Obi-Wan Kenobi, Disney+’s latest foray into live-action Star Wars television, has come and gone and feels like a brief moment of pure joy for me, lost to the sands of Tatooine now. But we’re still getting some new information about the creation of the series and the journey it took to bring Ewan McGregor back to our screens in the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi—like how it was apparently going to be a movie trilogy first, before it eventually began getting redeveloped and pushed into the Disney+ series that we loved.
The original writer on the project was Stuart Beattie, and he recently told The Direct about his project and what it was going to be and how that eventually led to the series we saw on Disney+.
“When I pitched my Obi-Wan story to Lucasfilm, I said, ‘There’s actually three stories here. Because there’s three different evolutions that the character has to make in order to go from Obi-Wan to Ben,'” Beattie told The Direct. “And the first one was the first movie, which was the show, which was, ‘Surrender to the will of the Force. Transport your will, surrender your will. Leave the kid alone.’ So then, the second [movie] was thinking about where Kenobi ends up. And one of the most powerful and probably the most powerful moment in all of Obi-Wan’s story is that moment where he sacrifices himself in A New Hope. Great moment, you know, makes you cry. But, if you stop and think about it, it’s a pretty sudden thing, to just kind of go be fighting a guy, to see Luke and go, ‘I’m gonna die.’ You know, that to me, that required forethought. That required pre-acceptance that this was going to happen.”
Beattie then went on to describe the second story of his series, saying, “It’s one of those universal things we all struggle with, to come to terms with our own mortality. So, that was the second step of the evolution for me, that Obi-Wan now has to come to terms with his own mortality, somehow in a prophecy, or Qui-Gon telling him, ‘There’s going to come a moment where you’re gonna have to sacrifice yourself for the good,’ And then [Obi-Wan] is like, ‘What? No, no, no, no, I’m here to help… I can’t, no.’ And get him to that point where Obi-Wan has accepted the idea that he’s going to die, and that he’s going to die willingly at a crucial moment, and you will know when that moment presents itself. So that when that moment comes up in [A New Hope], you understand. He’s recognizing he’s been on this journey already, and he’s waiting for this moment, and that’s how he’s able to make it so easily. To do this [sacrifice], and die. So that to me was the second evolution, the second film, the second story.”
He also talked about how, if he has anything to do with season 2 of the show (if there is a season 2), this would be the journey he’d want to take Obi-Wan Kenobi on, and it led me to thinking about how I think a television series is just a better fit, over all, for these stories.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series sounds better
Don’t get me wrong; three more movies of Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi would have been great, but I love the emotional arc that the television show gave us better. And with what Beattie is describing with his arc, it’s an emotional journey to getting Obi-Wan to accepting his own death when he comes face to face with Vader in A New Hope.
So adapting that idea into a television series that lets Ben have these reflective moments and doesn’t force everything into a two-hour story means that we can have those deeper dives into the ethos of the character, and I do hope we get to see a bit of Beattie’s planned storyline in future seasons of Obi-Wan Kenobi—because then I’d get more of Obi-Wan Kenobi (and also because I think it’s a pretty cool concept).
(featured image: Lucasfilm)
