The fact that we had to wait this long for the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer is criminal to say the least. Star Wars fans have been getting the short end of the stick recently since Disney has been prioritizing their golden goose (and undeniable favorite child), Marvel Studios. While there was good reason to believe that we would get the Obi-Wan trailer late last year on Disney+ Day—four months later—we have finally received a close look at what we can expect in the new series set in a galaxy far, far away.
1. The Inquisitors have arrived
Originally a character from the Star Wars Rebels animated series (voiced by Jason Isaac), the Grand Inquisitor is the leader of the Inquisitorius (also known as the Order of Inquisitors and the Imperial Inquisition). Trained and led by Darth Vader, these force-sensitive dark side agents serve the Empire, and are tasked with hunting down the Jedi who managed to escape Order 66—a part of the Great Jedi Purge—at the end of The Clone Wars.
In the trailer, we are briefly introduced to a new Sith Inquisitor, Reva (played by Moses Ingram). In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ingram took a moment to give us a better idea of what we can expect from her character in the upcoming series saying, “Reva is a boss, I mean, really like a full-on athlete. She is on a mission and will conquer that at all costs when given the opportunity. She is pretty badass. [And has a badass outfit,] putting on a cape was a dream I didn’t know I had. I felt like I was 10 again! It was super dope.”
2. Darth Vader’s power will be at its peak
People couldn’t be happier for Hayden Christensen’s return as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. While we got to see Christensen’s character grow from a young boy on Tatooine to one of the most sinister Sith Lords of all time, the majority of this was his time as Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Padawan, Anakin Skywalker. His time as Darth Vader in the prequel series, while powerful at the time of his transformation, was undeniably short.
When speaking to Entertainment Weekly about his highly-anticipated return to the franchise, Christensen shared a little sneak peek in regards to his Sith persona in the series. Keeping things very mysterious, Christensen promises that “We’re going to see a very powerful Vader.”
3. Darth Vader almost didn’t make the cut
With the Obi-Wan Kenobi series finally speaking to a longtime gap in the galactic franchise, involving Darth Vader makes sense, right? The whole reason Kenobi is on Tatooine and in hiding is to watch over one of Darth Vader’s children, Luke Skywalker. It’s understood that during this time, Darth Vader is searching across the galaxy for him. So how is it possible that they almost cut out his existence in the series entirely?
Kathleen Kennedy, the President of Lucasfilm, reveals that while the concept was great, there was a lot of back-and-forth on the subject of his return. The biggest issue they ran into was that if they were to bring him back into the live-action fold, the writers would have to move forward with the utmost caution and care.
“The debate around whether we should do that or not carried on for quite some time. Everybody within our creative team has strong opinions, and all of our fans have strong opinions. So when you realize that you’re under that level of scrutiny, certainly a story point like that is going to be scrutinized at a very high level. We talked about it constantly.”
4. The series was supposed to be a movie
After The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Disney+ Star Wars series are any less entertaining than the films. In its earliest conception, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s post-Order 66 story was supposed to be a film. Development on the series began in early 2013, with a planned path of spin-offs from the mainline franchise. Anthology projects in the early pipeline were a Boba Fett film (which eventually became The Book of Boba Fett), Rogue One, and Solo: A Star Wars Story (whose failure at the box office put a huge damper on future anthology projects).
“When Bob Iger very specifically said, ‘We are going to start to shift our priority to making series for Disney+, and we’re launching the streaming service,’ that really was what shifted our strategy. We started to look at the opportunity in the streaming space where we could do long-form storytelling, and we realized there was an opportunity to experiment in that space without the level of scrutiny that happens when you release a feature.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi will finally answer the questions that two generations of Star Wars fans have held in for decades on May 25, streaming exclusively on Disney+.
Photos via Disney/Lucasfilm