Overall, it’s hard to look at the episode as a success from a suspense perspective, though when you think about it, that’s nothing new. Star Wars has always been about characters we know aren’t gonna die anytime soon, with rare exceptions; its great trick was in constructing action set pieces so gripping that they make you forget. (Seriously: No one on the planet thought Luke Skywalker was going to get shot down during the attack run on the first Death Star, but if your knuckles don’t still whiten at least a little bit every time you watch it, I don’t wanna know you.)
But a prequel show that features Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and Princess Leia as main characters faces an extra challenge, just as the prequel movies did: We know, for a fact, that these characters survive, since we’ve seen their future adventures. For that reason, the action must be doubly exciting and inventive to maintain audience investment.
Does the show deliver on that score? No, I don’t think it does. It’s true that there are occasional moments of menace or awe, like when the Grand Inquisitor sweeps back in to gloat, or when Darth Vader uses his incredible Force powers to stop an entire transport from taking off. (It’s a decoy transport, but still.) And of course there’s that nostalgic duel between Obi-Wan and pre-Vader Anakin.
But the battle between the Path folks and the stormtroopers is indifferently blocked and shot—it’s just a bunch of people shooting guns at each other and somehow missing despite the fact that they’re like four feet apart. The Imperials are so bad at this that Obi-Wan’s lightsaber-twirling presence on the side of the good guys is barely needed. The fight between Vader and Reva, at least, is supposed to be a one-sided affair, driving home Vader’s superior power, and on that count it succeeds.
I reviewed today’s episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.
Tags: decider, obi-wan kenobi, reviews, Star Wars, TV, TV reviews