Obi-Wan Kenobi starring Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen released its third episode today and it is still fine -- just very bland and unoriginal.
This review will contain spoilers.
Before pointing out plot holes and inconsistencies, there are still a lot of positive aspects of this episode. For one, Natalie Holt continues to be an excellent composer. One amazing track from this episode comes into play when *Reva is entering the *Fortress Inquisitorius. The track utilizes many drums and violins to make for an excellent and intimidating piece.
The CGI is also incredibly impressive which should be expected out of a Disney property. But again, like all Disney shows, everything is typically great, except for the plot and the screenwriting.
The episode begins with Vader being assembled and Obi-Wan still in shock that Anakin survived. In Revenge of The Sith when Obi-Wan and Yoda go to the Jedi temple after Order 66, they look at the security recordings to see what happened. There they see Palpatine specifically say, "You have done well my new apprentice. Now rise, Lord Vader, and bring peace.” So Obi-Wan already knew who Vader was, making this scene make zero sense. But, maybe he forgot it…or the writers did. Either way, it was poorly planned.
On top of this, viewers don’t know why --- or how --- Obi-Wan isn’t able to contact Bail Organa or anyone from Alderaan at all. In the second episode, it was explained by having this planet be an entire internet dead zone, but they are now in space going who knows where following the advice of a literal scammer and thief. Obi-Wan does have a way to talk to Bail, by the way. Bail contacted him via hologram in the first episode.
Continuing on, Obi-Wan and Leia walk to the area where the scammer said to go, and no one is there. Because of this, Leia tries to signal a truck to hitchhike on and it actually works.
This brings me to my next complaint which is Leia being used by the writers as a plot convenience. In the last episode’s review, I stated how lazy it was on the writers’ part to use Leia as a plot convenience continuously.
We saw this with the chase, making Obi-Wan use the force to save her, and having Leia run away numerous times. This does not change in this episode. Actually, it's even worse. In this episode, Leia hitchhikes randomly but it actually works. She continues to talk back or ask questions only the writers would want her to ask and gets the person protecting and escorting her to leave her alone so she eventually gets captured once again for the fourth episode.
Anyway, we get to an Empire checkpoint, and after being ratted on by the driver, Obi-Wan proceeds to kill around six to seven stormtroopers but only after he looks at a probe droid which will allow Vader and the Inquisitors to show up.
Once they open the gate, a car of three troopers and an officer show up which causes Obi-Wan to surrender. This is silly for multiple reasons.
One, there are only four people, which should not be threatening as Obi-Wan has proven he can take out twice this amount.
Two, Obi-Wan cannot surrender because if the Empire gets him, then he will not be able to train or protect Luke, which he said was the only hope the galaxy had at destroying the Sith.
The officer who came with the troopers is actually the person whom the scammer contacted. But, this shouldn’t be possible considering the scammer’s planet has “no communication in or out,” but again, forget about that.
After this, viewers receive some boring dialogue and a whole lot of “oh no are they going to get caught” scenes until Vader shows up.
This scene is actually one of the best. Vader does not talk and instead, just walks through the town, snapping necks and choking people out relentlessly in order to draw Kenobi out, who then, in an attempt to save lives, draws Vader into the middle of nowhere.
Then they finally duel and it is…completely pathetic. It reminded me of the sequel fights where barely any blows are exchanged and it’s more of just watching them fight than being really invested in the consequences or outcome. Afterward, due to plot convenience, Obi-Wan escapes and Leia is yet again captured, making the last two episodes feel somewhat pointless.
I can understand why people are enjoying this show a lot, for my first viewing of each episode I felt the same way and thought that Star Wars was back to being good again, however, once you get past the nostalgia of these childhood characters and take the story at face value, it begins to fall apart.
I’m not saying that a Kenobi show is a terrible idea because you can do good things with old characters that aren’t just “remember this” or “remember that”.
Kenobi feels like the Mandolorian now and if you just replaced Baby Leia with Baby Yoda and Kenobi with Mando, then this story would be far too similar, almost to the point of plagiarism if they weren’t in the same franchise. I hope that Kenobi will get better, but we are halfway done with the show now, and that’s worrisome.
Rating: 3/5
