Star Wars: Will the ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Series Destroy Canon?!
By: Jonathan Sim
Tags: Disney, Film, Movies, Star Wars, TV Series

With the recent Disney Investor Day, audiences have been treated to a slew of brand new upcoming projects with Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. If you missed any of the upcoming movies and series, click here to catch up.

One of the more noteworthy announcements is the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone series, which will bring back Ewan McGregor to his role from the prequels. We’ve heard about this series for a while now, but the bombshell announcement is the return of Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader.

The reaction to this news was overwhelmingly positive, with many excited to see the two stars of the prequel trilogy reunite with their original actors. I was excited to hear the news too, but I began to worry about what this would look like as I heard more about the news.

According to the tweet above, this series takes place ten years after Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader. And unless the show mainly consists of flashbacks to before his fall, that would mean Hayden will spend most of the show under the Vader helmet.

But that doesn’t bother me too much. What I’m most worried about is the duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. It would be a disappointment if we had an entire show with both McGregor and Christensen, and we never got to see them share a scene once, right?

A reunion between the characters is likely to happen, with producer Kathleen Kennedy stating, “This will be the rematch of the century.” However, could a duel between the characters break the Star Wars canon?

My concerns for this arose because while getting to see Darth Vader and Obi-Wan duel for the first time since the Battle of Mustafar when the apprentice turned against his master seems great initially, we technically already got a scene like this in the original Star Wars.

This was the first lightsaber battle in the entire franchise, and while it looks very underwhelming now with the slow choreography compared to other battles we’ve seen from the series, there is a lot of emotion behind that battle. Furthermore, the dialogue shared between them does not imply the events of any Obi-Wan Kenobi series.

I think there’s something very profound about the scene above, where Vader and Obi-Wan see each other for the first time in nearly 20 years, and they battle each other again. Having another battle between the two takes away from the “we meet again at last” line that Vader delivers at the beginning.

Also, Vader tells Obi-Wan, “when I left you, I was but the learner. Now, I am the master.” This further implies that this is the first time they see each other since Vader left him, and he is telling Obi-Wan how everything has changed since then.

Does this destroy canon?

The answer? Well…I guess not. The prequel trilogy and the many projects since that have taken place before the original trilogy have all created a few hiccups with each other. For example, how does Leia recall her mother’s face in Return of the Jedi if we saw Padmé died right after giving birth in Revenge of the Sith?

Well, the answer would be that Leia may have seen Padmé through the Force. It’s not a bad explanation, but it’s one of those necessary explanations that need to be used to “force” a reason for why she remembers her.

As Star Wars fans, we’re used to making up the rules and coming up with explanations for things that don’t add up 100%, like why Obi-Wan doesn’t seem to recognize R2-D2 in A New Hope. And this appears to be another one of those hiccups that can be explained if you really tried, but any explanation we give wouldn’t be that great.

Overall, I’m still very excited to see what the series has in store for us fans.

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