Now that the illustrious Star Wars spinoff show Obi-Wan Kenobi has come and gone, we’re learning more and more about what could have been. The show, which aired to mixed reviews last June, followed a “young” Kenobi, played by Ewan McGregor, as he creepily watched young Luke Skywalker through binoculars for years. Turns out McGregor was pitching season 2 ideas from the jump.
The Hollywood Reporter sat down with show director Deborah Chow and talked about what it was like getting Kenobi to fruition, especially considering it was originally supposed to be a stand-alone movie directed by Stephen Daldry.
It evolved into a show before getting crippled by COVID-19, meaning it was stuck in development hell from 2017 to the latter half of 2021. Chow said that when she finished the “very last shot” and was “literally taking off [her] headphones,” McGregor was in her ear pitching ideas for another season. Will it happen?
“There’s another 10 years with plenty of stories, and I don’t think it’s off the board. It is a ‘never say never’ situation, but we really did conceive this to be a limited series.” She also touched on the idea of having to shoehorn in a story between six movies that everyone was acutely familiar with. That, she said, was the “biggest challenge of the whole project.”
“That’s also why it had gone through so much development. You’re between two trilogies with these huge, iconic characters. Everybody knows what happened to them, before and after, and you’re starting with a character where the public perception is that he should be sitting on that rock for 20 years. But those 20 years [between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope] had so much to explore on an emotional level.”
There’s also the retconning. In the original Star Wars, Obi-Wan tells Luke Skywalker that his father was “betrayed and killed by Darth Vader.” Then it becomes “true, from a certain point of view.” Did this give Chow more license to move away from what was canon? Did the line allow for more interpretation?
“I don’t think anyone will ever know exactly what George Lucas intended or what the intention was with some lines. There’s so much room for interpretation, and so many people have different interpretations. So for us, the big thing was emotional authenticity and that this felt innately like the right journey for these characters who were coming out of the prequels and into A New Hope.“
Regardless, we’d by lying if we said we weren’t patiently waiting to say “Hello there” to a second season of Obi Wan Kenobi. We’ll keep you posted.