Obi-Wan Kenobi is now four episodes in with two to go, and while it’s been warmly received, it’s now looking like it won’t live up the high bar set by The Mandalorian. Everyone loves Ewan McGregor’s downbeat and defeated title hero, Vivien Lyra Blair’s 10 year-old Leia is great, and this peek at Jedi on the run is very compelling.
But fans have justifiably found fault with some of the storytelling decisions, the short length of the episodes, and some oddly goofy moments scattered throughout the show. There were several of these in the most recent episode, including Tala bonking a stormtrooper on the head to take him down, and Obi-Wan’s ludicrous trenchcoat disguise to get Leia to the escape ship.
Now, a poster on r/StarWars has said that true fans shouldn’t be surprised at this, as moments like these are exactly what Star Wars is all about.
They point to the Ewok scenes in Return of the Jedi, in which they take AT-STs down with logs, C-3PO’s head being put on a battle droid in Attack of the Clones, and Han Solo yelling and running into a roomful of stormtroopers in A New Hope.
Many agree, saying that the much-criticized scene of Leia hiding under the trenchcoat was supposed to be ridiculous. But there’s also a case that Obi-Wan Kenobi has a much more downbeat tone than the other movies, and moments of comedy don’t gel quite so well in a story that begins with child murder, shows Jedi being hunted down like dogs, and has Darth Vader casually snapping necks with the Force.
We still have two more episodes to go. What’s coming next remains a mystery, though it would be safe to say Obi-Wan is going to square off with Reva, and we’ll get one more encounter with Vader. We hope that these are played without too many silly gags, but we won’t complain too much if there’s the odd funny moment here and there.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is released Wednesdays on Disney Plus.
