Obi-Wan Kenobi starring Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, released its fourth episode and the series continues to disappoint and make little sense from a writing perspective.
This review will contain spoilers.
Before I say anything, I want to address why I don't like Kenobi as much as other series, considering the "toxic fandom" controversy surrounding Moses Ingram's portrayal of the Third Sister.
When I review any show, I mainly focus on the writing and the music because they are crucial to the show's enjoyment factor. For example, people like Breaking Bad because of its excellent writing and story, not because of any CGI or special effects.
When analyzing Moses Ingram or Vivian Lyra Blair's acting, it's important to examine the character rather than the actor themselves.
All of this is my opinion and if you are enjoying Kenobi, then good for you. However, a multi-billion dollar company should know how to write a good story considering they've been doing it before anyone reading this was probably even alive yet.
Continuing, episode four is terrible for a multitude of reasons. From lazy writing to nonsensical scenes, there is a lot to unpack. However, the music in the episode was commendable. Yet again, Natalie Holt delivers with suspenseful tracks and good bass.
The CGI was hit-or-miss unlike previous episodes, but for the most part, was just fine, just nothing to write home about. Furthermore, here's what didn't work.
The episode begins with Kenobi being taken to Jabiim and put into a bacta tank to heal his wounds. During this, viewers see that the writers want to parallel Vader and Obi-Wan with their battle scars. However, this doesn't really work for many reasons, one of those being that Obi-Wan is not heavily impacted at all from his fight. By the end of the episode, he is completely fine, although he never fully heals.
The thematics don't work as well. Because of the fight with Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith, Vader lost Padme and his entire body, making him completely a monster. Obi-Wan loses…nothing. During this scene, we see that both Vader and Kenobi are having flashbacks from the fight in last week's episode. It seems that both are connected and dreaming the same thing like Rey and Kylo which doesn't make sense as Vader and Kenobi are not a dyad.
After this, we go to the Fortress Inquisitorius where Leia, being held captive, says "You cannot keep me here. My father is Bail Organa. He's a senator. I am a princess of Alderaan.”
This actually makes complete sense, the Empirehas no reason or right to capture someone's daughter from the Senate. For example, if the FBI randomly kidnapped a U.S. Senator's daughter and held her captive secretly, there would be a monumental crisis. To make this comparison even stronger, both Senates are extremely similar which was made intentional by George Lucas. Following this, Reya enters the room, saying that Obi-Wan is dead and no one is coming for her. This correlates with what Leia knows so nothing is wrong here.
We cut back to Jabiim where we get some terrible writing from Roken, a new random character who dropped all of his beliefs and morals to help Kenobi. We also learn his backstory and that his wife was a Jedi. This is strange as Jedi aren't allowed to get married or have strong connections to others as it leads to the Dark Side. However, this could be hand waved away by saying it was after Order 66, but we don't know. Roken drops his morals because "Leia knows everything," which isn't true. Leia doesn't know what planet they are on or specifically where to go. Let me remind you that this is a PLANET. It would be like saying, "My friends are on Earth, can you help me find them?"
Next, Kenobi, Tala (the officer from the last episode), Roken, Sully and Wade (some random people we have never seen) hatch a plan, which includes having Tala disguise herself as an officer again to get in.
Reya continues to interrogate Leia, who both knows that Leia knows nothing that Reya doesn't know, as Leia has no idea what the path is and has no connections yet with the Rebellion because this all started when Reya kidnapped her on Alderaan, making this whole interrogation completely pointless.
We cut to Kenobi and Tala going through the base. After Kenobi rescues Leia and is about to leave in the hanger, Reya catches them and calls them out, only to have the two random people from before, save them with Snowspeeders that had really terrible CGI.
It could be the angle, but they looked like they had been completely copied and pasted onto the screen. We end with the group escaping and Reya telling Vader that they have a tracker revealed to be on Leia's droid Lola.
Overall, this episode was really boring and a complete waste. I haven't mentioned it yet, but this episode is only 30 minutes long which is extremely short for a Disney+ show. I have low expectations for the final two episodes but will stay optimistic.
Rating: 2/5
