story. In case you forgot, she’s after Luke now for some reason. The entire reason she was after Leia and Obi-Wan was to get close enough to Vader to kill him, but now I guess she’s just trying to get Youngling-killing revenge on his son? Or as a cycle of abuse? Or maybe just to get some slim feeling of accomplishment since the plans to kidnap Leia, capture Obi-Wan, and kill Darth Vader all were sort of busts?
Whatever her reasons may be, she’s out to kill Luke—but first she has to get through Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. You wouldn’t think this would be a problem for a recently laid-off Grand Inquisitor, but Owen isn’t afraid to play dirty. We’ll get back to that, too.
Meanwhile, back on whatever-the-fuck planet, Vader and Kenobi have remembered that Force powers are actually way better than using three-foot swords. They’ve both evolved to be rock-based Jedímon now.
Obi-Wan tries to collapse a stone pillar onto Vader, while Vader counters and ends up going full Step Brothers on his ass. He’s burying Obi-Wan alive!
Vader indeed does bury him alive, and walks away, as if that’s that. But Obi-Wan uses his own tremendous rock powers to blast the rocks first off himself and then onto his foe.
Vader starts getting pelted with full-on boulders, and he’s all, “Owie, owie, ouch, oof, owie!” It’s like, at least deflect them or something. Why is this not more of an issue to be hit with huge stones? Even Darth Sidious or whoever is gonna be smushed like Wile E. Coyote in this situation, right?
Finally, after a bit more fighting, Obi-Wan gets a clean strike on Vader’s helmet, revealing that Hayden Christensen came to the set again. The true face of Darth Vader is partially revealed, and like the poster for 2018’s Little Italy, it’s half an aged Christensen.
“You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker… I did,” the star of Jumper explains.
UGH.
This is some fan-service gratification on par with Batman saying, “ACTUALLY, Batman is the real me! Bruce Wayne is the alter-ego!”
Honestly, did this need to be spelled out? After four decades, we’ve all figured out the retroactive metaphor of Obi-Wan saying how Vader “killed” Luke Skywalker’s father.
Obi-Wan hasn’t had time to think about that, though. He’s so, so sad about what is for him a new realization he will post on Reddit, and he walks off in a huff, leaving Vader once again gasping and in need of a Ralph McQuarrie-designed suit.
This was already basically the end of Revenge of the Sith, but here we are again, as it always is with the recidivist fantasy that is Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Jumping back to our favorite planet, Third Sister has been asking around (asking literally one guy) about Uncle Owen, that guy has relayed that back to Uncle Owen, and now Uncle Owen is in a panic room situation with Luke Skywalker when Third Sister arrives.
After swinging at Third Sister a few times with what is almost certainly the rod from the trash compactor in A New Hope (already recently seen in The Mandalorian, because we love references, folks), Owen makes a desperate grab—quite literally.
Faced with death, he jabs out his palm and grabs either Third Sister’s Vader-inflicted gash or… nature’s gash? His intent is unclear, but the results are: it works! At least in saving him from dying, as required by his needing to appear in A New Hope.
Beru likewise fights and loses but lives, and Third Sister moves on to catching Luke. This actually proves pretty simple, because the little idiot just runs off a ledge and immediately knocks himself out. Though it’s hard to blame him when indeed you honestly can’t see shit out there. Yet another Disney+ series knocks its nighttime desert scenes out of the park, huh?
So Luke falls down and breaks his crown, and Third comes tumbling after. She’s like, “Great, now I can finally kill this boy, which I’m telling myself was always my goal.” And she almost does! But at the last second, she remembers a moment from her past: the moment when she realized that murdering children in cold blood is actually pretty crazy.
At this point, the two stories have lined up, and Kenobi has arrived back to what is apparently also his favorite planet. Soon after, Third Sister walks up with the body of Luke Skywalker? Is he dead???
As you will not be surprised to learn, he actually lives for like five more movies. Third Sister has spared him. She has brought him to the Owen-Beru household. And she, like so many before and to come, tosses her lightsaber into the sand. Between Tatooine’s desert and that bin we saw earlier, there are so many stray lightsabers that the weapon is honestly losing its cachet. No wonder Maz Kanata had one in a junk drawer.
Back at Darth Vader’s lava house—the house that Darth Vader lives in that is in lava—Darth Vader is still stewing about how Obi-Wan broke his mask and walked away. He’s moaning to the Emperor about how he’ll redouble his efforts to catch Kenobi when the Emperor is like, “Look, man, you are obsessed and are starting to sound insane. Can we just drop it with this guy?”
Vader agrees to move on, and as the camera pulls out on him on his Dad Chair in the house he lives in, the Imperial March swells.
THE END.
Oh, fuck, it’s somehow not. It really seems like the end, but it’s not.
Instead, we’re sent back to Jimmy Smits World, where Leia is putting on the iconic holster and brown leather boots we all know her for. This is her classic costume and we love to see its origin!
Obi-Wan shows up there, too, and once Leia gets her little beetle droid back from him, she reaffirms their close relationship, making it even weirder how she won’t seem to know or care much about him when he shows up and dies in front of her less than a decade later in that other movie.
Oh well! Back to Tatooine! We love to see it!
When we get there, Obi-Wan is already moving out. Like he found a new, rent-controlled cave to move into for A New Hope? This show is ceaseless in its indifference to its audience’s bewildered indifference.
Before he leaves for his new digs, though, he decides to stop over and check in on how Luke is doing with his concussion. Hooray! Luke is fine!
Kenobi starts to leave, but Uncle Owen is like, “Actually, want to meet him instead of just peering at him weirdly through binoculars all the time?”
This is where you’d assume you’re going to get Kenobi dropping some coy, cute little, “Maybe another time,” winking at how we all know how he’ll mentor Luke in another decade. But this series isn’t even that unsubtle with its bullshit.
Instead, Obi-Wan struts up there and fucking does the meme.
Yes, he does “Hello there.”
It’s a moment that makes one exceptionally grateful this is the end of this thing. But it turns out it’s just the beginning.
As Obi-Wan rides off on his garbage alien camel thing, THEN is when Liam Neeson’s ghost shows up! Instead of helping out with the twice-kidnapped child or anything else, Liam Neeson’s ghost has decided to only now show up in this little epilogue where he’s like, “If you couldn’t save me at my most alive, you didn’t deserve me at my most translucent—which is now, for some reason.”
Star Ewan McGregor recently told GQ “I really hope we do another [Obi-Wan Kenobi]. If I could do one of these every now and again—I’d just be happy about it.” And it seems he will be happy, even if we aren’t. Because Obi-Wan heads off not toward his latest rental property but into the distance and, as vaguely implied, toward further in-between tales.
The big lesson of Obi-Wan Kenobi? That he was probably a lonely hermit for only about nine months before he became a robe pile. Get ready for more of his very self-referential adventures!
