Obi-Wan Kenobi: Everything you need to know about the latest Star Wars series
Ewan McGregor returns as the Jedi master 17 years on from Revenge of the Sith
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Your support makes all the difference.The first episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi , the latest Star Wars spin-off miniseries following on from the success of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, have arrived on Disney+.
The six-show run sees Scottish actor Ewan McGregor reprise his role as the titular Jedi master from George Lucas’s The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), prequels to the original trilogy in which Sir Alec Guinness played the role.
The events of the new show, directed by Deborah Chow and masterminded by Joby Harold, take place on Tatooine 10 years on from Revenge of the Sith, in which Obi-Wan failed to prevent his protege Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) from turning to the dark side of the Force and nine years before the storyline of A New Hope (1977), the very first Star Wars adventure.
Christensen likewise returns as Darth Vader while the cast is rounded out by the likes of Rupert Friend, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Moses Ingram, Indira Varma and Sung Kang.
Fans will be expecting lightsaber duels and the return of other favourite characters from the franchise, perhaps Chewbacca, Darth Maul or even Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn in spectral form.
McGregor has said he always kept Guinness’s original performances in mind during the production of Obi-Wan, revealing that he regularly listened to recordings of the great actor’s distinctive speaking voice in his dressing room to ensure his imitation remained consistent.
“It’s got to feel like him,” the 51-year-old screen star said. “I studied him in that movie. I’ve always got to be somebody who ends up becoming Alec Guinness at the end of the day.”
Director Chow has said the character’s transition from guilt-stricken rebel fighter to Zen-like guru is central to the new show’s approach: “How did he go from the banks of Mustafar to the calm of Sir Alec Guinness? Something obviously happened there, between those 20 years. So for us, in large part, that was why we felt we actually had a story to tell.”
The project has reportedly been in development for years, with Stephen Daldry once attached to direct, but had to be rethought after the underwhelming box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018.
The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi arrived on Disney+, the corporation’s subscription streaming service, on Friday 27 May, with the third dropping on 1 June and the remainder following weekly, one by one, between 8 and 22 June.
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