Obi-Wan Kenobi. Right show, wrong time. That s kind of my takeaway from the messy,
messy reception this project enjoyed. Now don t get me wrong, there are absolutely valid critiques
to be made of this show the weird blocking and set design is the first that springs to mind,
or the pacing but so much of the discourse around this show is vapid nonsense. And don t worry, we
will get into the specifics of that shortly but I just think it s a shame. If this show d have come
out back in 2013-4, it would have been a smash. People would have lost their shit. Seriously,
the amount of lost shit on a worldwide scale would ve singlehandedly sent toilet paper stocks to the
moon. But 2022 s a different beast. People don t fondly reminisce over past Star Wars movies
these days, we thank God that no one s forced us to watch the Rise of Skywalker recently.
People are down on Star Wars, Disney Star Wars specifically. Add to this the current state of
online reactionary culture, and the hype mindset that certain studios have cultivated over the
past few years and, well, in retrospect it seems foolish to think that the long-awaited
return of Ewan McGregor s Obi-Wan Kenobi could ever have fared better in today s day and age.
O tempora, O mores, and all that. But this response wasn t inevitable. In a lot of ways,
this show really works and at the very least, it does not deserve the mudslinging it s endured.
I honestly believe that if this exact show had been released in a cultural moment with less Star
Wars negativity, it would have been received as a highlight of the Disney era. So let s talk about
why. In this video, I ll go over the trajectory and reception of the show more generally,
looking at the absolute smoothbrain energy of the more dominant criticisms,
and in a followup coming soon we ll talk about the elephant in the room the climate of racism
surrounding these responses, and Reva s writing. The first point I want to make is that, from a
narrative perspective, this show was always kinda sat between a rock and a hard place. There really
wasn t much room to manoeuvre between where we leave Kenobi in episode 3, and where we find
him in episode 4. I think that s essential to bear in mind when considering the issues some have had
with Kenobi s plot. There was a lot of chuntering and harrumphing when it became clear after the
first two episodes that the story would be focused on the Ben / Leia pairing. It was political
correctness gone mad! The force is female! Kathleen Kennedy! Except let s step back and
actually use our brains. We saw in Revenge of the Sith that Obi-Wan s mission was to protect Anakin
s children. He goes to Tatooine to watch over Luke because, well Leia s being adopted by an imperial
senator, and Luke by some yokels in the middle of nowhere. On paper, they need that protection
way more than the Organas. But he and Yoda don t just want to protect Luke why would they?
They haven t seen Star Wars episode 6, Return of the Jedi they don t know Luke s the one who ll end
up toppling Palpatine and saving Anakin. No Kenobi s responsibility, whether it s said explicitly or
not, is to both of Anakin s kids the future of the force. That s his mission. That s the only reason
he d be able to leave his retirement behind, and accept the sort of call-to-adventure necessary
for a Kenobi series to begin to protect these kids. So either Luke or Leia had to be involved.
And it couldn t have been Luke, because, I don t know if you ve seen it, but there s this film
called A New Hope , and in it we learn that Luke only has a passing familiarity with ol Ben Kenobi.
Writing around this would have meant some sort of kidnap plot where the two never interact,
and Luke never learns of Ben s involvement and that wouldn t have made for satisfying television.
That would have been immensely contrived. So, yeah this story is kind of how it had to
happen. Any significant changes would have meant undermining either episode 3 or episode 4. And hey
I think it works, I think young leia absolutely captures Carrie Fisher s original trilogy energy,
and I like the idea that this experience gets Ben out of his crusty, negative retirement shell. I
like the idea that that s maybe because this little rugrat reminds him of a certain other
little rugrat. But hey, I m not going to dwell on what I personally like, because that s subjective,
and if I did, the comments would be full of people saying cool, you liked it, but I didn t,
so what. No, it s more important to look at the narrow narrative opportunities afforded to this
show by its place within the larger Saga and to make the point that those choices you don
t like weren t poor decision making. This isn t pandering, and it isn t WOKE FEMINISM. No,
it s something far scarier to the modern Star Wars fanbase. It s.. GASP.. sensible writing. But this
Leia choice doesn t just tie together episodes 3 and 4 it goes further than this. Ever since
episode 7 came out, it had always been slightly unclear why Leia chose to name her kid after
some dude she d never met. Now.. it isn t. This narrative determinism goes beyond Leia,
however. Since the show brought Vader into the mix, Ben had to win their final fight,
but given Ben s original trilogy conviction that Anakin is dead and gone he needs to
lose all faith in his former protege. But this generates thematic issues.
