Ewan McGregor returns as the titular Jedi in the latest Star Wars series with Hayden Christensen playing Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker. The new series premiered just over a week ago and has completed half of its six episodes.
The story of Obi-Wan Kenobi continues ten years after the events of Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, with Obi-Wan Kenobi having survived Order 66 and hiding from Darth Vader’s Jedi hunters.
The ruthlessness of Vader in the Mapuzo village in Episode 3 has been one of the biggest shocks in Obi-Wan Kenobi so far. Due to his knowledge of the old Master, the apprentice is able to commit violent acts that will draw Obi-Wan out of hiding. The way Darth Vader tortures a father, breaks his son’s neck, and drags along a woman behind him—it’s clear that his own interests matter more to him than anything else in this galaxy.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s head writer, Joby Harold, revealed that this scene from Obi-Wan Kenobi was originally even more extreme than what viewers saw.
This moment is a step up from the Vader scene at the end of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which was directed at the military, while the new scene is directed at innocent villagers.
Harold stated that it was “a thousand percent the intention” for the audience to be terrified by the acts of Vader in this scene. The writer said that scene was so terrifying that he “got pulled back a little bit on that”, possibly due to how extreme the character and series are allowed to be.
Here’s what the writer has to say about the scene:
“From a Vader point of view, we’re all living with the memory of the end of Rogue One, and how effective that was. It was very gratifying to see Vader finally be unleashed in a sequence like that, so we wanted to try to trump it if we could. It was so important to define Vader’s anger and rage. There’s an emotionality to the choices he’s making that are a little further than we’re used to seeing with Vader. He’s pushed a little more than the Vader we know. Obi-Wan isn’t the finished article before [the original Star Wars], and we can look at Vader in the same way”.
It is clear that Vader truly feels this emotion in the Obi-Wan Kenobi scene as he tears through the village in search of Obi-Wan. All of it is still very personal to him at this point, including the physical turmoil he suffered and continues to suffer from his old master, the Jedi’s resistant reaction to his Dark Side path, and the loss of Padmé and his children.
Vader is at the peak of his rage and power with the formidable Galactic Empire, stronger than ever.
His willingness to savagely destroy this village and get to Obi-Wan shows this. That scene is already brutal enough, so one wonders how an even more extreme version of it would have played out.
Due to Vader’s cruel and fiery revenge, Obi-Wan’s situation has now become extremely dire, as he is being pursued by the Inquisitors and stuck far away from Tatooine. Having Leia in the hands of Reva (Moses Ingram), Obi-Wan will need to spend even more time away from Luke and the Lars homestead in order to make sure Anakin’s and Padmé’s other child makes it home safely.
With the Path introduction, the cast of Obi-Wan Kenobi has been given some familiar Force-sensitive characters, but there’s still plenty more to discover in the final three episodes of the series. One thing is for sure—Vader isn’t finished with Obi-Wan Kenobi yet.
About Obi-Wan Kenobi
Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Star Wars spinoff series directed by Deborah Chow for Disney+. It premiered on May 27, 2022 on Disney+.
The main cast includes Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, who will be reprising their roles for Obi-Wan and Vader, respectively. Additionally joining them are Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Joel Edgerton, Bonni Piesse, and Rupert Friend among many others.
The show follows Obi-Wan Kenobi ten years after the events of Revenge of the Sith where he faced his greatest defeat, the downfall and corruption of his best friend and Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker turned evil Sith Lord Darth Vader.
Source: Disney Plus
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