This year’s May the Fourth was unusually modest. Compared to dozens of announcements about upcoming shows or projects that we have been seeing couple of years ago, this year the only real thing was the official “Obi-Wan Kenobi” trailer (if you haven’t watched it yet, see below).
And even the trailer showed little in addition to the first teaser. One fun detail was seeing Obi-Wan use an “uncivilised” weapon – shooting a stormtrooper with a blaster. Overall, however, most of the material – little Luke, the Inquisitors, in particular the Third Sister, the planets – we have seen already. We only got a couple of new shots and a few lines that add a little insight into what is going to happen – mostly nothing unexpected.
It has still provided some insight into the series as a whole.
Uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton) expressing his doubts about Obi-Wan insisting to train Luke in the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer.
This Will Be The First Episode…
Among the new things was the scene of all three Inquisitors arriving on Tatooine. Knowing how trailers work, this will likely happen during the first episode. In fact, one could probably reconstruct the events of the first episode from all that we have up to now. Obi-Wan reminiscing in his retreat, watching little Luke, meanwhile the Inquisitors learning that he may be on Tatooine and coming there.
And Obi-Wan talking to uncle Owen. That is possibly the most interesting scene of the trailer – hopefully promising some more conversation, character-building and relationship-building between Obi-Wan and Luke’s foster family. I very much appreciate that uncle Owen (captured very faithfully by Joel Edgerton) has the recognisable aspects of his grudging, adverse-to-Jedi-nonsense personality from A New Hope.
Fourth Sister and Fifth Brother in the Inquisitor home base on the water-moon of Nur.
The Villains’ Modus Operandi
The trailer also capitalizes on the Third Sister (Moses Ingram) who is clearly going to be the focal villain of the miniseries. Here we hear her deciding to corner Obi-Wan by calling the bounty hunters and “lowlifes” on him (possibly on the “space Hong Kong” world of Daiyu). That already says something about Third Sister’s personality and the way she operates.
Speaking of villains, those with a keen eye may have spotted another female inquisitor walking alongside the Fifth Brother in the water-moon base’s corridor. She was already briefly visible in the previous trailer, and it seems that she is the Fourth Sister – an Inquisitor who has appeared before in a comic but did not do anything. She is played by Rya Kihlstedt.
And of course the trailer culminates with the view of Darth Vader putting on his armour, and a worried shot of Obi-Wan, presumably from their encounter. Ewan McGregor’s face here captures it all – the pain of the Master who has to face the greatest failure of his life and would very much like not to. If the entire series is as good as Ewan McGregor’s acting in this single five-second shot, it will be great.
The Bridge Between III and IV
But so far we can only hope. What we can say is that everything we have seen from “Obi-Wan Kenobi” continues to confirm the impression that this will be heavy Star Wars nostalgia, but not (we hope) just nostalgia for the sake of it. It seems like it could be, at best, a bridge between the prequels and the original trilogy, in the best possible way.
Let’s hope it will be that, and not just superficially.