Think about it. Ben s super zen when we rejoin him in Alec Guiness form, and he s so in tune
with the force that he s able to become a force ghost. So his faith in the force, the Jedi way,
the light side, needs to be affirmed at the end of any inter-trilogy project. That s not really
possible if it also ends with a defeated Vader discarding the last of his humanity and embracing
the dark side. So that couldn t have been the end, and it needed to be balanced out, flipped,
by a redemption. Dark to light, a mirrored twist on Anakin s downfall. Enter Reva. In any version
of Kenobi s script which involves Vader, there needs to be a Reva-like character who survives,
and is redeemed. Otherwise it doesn t work, on a fundamental level. And, sure the broad strokes
of this character may always have been required, but that doesn t necessarily mean that your more
specific criticisms of this character s writing are invalid. In the abstract, that s correct, but
we ll talk more about this in the followup. Now you might well say, hey there is an alternative
here - no Vader, but just imagine. Imagine the fan response if Disney came out and said their Kenobi
project, Ewan McGregor s big return to the role, wouldn t feature his archenemy, wouldn t feature
the now beloved Hayden Christensen. Be honest with yourselves would you have preferred this version?
Maybe some of you would, individually but you re kidding yourself if you think there wouldn t have
been a massive backlash. But as ever the show is smart with this inclusion, tying into episode 4.
The moment Ben is convinced Anakin is truly dead is the moment he abandons his former prot g s
human name, and begins calling him Darth, as he did back in 1977. This is recontextualised,
not as some obscure remainder of those brief years in the 70s when Darth was supposed to be this guy
s actual name, but as the deliberately impersonal, dehumanising name Ben has chosen for his enemy the
enemy he now sees as more machine than man. For the next portion of this video I want to
think less about the reception Kenobi s enjoyed post-finale, and consider the discourse that
surrounded the project as it aired. Because good lord, was there a lot of single brain cell energy.
Week on week discussion threads and comment sections were being bombarded by viewers
proclaiming that none of it made sense, that it all broke canon, that this or that was
underwhelming. People complained that the grand inquisitor s shanking in episode 2 was impossible
because he appeared in Rebels, and this showed how incompetent Disney was, and how apathetic toward
Star Wars the company had become. They complained that Qui-Gon hadn t shown up, that the series wasn
t using Hayden Christensen enough, and that Reva couldn t possibly know Vader s secret identity,
because it wasn t common knowledge. They complained that the big Vader Kenobi rematch in
episode 3 wasn t as epic as it should have been. They complained about many more things besides.
And without fail all of these holes they found, all of these canon-breaking, illogical mistakes
turned out to be addressed in later episodes. The upside of the Disney+ staggered release model
is that it keeps people talking about a show longer, but the downside, evidently, is that
it breaks people s brains. Obviously, the grand inquisitor survived. Obviously, we got Qui-Gonn
and more, effective uses of Christensen s talent. Obviously, there was a reason Reva knew who Vader
was, a reason which became incredibly important. Obviously, there was an epic Vader Kenobi rematch.
These things just hadn t happened yet. Kenobi hadn t given us the solutions to
its mysteries immediately because that s not how mysteries work, and that s not how stories work.
Yet that didn t stop the discourse being hijacked by people unable to understand this,
people for whom a temporary lack of information was indistinguishable from bad writing, and plot
holes. Kenobi hadn t shot its big rematch wad all at once, because it wanted to build tension,
and use this first, abortive encounter to explore Ben s inadequacies at this point in the story.
That disorienting cinematography guess what? That was on purpose. It was to put you in Ben s state
of mind. It didn t feel like a big prestigious rematch because to Ben it wasn t. It was terror.
It was fleeing some seemingly unstoppable monster from your past, unable to right back,
or think clearly. That scene was supposed to leave you feeling short-changed, it very consciously
WASN T the epic moment that Kenobi knew we were expecting. And that s to provide a contrast to
the final fight we did get where Ben s back in touch with the force, where he s embraced his
purpose as a protector, and this final fight is the sort of epic rematch people were hoping for.
