Obi-Wan Kenobi writer Stuart Beattie reveals the series reused the story treatment developed when the project was still slated to go to theaters. In an interview for The Direct, Beattie also talks about how the scrapped Obi-Wan Kenobi film was initially planned as a trilogy, pointing out which plot points of the second scrapped movie could show up in a possible Season 2.
Before becoming a series, Obi-Wan Kenobi was planned as a Star Wars spinoff theatrical film. However, after Solo’s lukewarm reception, Disney decided to shelve the project. Once Disney+ was in place, and the Star Wars train started to move into new and exciting directions with the release of The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi was also recycled into a series. Beattie was the very first writer to work on the Obi-Wan Kenobi project when it was still supposed to be a movie, which led him to be credited as a writer for Episodes 1, 2, 3, and 6 of the series. As Beattie explains, the show created, by director Deborah Chow, was based on his first story treatment, but he didn’t work directly with the Disney+ project.
As Beattie puts it:
“I wrote the film that they based the show on. So, yeah. I spent like a year, year-and-a-half working on it. And then, when the decision was made not to make any more spin-off films after ‘Solo’ came out, I left the project and went on to other things. Joby [Harold, head writer] came on and took my scripts and turned it from two hours into six. So, I did not work with them at all, I just got credit for the episodes because it was all my stuff.”
What’s particularly interesting is that Beattie’s scrapped Obi-Wan Kenobi film was actually planned as the first chapter of a trilogy. And Beattie says he already knew where to lead the Jedi Master in the following chapters of the spinoff. In Beattie’s words:
"So when I pitched my Obi-Wan story to Lucasfilm, I said, 'There's actually three stories here. Because there are three different evolutions that the character has to make in order to go from Obi-Wan to Ben.' And the first one was the first movie, which was the show, which was, 'Surrender to the will of the Force. Transport your will, surrender your will. Leave the kid alone.'”
After learning, he should trust the Force to guide Luke, Obi-Wan would move to the next step in his journey: accepting his own mortality. While Beattie didn’t write a script for the second movie, he had a very clear idea of the character growth he would like Obi-Wan to have in this second chapter. As Beattie discussed with Lucasfilm at the time:
“Probably the most powerful moment in all of Obi-Wan's story is that moment where he sacrifices himself in A New Hope. Great moment, you know, makes you cry. But, if you stop and think about it, it's a pretty sudden thing, to just kind of go be fighting a guy, to see Luke and go, 'I'm gonna die.' You know, that to me, that required forethought. That required pre-acceptance that this was going to happen. (...) So, that was the second step of the evolution for me, that Obi-Wan now has to come to terms with his own mortality, somehow in a prophecy, or Qui-Gon telling him, 'There's going to come a moment where you're gonna have to sacrifice yourself for the good,' And then [Obi-Wan] is like, 'What? No, no, no, no, I'm here to help... I can't, no.' And get him to that point where Obi Wan has accepted the idea that he's going to die, and that he's going to die willingly at a crucial moment, and you will know when that moment presents itself.”
While director Chow previously said Obi-Wan Kenobi was conceived as a miniseries, Star Wars producer Kathleen Kennedy thinks Season 2 could happen if fans really want it. Considering how the series broke some viewership records for Disney+, a follow-up season is not unlikely at this point. Of course, there’s no telling if an eventual Season 2 of Obi-Wan Kenobi would follow Beattie’s original plan for the character. Still, it’s interesting to know Lucasfilm was discussing a trilogy at some point.
All episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are available right now on Disney+.