The Battle of Light and Dark in Obi-Wan Episode 5

As Reva tracks Obi-Wan back to the path, Obi-Wan leads the pseudo-rebels in a delaying fight to facilitate their escape, while secret agendas come to light in Obi-Wan Kenobi Part 5!

Austin Gorton: Adam! Welcome back to the world of Star Wars coverage! We are now poised on the finale of the series, and with five full episodes under our belt (and coming out of last week’s…less successful outing), how are you feeling about the show overall, thus far?

Adam Reck: I started off really enjoying the first two episodes. Since then, it really has felt like a lot of filler. Especially the fourth episode which was particularly stupid and looked cheap. I wish I could say this episode stood more of a chance this time, but I have some serious reservations about this one too. Are you ready?

Austin: [ignites lightsaber] Are you?

Adam: [ignites lightsaber] Then let’s begin.

Forget the Path, Kill it if You Have To

Austin: The episode opens in the past. Attack of the Clones era Anakin (he’s got the braid and everything) waits on a Jedi temple balcony (possibly the same one on which Part 1 of this series opened) for the arrival of the mulleted Obi-Wan, after which a friendly sparring session between master and Padawan begins. The episode will continue to cut back and forth between the present day events and this duel, and it might be my favorite thing about the episode. I love the way it’s just a lightsaber fight, but also works to inform the present day events. I love that Hayden Christenson got a chance to do something outside the Vader suit (other than appear briefly as a mirage). I love that it seemed like they were trying to do their deepfake aging thing to make them both look younger, but it didn’t really work. Did Anakin look more like a 50 year old Jedi worrying about making the mortgage payment than a youthful teenaged apprentice? Yes. But I loved it anyway!

Adam: What’s wild about this sequence is that for any de-aging FX Lucasfilm might have used, Ewan still looks younger than Hayden? Which suggests two things: the first being that Ewan Macgregor is an ageless beauty and that they maybe just didn’t bother using the technology and let these guys have some fun? This flashback, while a nice callback, also cemented something about how I’m seeing this series as a whole. It feels like an arc of the Clone Wars cartoon. And say what you will about that show (I liked it for the most part), it often dragged out stories across multiple episodes when it didn’t need to. Something I started to feel again as we spend most of this episode with extras trying to fend off Stormtroopers.

Austin: One of my disappointments with the last episode is that it really made clear that this series is concerned with telling just one story – like an extended Clone Wars episode, or a movie cut into six parts, if you will. Which isn’t inherently bad, but is definitely not what I was expecting from the series.

So yeah, there was a lot of stuff in this episode I enjoyed, but the part that didn’t really work involved all the background extras. I’m capable of feeling sympathy for their plight in theory, but the characters only exist as a mass, not as individual characters. This makes it hard to care about anyone specifically. I care what happens to Obi-Wan and Leia, certainly. I care about Tala (because Indira Varma is doing a lot with what little she’s been given; her and Ned’s deaths were genuinely moving) and Haja (because his characterization and voice is relatively unique to the Star Wars universe). Beyond that, I don’t really care about what happens to anyone in anything but abstract terms. Perhaps if the show had more time, more room to operate as an actual series, we’d have been able to get to know – and care about – more of these people.

Adam: I don’t even think it’s about more or less time, it’s about utilizing that time to reveal things about characters. I’ll give you an example. Through their body language, it sure looks like Tala and her silent droid might have some kind of relationship. It’s a subtle thing, but it’s what this series could use way more of. So many people are just standing around that when some or any of them are hurt or die, I feel nothing. I have no connection to any of them beyond that they are “on the Path.” Another huge issue here is that aside from the bridge of the Destroyer, this is a three-four set episode all of which look like soundstages from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The recent Vanity Fair article that went behind the scenes with Lucasfilm made a big deal out of the giant LED screen nicknamed “The Volume” that allows actors to work against images instead of green screens. This could be the coolest thing ever made in the history of special effects, but it’s very obvious our actors are working in cramped indoor spaces. And it doesn’t look great. That’s a lot of factors working against our story, which, if given a better context could be really cool.

Austin: It’s not even like this show hasn’t had some good sets! Daiyu in Part 2 felt large and expansive but also richly detailed. The vast expanses of Mapuzo in Part 3. Even parts of Fortress Inquisitorius had some nice design elements to them in the last episode. But yeah, here, it’s very much “everyone is hanging out in a Star Trek cave”.

The Reva Reveal

Austin: So the big revelation in this episode is the fact that Reva isn’t working with Vader, she’s working against him, angling to get close in order to take him down (because she was, after all, one of those younglings from the first scene of the series who saw him killing Jedi during the assault on the temple in Revenge of the Sith, which is also how she knows he’s Anakin Skywalker). How did this revelation land for you Adam?

Adam: The show did a good job of planting this seed from its opening scene in episode one. And especially after the longing look Reva gives to the Jedi crest scrawled on the wall in the third episode, the show isn’t really hiding this secret too well. The mystery was really what was Reva’s motivation? Is she after Obi-Wan for not protecting the younglings, or is this part of a larger plan to get at Darth. This through-the-door conversation was probably the most interesting part of the episode, even if the way the flashback was filmed with awkward close-ups of blue-lit Anakin struck me as odd. But it does mean that Reva continues to be the most full-formed of any character on this show with the most going on.

Austin: Agreed, I thought the reveal worked well: we kind of saw it coming, but not the exact circumstances of it, and it fits with the little clues they laid (another came in episode 3 when Third Brother was tossing Reva around and she reflexively touched the spot where we now know Anakin stabbed her as a kid). It also adds a fun “enemy of my enemy is my friend” angle that brings a touch of complication to an otherwise pretty straightforward storyline.