So, yeah. Things got explained. Obviously-dangling threads were picked back up by the end. But by
then? It was too late. This show s status was pretty much sealed by the time the fourth episode
dropped. People had made their minds up one way or the other, and many were vocal critics of
Kenobi often due largely to things which would become non-issues by the finale. The thing is,
this kind of vocal criticism has consequences, because it doesn t exist in a vacuum. Every viewer
who goes to Twitter or a forum to prematurely blast the show for breaking canon, or ruining
the Vader rematch is contributing to this larger, toxic fandom culture. Because of the way these
algorithms work, every comment like this on a YouTube video or reddit thread, every retweet,
every like, leads these viewpoints to be shown to more and more people. If you thumbsed-up a comment
like this after the first couple episodes dropped, you re part of the reason it got shown to new
viewers before less hyperbolic takes did. And this effect is scaled-up a thousandfold when it comes
to reactionary content creators like *shudder* Nerdrotic or Geeks + Gamers who went semi-viral
from regurgitating a lot of this same premature negativity. But guess what? Those losers only make
content that they know is gonna get rage-clicked on by the viewership. But the consensus on this
show was shaped by such reactions to moments like these and so by the time that Reva s
backstory was made explicit, by the time that we see the Grand Inquisitor obviously survived,
by the time Vader and Ben had their re-rematch, the damage had been done.
Look, nobody s saying you can t react to a show as it comes out, or that you can t share those
reactions with other viewers, and discuss the project critically. This rolling judgement is
fine, but not when it s absolutist. Some amount of judgement needs to be reserved. I don t think I
have to explain why it s not a great idea to build a critique or an interpretation on an incomplete
text. And this rolling judgement has to be paired with some basic amount of media literacy. For
instance, if a character who you know to be alive at a later date is injured onscreen he probably
isn t dead. If a character shares some information you wouldn t expect them to know there s probably
going to be more to that story. If the show s given you questions it s probably also going to
give you answers. Just maybe not at the exact same point. Another example we haven t touched on yet
lies in the last two episodes, where Ben seemingly teleports from his Vader showdown to Tatooine. I
know a lot of people brought this up as an issue with the finale, but it isn t because the two
storylines in that last episode weren t happening concurrently. They were merely edited together
to improve the flow of the episode, and to heighten the sense of thematic mirroring. Ben has
a vision that stuff s gonna go down on Tatooine, sure but we know as Star Wars fans that the force
can be precognitive. The problem with Kenobi s reception is that too many viewers didn t respond
thoughtfully, they responded instinctively. Upon being confounded by this plot beat, or that piece
of new information they didn t remain aware of the fact that there was more to come, that this
flummoxing may have been intentional instead they immediately tore the show apart online.
To return to the thought we opened with, I think this is largely due to where Star Wars is in 2022.
Many were going into this with a negative mindset, fattened up by both underwhelming projects, and by
meta-narratives around this agenda or that. And if you watch something expecting it to be a mess,
if you re prejudiced for whatever reason it s a lot easier to let your media literacy lapse, and
to understand a character s possession of secret information as a plot-hole instead of as the
development of an intentional mystery. But that s a mistake. And it s not on the show. It s on you.
Disney s not your friend. They re not mine, either. Frankly, I m not concerned with the
way all this misplaced criticism and poor media literacy s impacted their profits, or their plans.
I m concerned with the way it impacts us. At the end of the day, the way we respond
to media influences our society and our discourse just as much as the media itself. That s why this
stuff bothers me, and why it should bother you. That s an angle we re going to explore further
in the follow-up, all about Reva, so come back for that at some point soon. Until then,
though do me a favour. When you re watching the next big series or movie, when you ve got your
hot take ready to post, just think for a moment. Is this complaint a well-founded one? Or is it
premature? Is it possible I ve misunderstood something? And.. then hit send. But not before.
Oh, and you can like this video too. I guess that s two favours! As always,
I d like to thank my Patrons onscreen now, especially Kevin Douglas. And hey,
YouTube thinks you might like this video onscreen now, so maybe check it out. See you soon.