The show may have already faced a number of setbacks including a complete creative overhaul, but that hasn’t done anything to change the fact that Disney Plus’ Obi-Wan Kenobi series is arguably the most highly-anticipated Star Wars project on the horizon. Of course, bigger anticipation leads to higher expectations, and with fans having waited so long to see Ewan McGregor reprise his role from the Prequel Trilogy, they’ll have their fingers crossed that it manages to deliver big time.
Most of the Disney era of Star Wars has relied a little too heavily on callbacks and references to the original movies, but The Mandalorian definitively proved that you can tell fresh standalone stories in a familiar setting without having to force-feed viewers characters and iconography that they recognize.
Despite this, Hayden Christensen is widely expected to be involved with Obi-Wan in some capacity, either through flashbacks to his time as the title hero’s apprentice or a full-blown Darth Vader cameo that shows just how far the former Chosen One has strayed from the light side of the Force. While his role hasn’t been officially confirmed by the studio yet, we’ve nonetheless heard that his onscreen love interest could also be set for an unlikely return to a galaxy far, far away.
According to our intel – which comes from the same sources who told us Ahsoka Tano will be in The Mandalorian season 2 and that Christensen is returning for Obi-Wan – Lucasfilm want Natalie Portman to feature in Obi-Wan‘s prequel era flashbacks to add more depth to the relationship between Padme and Anakin that was botched so spectacularly in the movies and is now generally best remembered for the memes.
While things can always change as the scripts are still being written, Portman’s recent return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe indicates that she’s happy to return to franchises she’d long been absent from if the story is right, and given the major way the bond between Padme, Anakin and Obi-Wan ultimately factored so heavily into the wider Star Wars mythology, it could end up being much more than just another fan-baiting cameo from an old favorite.