Adam: I wish there was more of this in this series. But there seems to be such a fear of shaking the status quo or even reframing things that prevents us from learning anything new about Obi-Wan or Anakin. So the revelations go to the new character who was a victim of events that already transpired. This is the core problem with the show: It refuses to take any risks or say anything new. It’s stuck dancing between the raindrops and that’s incredibly limiting. What I did like was that Obi-Wan uses Reva to flip her plan and use himself as bait to bring Darth right into the battle.

Austin: And I appreciate the way it loops in the flashback and the lesson Obi-Wan is trying to teach Anakin about losing awareness of his surroundings in pursuit of victory.

Who Knows? Darth Knows

Austin: Speaking of Vader, he takes the bait as Obi-Wan expected, and before long, he’s striding through the base on Jabiim like it was the evacuated Echo Base on Hoth. I could have done without the false drama of “will everyone get on the ship in time?” (everyone not engaged in the fighting should have just been on the ship already!), but I didn’t mind the second ship fake out as Vader demolished the first. How’d that work for you?

Adam: I am in the minority when it comes to how Darth is generally used post-prequels. I thought his cameos in Rogue One felt like unnecessary fanservice and not in line with the movements of the original Darth. So it surprised me when I found myself liking how Darth is handled so far in this series. He is stoic, methodical, and uses a conservation of movement that seems more like the character I know. When he attacked Obi-Wan in the third episode, it felt right. Darth’s actions here feel much the same. We could quibble about his use of the force to hold and then destroy the decoy ship, but he does it so nonchalantly that I thought it was great. Also great is that Darth knows exactly what’s going on with Reva’s revenge plot, and has since the start. And while I did not particularly like this episode, their lightsaber duel was really well choreographed.

Austin: Heading into the series, I was apprehensive about the way Vader would be deployed. Thus far, I’ve been pretty pleased with it. The series isn’t afraid to use the character but is smart about when and how to deploy him. His duel with Reva is probably the action highlight of the series to this point. The way he easily evades her attacks (and the way she adjusts her attacks to attempt to strike at things like his feet) is thrilling, and the fact that he defeats her without ever drawing his own saber is a tremendous flex. It strikes the balance of making Vader a force to be reckoned with, but not omnipotent. Which is a hard balance to strike.

I also liked, again, how the lesson of the flashback reverberates in their duel. Vader still fell for Obi-Wan’s trap, but he was smart enough to use Reva for his own ends rather than merely execute her once he realized who she was and what she wanted. He played the long game, something the impetuous Anakin had difficulty doing.

Adam: It’s not a perfect one-to-one, but the lesson to Reva duel comparison does work superficially to show Darth isn’t about small wins. He’s willing to patiently wait out his enemies to get what he wants. Which begs the question of how this series will end. Thanks to a clumsy Haja, Reva has seen a glimpse of Bail’s transmission and knows that there’s a boy on Tatooine. How Reva survives and Obi-Wan keeps her and Darth away from Luke will likely be our finale. I’m hoping for a strong finish after a lackluster middle of this short series. Any predictions, Austin? It’s not like there’s a ton of checklist items like a “Rancor for Boba Fett to Ride” here.

Austin: Reva kills Luke, all of Star Wars ends [closing musical fanfare]!

Seriously though, you’re right that the series hasn’t laid a lot of narrative traps it needs to spring. I don’t think Reva is any more likely to die on the floor of a pseudo-Rebel base on Jabiim than the Grand Inquisitor was in a cargo facility on Daiyu. We’ve probably got at least one more direct Obi-Wan and Vader confrontation coming. Assuming the series follows its “aping the trilogies” format, we’re due back on Tatooine for a “go back to where it all began” moment of some sort.

Beyond that, how exactly all this ends probably depends on how LucasFilms views the future of this series: is it truly a done-in-one-thing, or might future seasons be on the horizon? Because while I suspect it will end with an Obi-Wan a little less shell-shocked and withdrawn than he was at the start, how much space there is between the Obi-Wan at the end of this series and his sort of genial acceptance of his lot in life as seen in A New Hope will depend on how much ground LucasFilm wants to leave open for future stories.

Adam: Nothing would make me happier than to finally see the head injury that makes Obi-Wan forget he owned droids.

Austin: Oh, and Ghost Qui-Gon will be there in some manner. That’s the one Chekhov’s Gun the series has loaded at this point, and it’s still hanging out, just waiting to be fired.

Adam: Liam Neeson in a wig? I’ll be tuning in for sure.

Force Facts

Closed captions translate a passage from the inscriptions on the wall Obi-Wan looks at as “The light will fade, but is never forgotten.”
Speaking of surviving – will Reva? She’s practically our protagonist at this point, so I have to imagine we’ll see her again, especially with her newfound knowledge of Luke!
Stomach wounds are clearly not all that lethal in the Star War universe: Reva’s had two now, the Grand Inquisitor survived his (Pau-an’s have two stomachs!), and Fennec Shand bounced back from hers in Book of Boba Fett. If it’s not just the Bacta, Thundercat must be busy!
The fan theory that each episode of Obi-Wan is a reference to each “episode” of the prequels/original trilogy continues as the Imperial assault on Jabiim = the Battle of Hoth, “rebels” fighting simply to buy the rest time to escape, and Vader storming through the evacuated tunnels. Plus, there’s the Reva revelation which loosely parallels the Vader revelation in Empire in that it changes the protagonist’s (Obi-Wan) relationship to the antagonist (Reva) a la Vader and Luke.
I went back and watched the ship’s landing a few times to see if you can make out the second ship they escaped in, and it’s not very clear and obscured by dust.
It took me five episodes to realize that the Grand Inquisitor was Homeland’s Rupert Friend. That is a LOT of make-up. He and Sung Kang are unrecognizable!

Austin Gorton

Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him on Twitter @AustinGorton