OBI-WAN KENOBI: PART VI dir. Deborah Chow | released June 22, 2022

Star Wars girl dads you will ALWAYS be famous to me <3

OBI-WAN KENOBI & LEIA ORGANA + hugs

OBI-WAN KENOBI Part III

Leia and Bail Organa in Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022-)

OBI-WAN KENOBI (2022) Cinematography by Chung-Hoon Chung

Our hyperdrive is down, and they’re behind us.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Part V

Obi-Wan + signature move

Second video (first one can be found here) where we show how well Obi-Wan Kenobi meshes with the themes that George Lucas established in the Prequels.

This time about Obi-Wan's confrontation with Vader.

Audio taken from audio commentaries for A New Hope and Revenge of the Sith, as well as the Episode III Featurette: "The Chosen One" which can be viewed here.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi" (2022) "Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith" (2005)

star wars: revenge of the sith (2005) | obi-wan kenobi (2022)

OBI-WAN KENOBI (2022) | E02 Part II dir. Deborah Chow

obi-wan kenobi (2022) | dir. deborah chow

“They’re scared. She keeps their minds off of it.” “Maybe I should borrow her, too.”

The Jedi Code is like an itch.

Consider who the three main characters of Obi-Wan Kenobi are.

Obi-Wan, Vader & Reva. What ties them all together?

They’re all trying really hard to NOT be Jedi… even though, deep down, that’s who they are. 

Because as the Grand Inquisitor puts it: the Jedi Code is like an itch; they cannot help it.

Take Obi-Wan, for instance:

He's saying: “I’m not a Jedi anymore. That guy died the same day Anakin did. I’m just Ben.”

But it kills him that he can't help Nari, he can't help that dude who can't feed his family, he can't help those settlers on Mapuzo who were getting bullied by stormtroopers.

His character arc is the most obvious one: he is coming to terms with the idea that, yes, he still is a Jedi.

Because that’s who Leia needs him to be right now.

And it’s who Luke will need in the future.

Also Vader:

We know Vader’s arc won’t conclude in this series.

For years, Vader is always THIS close to going back to the Light, then always stomps his foot on the ground and doubles down, going “nu-uh, I’m evil deep down inside, I swear! Dark Side all the way! Look how I’m killing this guy! See what a monster I've become Obi-Wan?!”

He keeps rejecting the Light and rationalizes his actions by saying the Jedi betrayed him, but deep down, he’s rejecting the Light because he thinks he deserves the pain that the Dark gives him. He’s a monster and he is where he belongs: in Hell.

But we know that, eventually, he lets go of the guilt, the anger, the fear, and does become that Jedi again, which George Lucas once described as “ultimate father figures”.

Because that’s what Luke needed when the Emperor was killing him: his father, the Jedi.

Now take Reva:

She's saying: “I’m not a Jedi. The Jedi abandoned me. I hate them and I’m gonna have my revenge!”

That whole speech she gives in Part I?

She’s not saying that to the Tatooine randos (who the Jedi never protected in the first place because they had no jurisdiction in the Outer Rim). She’s repeating that to herself.

Clearly, she was a youngling when Order 66 happened, she got taken in and made into a monster. But not really, right? ’Cause the other Inquisitors? Now those guys are full-on psychopaths. She’s cute compared to them. They tell her as much.

She’s not as broken inside as they are.

And deep down, she knows it too. Which is why she screams, she pouts, she’s overly arrogant, reckless, mean and insistent, she’s overdoing it, she’s overcompensating.

“Look at my flips! Look at how I parkour! Would a Jedi be so badass?!”

She’s doing exactly what Vader is doing.

Only she’s doing it louder, because the good in her isn’t buried as deeply as it is with him. She’s stomping her foot and doubling down and insisting that “no, I’m bad, I swear”.

Because the alternative is accepting that - unlike Vader who made his own choices - deep within Reva lies the truth that what happened to her wasn’t her fault. She’s a victim of a galaxy-wide genocide. And it's not her her fault. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and it's unfair.

Which is why Haja takes her by surprise.

Why would this guy WILLINGLY say he's a Jedi? Is he crazy? Doesn't he realize what that comes with? The target it puts on your back?

Seeing him do that clearly hits her where it hurts.

Now, I don’t know if she eventually arcs and manages to become that Jedi once again… or if she’ll die trying… or if she does like Vader and rejects it for good.

There’s a reason Reva and Moses Ingram are positioned in the middle in all promotional pictures featuring the trio:

My guess is that, aside from just aesthetic reasons, it's partially because while Kenobi is coming around to following the Way of the Jedi again, and Vader is just blazing trails in the opposite direction… Reva’s fate is unclear.

update #1

New episode came out and first off, it's nice to see Obi-Wan getting back into the basics!

