SNAPSHOT
The story begins 10 years after the dramatic events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith where Obi-Wan Kenobi faced his greatest defeat—the downfall and corruption of his best friend and Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, who turned to the dark side as evil Sith Lord Darth Vader. The series stars Ewan McGregor, reprising his role as the iconic Jedi Master, and also marks the return of Hayden Christensen in the role of Darth Vader. Joining the cast are Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell and Benny Safdie. Obi-Wan Kenobi is directed by Deborah Chow and executive-produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Michelle Rejwan, Deborah Chow, Ewan McGregor and Joby Harold. (synopsis courtesy Star Wars YouTube channel)
It’s no secret that Star Wars is based on a mix of good old-fashioned Westerns and Samurai tales writ large, all of it centred on a simple but powerful idea that there is a good and evil, and that the former must always triumph over the latter.
Where things gets grey and murky, especially when it comes to storytelling on modern streaming platforms, is that while the two might be reasonably clearcut, the people within both those realms rarely are, and Disney’s latest addition to the Star Wars canon, Obi-Wan Kenobi, makes merry with that, or ruminatively introspective at least, with characters who are clearly members of one camp or the other but who don’t always act as you might expect.
The latest set of Obi-Wan Kenobi character posters, released following the premiere of the first two episodes of the six-episode limited series, showcase four characters, two of whom very much fit the evil mould – the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) and Inquisitor Fifth Brother (Sung Kang) – and two characters who are theoretically residents of that group but are more complex than their initial character introductions might suggest – Inquisitor Third Sister, Reva Sevander (Moses Ingram) and a man pretending to be a Jedi for financial gain, Haja Estree (Kumail Nanjiani).
They are grippingly intense character posters with more than a hint of Borg about them – yes, yes, I know totally another franchise – than go nicely with a show that is promising to tell a suitably intense tale of fallen people, both good and bad and how they deal with trajectories that have not matched expectations.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is currently streaming on Disney Plus with episode 3 dropping tomorrow, 1 June.
