It's no secret that the Star Wars universe was in a pretty dark place following the events of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Not that there's much chance of a sweet and peppy ending with a name like that, but it seems as though everything that could go wrong for the good people of the galaxy did so. The arguably benevolent Republic swapped kabuki masks into the oppressive Galactic Empire, the Jedi were hunted down and slaughtered en masse, and all that was left was a sliver of hope tucked away on Tatooine.
That's where the upcoming Disney Plus series Obi-Wan Kenobi picks up, leaving audiences to speculate that this might be one of the darkest new stories in the entire Star Wars franchise. While it's true that Obi-Wan Kenobi's original script was deemed too bleak, prompting rewrites and a substantial delay, it's still an unavoidable fact that the galaxy as a whole is in a pretty rough way during the time the show will take place. According to one writer, that's potentially one of the show's greatest narrative strengths.
Joby Harold, writer on Obi-Wan Kenobi, recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about what to expect from the series, and he painted a pretty grim picture of the situation. "It takes place 10 years after Revenge of the Sith, in a time of darkness in the galaxy," he explained. "The Empire is in the ascendancy. And all the horrors that come with the Empire are being made manifest throughout the galaxy. And the Jedi Order as we know them are being all but wiped out. So everything that was in the prequels has crumbled." He certainly doesn't mince words, making this already feel like a pretty intense setting, between the Jedi-hunting Inquisitors and just the general feeling of hopelessness.
But oddly enough, this seems to play into the previously mentioned efforts to rework things into a more hopeful story. After all, one has to fall before they can rise up, and Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan certainly has a rough ride ahead of him. "Within that hopeless fatalistic world, we find possibly the most famous of all our surviving Jedi in hiding struggling with that faith that defines the Jedi," Harold continued, "and wanting to hold onto it and hoping to regain that faith within that sort of hopeless world." Just like the theme of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, it looks like rising up from a desperate place will play a big part in the story of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The main focus of the series will be on Obi-Wan's own progression from dejected lone survivor to the zen old master that audiences first met in 1977's A New Hope, courtesy of the legendary Sir Alec Guinness. But to get there, the setting itself has to go to some pretty dark places. "Within that environment and that galaxy, his faith is tested," Harold elaborated. "And he goes on a journey that allows him to travel from that character that we saw in the last of the prequels, where [McGregor] really felt like he was embodying Obi-Wan Kenobi to a pretty extraordinary degree, and ends with him as the more finished article that Sir Alec Guinness gave to the world in A New Hope."
There's a lot of potential in Obi-Wan Kenobi for some truly original storytelling, the likes of which have yet to be seen in the new canon of Star Wars. Fans of the now non-canon Star Wars Legends collection of tales will remember plenty of similarly bleak offerings from the old days, like the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong. So this could be a big step toward the sort of tonal diversity that made the former Expanded Universe so enticing in the first place.
Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi will have its 2-episode debut on May 27th, 2022, on Disney Plus.
Source: Entertainment Weekly