He's slowly becoming his old self again, at least from a figthing standpoint!

Also, we're still getting a flurry of subtext in almost every sentence Reva says, hinting at her past.

She used to be strong and kind, like Leia... but eventually, they broke her. As the scenes between her and Leia progress, she displays less and less bravado.

Because this isn't just some random prisoner. Reva feels like she is talking to her own past self.

And we do see some parallels between what she says... and what another inquisitor, Trilla, went through... and I don't think it's a stretch to assume Reva was subjected to the same process.

They probably told Trilla that her Master abandoned her, they repeated it so much until she firmly believed it.

All the while torturing her.

And when she's about to subject Leia to the same pain she went through, Reva says she doesn't want to do this. She's screaming at Leia, who still won't budge. "FFS, don't make me do this to you."

I genuinely think she's believes what she's saying. Like, look at her, she holding back tears.

But guess what she's also doing? Rationalizing.

"You're making me do this, I got no other choice, if I don't do this Vader'll kill me."

As usual, she's not just saying this to Leia... she's telling it to herself. She's lying to herself.

Who else do we know like to rationalize his own evil deeds?

Which is very telling because we know the Inquisitors have been molded by Vader. They were initially just angry Jedi survivors. He turned them into cruel Jedi killers.

He molded them in his image.

Thing is... Vader did have a choice. He made the wrong one.

Reva seemed pretty resolute in also making the wrong choice, in this episode... but outside circumstances stopped her from making it.

Will she gets that opportunity again? If she does, will she be as unflinching? Still we wonder... is Reva too far gone?

Final update

Turns out, she wasn't! 'Came real close, though.

The parallels between her arc and Anakin's were stronger than ever...

... but when the time came she couldn't bring herself to do it. 'Cause while she’s on the same path as Vader was… she’s not that far gone.

This parallel is also illustrated by the visuals and the dialogue.

And you gotta give props to @gil-estel for summing it up beautifully in the tags of this post:

And Reva's first instinct is to cry and think she's failed, because Vader taught her and the other Inquisitors that mercy is weakness… but they're not. It shows strength. Mercy comes from compassion and compassion is kinda what being a Jedi is all about.

By sparing Luke, Reva proves herself to be stronger than Vader could ever be, as explained by Obi-Wan:

Obi-Wan, himself, now walks firmly on the Jedi Path again, after (among other things):

Typical trials and tribulations a Jedi faces.

He had shut himself off from the galaxy, the Force... but he's past that now. Obi-Wan doesn't wear civilian clothes anymore, he sports a classic Jedi tunic. He doesn't keep his lightsaber locked in a box buried in the desert, he wears it proudly on his belt. If he'll see injustice, he won't be idle, he'll act.

Which means ol' Ben-Ben is ready for the next stage of his training.

He's gotten back on the saddle and rides out into the sunset, further into the light.

All that leaves is Vader, who still sadistically proclaims that the good man he once was - Anakin the Jedi - is dead. And so Obi-Wan walks away, leaving him as all Sith are...

... angry and alone, in the dark and in the cold.

I’m still not over how well Reva Sevander fits into the storyline of not just Star Wars but specifically Anakin Skywalker’s story, that she’s not just a Jedi youngling that he brutally killed her family, but that the whole point of her character was that she was on the same trajectory as he was. “You have become the very thing you have sworn to destroy,” Obi-Wan says to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. “Have I become him?” Reva sobs to Obi-Wan in Obi-Wan Kenobi. She swore to destroy him and very nearly became the thing she herself swore to destroy.  She rationalizes it, she says she wants “Justice.” when she goes after Luke Skywalker, a youngling like herself with a family willing to die to protect this child, just as the Jedi Knights died protecting their younglings, their family.  Just as Anakin rationalized what he was doing, that he was doing this for Padme because he couldn’t live without her, this was the only way he could become strong enough to save her. Both are just excuses for their own pain and suffering and their desire for what they want, not what the people they love want.  Both come from places of understandable and deeply empathizable pain, they’re both characters that my heart aches for. But Reva stops herself, she chooses mercy at the last moment.  She honors her family, they are at peace because she chose to spare the youngling. Anakin does not stop himself, he chooses to slaughter the children every step of the way.  He loses his family, Padme and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, all of them, because he refuses to stop, to embrace mercy, even here in this show, he murders a child yet again. Reva’s story isn’t just filler for this show, she is central to the themes of Anakin’s journey, she is a reflection of what he could choose at any point, while also being a voice given to one of the Jedi younglings that he struck down.  She is absolutely VITAL to show that Anakin Skywalker chose this and continues to choose it every day.