We all know the story of Star Wars. Whether you’ve seen the movies or not, there’s absolutely no way that you aren’t aware of Luke’s journey being trained by Obi-Wan in the Jedi arts, meeting his sister, and eventually his father, but the whole story was almost drastically different.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is at the center of all stages of the Star Wars universe — aside from the sequel trilogy, we’d prefer not to speak about. But his character was almost completely retcon’d during the prequel trilogy.
The Phantom Menace originally concluded with a twist so big that it would have changed everything about the Star Wars story both before and after, however, according to Star Wars creative Iain McCraig, Lucas’ decided to cut the proposed bombshell, and gave us the ending we know today.
Okay, enough with the context, here’s the explosive reveal. Qui-Gon was almost Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Obi-Wan we know today would have been Qui-Gon. Sound confusing? Well the rest of the story might clear things up.
“For a time, the older Jedi was named Obi-Wan and the younger Jedi was named Qui-Gon,” McCaig said in his interview with StarWars.com, cited by Variety. “It was very poignant that at the end, as Obi-Wan dies and Qui-Gon defeats Darth Maul and stays with his Master as he passes away, he not only takes on his Master’s quest, but he takes on his name. Qui-Gon becomes Obi-Wan.”
If you’re reading this and wondering what implications that twist would have had for the original trilogy well Lucas had already thought of that too. McCraig explains that when Alec Guinness delivers his first lines in A New Hope sharing that he hadn’t heard the name Obi-Wan in a long time it would have had a different meaning. Instead of being due to his solitude on Tatooine it would have been due to the fact he was never Obi-Wan to begin with, and that it was his master’s name. Yes, it really goes this deep.
One thing that does help from things getting out of hand is the fact that Ewan McGregor would have still been playing a version of Guinness’ character, so there wouldn’t be too many problems with keeping continuity intact, but we’re happy this twist never happened, as it could have easily overshadowed the other major moments in the prequel series.
The reality is that we almost got another twist on the level of Luke finding out that his father was Darth Vader. That’s pretty cool and the fact that it remained a secret until the 25th anniversary of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is truly impressive. Who knows, we might get more stories from the production in the near future that could implicate other characters. We know there’s got to be some Yoda secrets out there waiting to see the light of day.
If you need to brush up on what actually wound up happening during the first Star Wars prequel then you can stream The Phantom Menace on Disney Plus alongside all of the other films in the series now.
Published: Oct 31, 2024 06:29 pm