- Title: Obi-Wan Kenobi – Part I
- IMDb: link
Set a decade after the events of The Revenge of the Sith, the opening episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi picks up with the Jedi in hiding on Tatooine keeping an eye on young Luke, much to the dismay of Owen Lars (Joel Edgerton). Meanwhile, a galaxy away, the other child of Anakin Skywalker is kidnapped in a move designed to flush Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) out of hiding. The villains of the series, brought in from Star Wars Rebels, are the Inquisitors (Force-wielding Jedi hunters). We get the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) who sadly has neither the look nor menacing voice of the original cartoon character, the largely superfluous Fifth Brother (Sung Kang) , and the Third Sister (Moses Ingram) whose actions in kidnapping the adopted daughter of Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) are a means to feed her obsession in locating Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The heavy use of the Inquisitors makes the show feel like our first live-action version of Star Wars Rebels (which I’m okay with), although the motivations of our villains are less developed when they were only two-dimensional characters. After an effective rundown on events of the prequels (while largely ignoring the Clone Wars), the episode cuts between Obi-Wan in hiding, the Inquisitors hunting Jedi, and events on Alderaan where a willful Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) is kidnapped. As expected, this pushes Bail to ask his old friend to help and leads the reluctant Obi-Wan off of Tatooine for the first time in a decade, although in doing so will lead to issues with Star Wars canon beginning in the very next episode.
