My Review of Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

My TV Show Rating Score:

5/5: It is an awesome show!
4.5/5: it is a great show albeit not perfect
4/5: It’s a good show with minor flaws
3/5: It’s overall okay/guilty pleasure
2/5: It’s bad but not awful
1/5: Look, up in the sky! It’s super bad!
0/5: MY EYEEEESSS!!!

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Greetings, everyone! This is Mr. J back with another TV show review for today! This afternoon, I will be reviewing a Star Wars miniseries entitled “Obi-Wan Kenobi” from 2022! Now, ever since this show came out on Disney+, I was honestly interested in seeing it as I wanted to see more unfolding events between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope”. Plus, I was very happy to see them bring back Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to reprise their respective roles. And considering that this takes place right before “Star Wars: Rebels” which also happens 10 years after Order 66, I wanted to see how they would pull this off without screwing up the continuity. Does this show hold up? Is it as terrible as people say it is? Let’s take a closer look!

Ten years after the events of episode 3, Kenobi is now a lonely man who has a regular job, a humble dwelling, and is simply called Ben to hide his true identity. Will he ever regain his fire and return to the ways of the Force?

Not gonna lie, this miniseries was pretty decent all the way until the last couple episodes. I’ll explain why towards the end, but I’ll just say what I genuinely enjoyed about this series.

Obi-Wan was just as good as before! Ewan killed it in the role! I really liked the way he expressed his remorse, guilt, and anguish when he relived his PTSD in facing off Vader. We get to see what his life was post-Order 66 and how he got back up in the fight. For the most part, they did his character justice.

The visual effects were great, but the cinematography was kinda weak throughout the show. I didn’t like how they used the shaky camera style to direct the fight scenes. It was a little distracting and unnecessary to film them in such a manner. I’m trying to watch a Star Wars episode, not a Michael Bay movie.

Moses Ingram, on the other hand, did a great job with her role as the Third Sister/Reva. While I agree that she should’ve had more better material to work with, her acting wasn’t really that bad. I was disgusted when I found out many people sent hateful, racist, direct messages on her Instagram page as the show was progressing. People need to realize that it isn’t the actor who’s at fault when it comes to an underwhelming script; it is the writers. I shouldn’t have to explain this to everyone.

The fight scenes were pretty good, and the supporting characters were…okay, to say the least.

But here’s where the negatives are involved: the story has an interesting build-up where it looks very intriguing and promising until all that potential is thrown right out the window. The first three episodes set up the new story, bring us both old and new characters for us to care about, but the last three episodes ruin their potential and tear down the story.

At first, Darth Vader is seen as the same intimidating figure we know and love as we see him search, kill, and hunt for his former master. He isn’t messing around, right? But then moments later, he becomes an incompetent idiot. Now keep in mind, this is ten years after his transformation into Vader, so everything is still fresh in his mind and he wants revenge on Kenobi for what he did to him, right? So….he ignites fire on the ground and burns Kenobi with it in the same way he did on Mustafar. And somehow….there is very little burnt marks on Kenobi as if it had no effect on him whatsoever—despite his screams of agony from the burning.

Then when he is done torturing him, one of Kenobi’s allies reignites that same fire, takes Kenobi to safety, and Vader just stands there. Why didn’t he use the force to extinguish the fire like he did seconds ago? Why didn’t he force choke that lady and take back Kenobi?

But that’s not the end of it! In episode 5, just when one of the rebel ships was about to leave, Vader stops the ship from leaving and he rips it apart with the force…only to find out it was unmanned and the actual ship, filled with people, was able to escape. Why didn’t he stop that ship at the exact moment?? Why was he not able to sense that the first ship was literally empty?

One could argue that his rage and lust for revenge clouded his judgement, but that is no excuse to make such stupid mistakes like that. Even worse, he sent an entire Star Destroyer to go after Kenobi instead of just simply sending TIE fighters to go after the main ship and then go after Kenobi himself. What the hell, Vader? Are you dumb??

Episode six is the worst episode out of them all because it did a horrible job in concluding the character arcs of our central characters. Reva’s potential was wasted the most because I actually liked her as a villain up until this episode. I can understand why she became an Inquisitor in the first place, but why did she go after Luke?? What the hell does Luke have to do with her? Or all her young friends she lost during Order 66? They did a terrible way of making her become like Anakin prior to her forced redemption like what??? WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT OF THAT?! I cannot understand why she went after Luke and Owen even though they played no role in ruining her life.

Her redemption makes no sense, and it makes her entire character arc completely meaningless. Plus, they needlessly regurgitated the same formula we’ve seen before twice: introduce a menacing villain, give them a conflicted backstory, then give them a snapshot redemption. I’ll give them credit for not killing her off though, so that’s something.

Oh, and the Grand Inquisitor did nothing in this whole miniseries. There was no need to make a fake-out death only for him to return, gloat to Reva’s face, and then stop making him important. He’s practically a non-character just to enhance the story for Reva. So I have nothing further to say about him. Same goes for the other two Inquisitors—they’re just there for support. That’s it.

Lastly, the continuity is overall questionable. Both this series and “Rebels” happen ten years after ROTS except that this show happens right before the latter, and Vader and Palpatine made comments in “Rebels” which highly implies they have not seen Kenobi since Order 66. But here in this show, Vader and Kenobi meet again and duke it out. So in a way, it spits at the face of canon. Is this show canon within the universe, or is it not? I’m starting to think that there are some stories that aren’t worth exploring. It should always be up to imagination.

Overall, this show is tolerable despite the amount of irritating flaws it has. I’ll give this a 3/5: May the mediocre script be with you! It is nowhere as atrocious as the Star Wars sequels, but it is still heavily flawed.

Who knew that Leia would be annoying as a child? She’s truly Anakin’s kid after all…

Peace!