Editor's note: The below article contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Obi-Wan Kenobi.In Part IV of the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, there was a single emotionally-resonant moment that stood out far beyond the rest — which is saying something, since the series has been an absolute rollercoaster of feelings since it premiered on May 27. The moment comes right at the end of the episode, with Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) sitting side by side on a ship headed away from Fortress Inquisitorious. After a moment of silence, Leia reaches out and puts her hand on top of Ben's in a gesture of comfort, one he is quick to return.
Though the gesture is a small one, and a much-needed sigh of relief after an emotionally turbulent episode, the little action also speaks volumes about the kind of man Ben Kenobi always has been, and eventually the kind of woman and leader that Leia will grow to be.
For most of his life, Obi-Wan Kenobi has been the kind of man who deals with his own pain and grief by throwing himself into another task, and into the service of someone or something else. When his master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) died in his arms, their final conversation revolved around Obi-Wan taking over Anakin's (Jake Lloyd/Hayden Christensen) training. With his attention now dedicated entirely to his young student, Obi-Wan doesn't give himself the space to dwell on the way the man who was essentially a father to him was killed before his eyes, and arguably because he, Obi-Wan, didn't stop Darth Maul (Ray Park) fast enough.
Jumping ahead to the Revenge of the Sith, things haven't gotten much better. When Obi-Wan and Anakin have their duel on Mustafar, he walks away from it devastated, but perhaps marginally comforted by the fact he did all he could to pull Anakin back from the Dark before Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) got involved. He's also motivated to walk away from the fight because he knows that Padmé (Natalie Portman), who is pregnant with Anakin's child, is going to need support from the only other person in the galaxy who knows what she is going through.
Once again, his own grief is shelved in favor of someone else's well-being. The only emotion he displays in getting Padmé to the medical facility and through her delivery is one of steadiness and calm. It's what she needs, so it's what he'll be. Unfortunately, it just isn't enough. Unlike with Qui-Gon, with Anakin, with even Satine Kryze (Anna Graves), Obi-Wan can't tell himself that his own actions could have stopped this particular loss. Padmé dies, and there is not a single thing he could do about it. Obi-Wan Kenobi has gone to great lengths to show just how much Ben cared about Padmé, in the fond way he speaks of her, and how much he sees her in her daughter. Being helpless in the face of her death devastated him. But rather than process those feelings, he snaps his attention with an alarmingly practiced precision onto her two children, Luke and Leia.
With Leia in the capable hands of the Organas, the newly dubbed Ben Kenobi chooses to settle on Tatooine and watch over Luke, perhaps training him as he once did Anakin. The potential of one day taking on a new student and making right his mistakes — and thereby masking his grief even longer — is an enticing one, but is not an avenue that Owen Lars (Joel Edgerton) is willing to entertain.
This leaves Ben alone, broken, and apathetic. He's no longer the great Jedi hero he used to be. He is a man alone, haunted by decades worth of losses that he never once let himself process, and calling out for help like a scared boy from a master who cannot or will not hear him. It's Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) who helps Ben feel that sense of purpose again, in asking him to help locate Leia after she goes missing and bring her home. For the first time in a decade, Ben doesn't have to be left alone with his thoughts. A search for a missing child is something he can dedicate himself to.
What throws him completely off his axis, mission or no mission, is the sudden revelation that Anakin is alive after all. Whether Obi-Wan assumed Darth Vader was a mantle taken up by another or he was just so disconnected on Tatooine he didn't even know the name of Palpatine's masked enforcer is irrelevant. Reva's taunt, that the scared and angry former apprentice Ben had left for dead was alive and searching for him, throws Ben for a loop. Focusing on someone else isn't cutting it anymore, and Obi-Wan is no longer acting like himself.
Which brings us to the scene at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi Part IV.
Earlier in the episode, when en route to Fortress Inquisitorius, Tala (Indira Varma) tells Ben that the past is hard to forget, but that he needs to try for Leia's sake. In dwelling on loss without letting his mind heal, he is only prolonging the issue, and keeping himself stuck in limbo. He doesn't say anything in reply to Tala, but by the end of the episode, we see he's at least somewhat taken her words to heart.
After retrieving Leia and bringing her back safely, the two are seated side by side, in silence and in relative safety for the first time since they met. The audience already knows from earlier episodes that Leia is incredibly intuitive when it comes to the emotions of others, this being the main way her Force abilities appear to be manifesting. Sensing the veritable maelstrom that must be going on inside Ben's head and heart, she reaches out a small hand and places it on top of his, in a universal sign of comfort. It feels like a callback to Leia's first scene with Breha (Simone Kessell). When Leia lamented that her presence at an official function wouldn't make any kind of difference, Breha replies, "You get out of it what you put into it." While her meaning was no doubt somewhere along the lines of "effort will be rewarded," this scene gives it a different interpretation.
Leia has just gone through something horrific, particularly for someone who has never left home and never been given cause to expect anything of the sort to happen to her. She held her own while Reva (Moses Ingram) interrogated her and threatened her with torture. She even managed to get in a couple of the razor-sharp digs Leia Organa is so known for. But though she made it through as bravely as she could, the experience still left her shaken to her core. In reaching out to comfort Ben, and thank him for coming to find her twice now, she is seeking a little comfort for herself. After all, if he has come to help her twice despite the terrible odds, maybe things will be alright in the end.
In a way, this scene feels like a kind of parallel to A New Hope, where perhaps mere hours after losing her planet, her family and everything she's ever known, Leia's first action aboard the Millennium Falcon is to comfort Luke (Mark Hamill) over Ben Kenobi's death. Putting aside how much more heartbreaking that scene becomes in retrospect, given Leia's relationship to the old Jedi is closer than her brother's was, she is showing exactly the kind of adult she has grown up to be. She's hoping to get out of this what she's put into it. Only unlike that scene, where Luke accepts her comfort and wallows in his own misery, Ben only lets the interaction remain one-sided for a few seconds. He snaps out of his sadness, not permanently, but enough to realize that Leia needs his comfort more than he needs hers. Her ordeal was something she never should have had to face, not only because of her age but because sending her away to Alderaan in the first place was supposed to keep her safe from things like this.
So he takes charge of the moment, taking hold of her hand instead. Their joined hands move from his leg closer to her side of the seat, visually shifting our understanding of who is comforting whom. It's only when Leia stops sitting up straight in her chair — the very picture of a diplomat at work — and relaxes back into her seat that their hands move to the middle of the space between them. By this point in the entirely silent interaction, they've become more like friends and equals, rather than one person leaning wholly on the other.
He runs his thumb across the back of her hand then, and squeezes her fingers in his. The gesture is oddly reminiscent of the way he tried to comfort Padmé after Mustafar, with a gentle touch to her forehead. It's almost as though he is reminding himself who he is doing this for, besides the obvious Leia and Bail. Much like her initial gesture, this is him telling her that he's here for her. But it's also him thanking her, both for trying to help in the moment, and for helping him slowly come back to himself.
It's not perfect. Ben still has a long way to go, and we don't even know if he'll really get there. Given his conviction in Return of the Jedi that Vader must die, it's possible he might not ever get there. But as far as Leia and the health of his own mind goes, it's certainly a start.
The first four episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are streaming now on Disney+.
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