In the second episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, which Disney+ dropped this week as part of the series’ launch, Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) sets off on an adventure that feels reminiscent of the misadventures he and Anakin once got up to on Coruscant. In the criminal underbelly of a sprawling city, Obi-Wan follows a lead and winds up crossing paths with Haja Estree (Kumail Nanjiani) who advertises himself as a Jedi, but in reality, he’s just a rapscallion trying to make a few extra credits with sleights of hand and magnets. With a little aggressive negotiation, Obi-Wan manages to get Haja to tell him where he might be able to find the kidnapped Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair), and he goes undercover in a spice facility that is fronting a facility filled with holding cells, falling right into the trap laid by Inquisitor Reva (Moses Ingram).
Despite being out of practice as a Jedi for ten years, Obi-Wan easily dispatches the bounty hunters that jump him in the cell, using the spice to disorient them and lock them in the cell for Reva to find later. He locates Leia, and they make a run for it into a city that has been newly alerted to the presence of a highly sought-after Jedi with a sizable bounty on his head. When Leia discovers that Obi-Wan is a wanted man, she doubts that he is actually a Jedi that has been sent by her father, and she runs off—sending Obi-Wan on a pursuit throughout the city and up onto its rooftops.
Leia only believes that “Ben” is actually a Jedi when he saves her from falling to her death by using the Force—perhaps for the first time in a decade. The moment surely left an imprint on the young girl's life, and it’s easy to speculate that this might be the moment that would later inspire her to name her son after the man who saved her as a child. It definitely was a harrowing experience.
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Despite seeming like a conman, Haja proves himself to be a good man when he runs into the duo and offers to act as a diversion to keep Inquisitor Reva at bay so that Obi-Wan and Leia can escape on a cargo ship, which is the only way off the planet now that the Inquisitors have shown up to shut things down. Obi-Wan is hesitant to trust him, but later Leia offers some surprisingly sage mature words of wisdom about why trusting him made sense. But before Obi-Wan and Leia can get off the planet, Obi-Wan learns something that will completely alter the trajectory of his journey from this point forward.
Up on the cargo dock, Inquisitor Reva tracks Obi-Wan down and taunts him with the knowledge that Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) actually survived and is now Darth Vader. The moment knocks the wind out of Obi-Wan’s sails, but he is ultimately able to escape because the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) shows up to stop Reva in her tracks. In a shocking and wholly unexpected twist, Reva runs the Grand Inquisitor through with her lightsaber, though this surely can’t be the end for him. Not when he is present in Star Wars: Rebels—unless he isn’t the same Grand Inquisitor.
The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are everything that fans of the prequels could have hoped for. There are delightful callbacks, definite groundwork being laid for the future (even beyond this series), and strong performances from everyone in the cast. Deborah Chow brings her same ingenious directorial vision to this series, and it sets the scene for some really compelling storytelling moving forward.
Initially, it seemed like the story would focus on Obi-Wan’s life on Tatooine, but the inclusion of Princess Leia and Alderaan was a refreshing approach to this area of storytelling. Whoever cast Miss Blair as this younger incarnation of the character deserves a round of applause — because she fully embodies the sassy, headstrong, and determined Princess Leia we have come to know and love from the late and great Carrie Fisher.
Grade: A+
The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are streaming now on Disney+.