1x01 Part I

[8.1/10] What must it feel like, to fail so profoundly? When we meet Obi-Wan in A New Hope, he is wizened, wily, even a touch nostalgic, with a twinkle in his eye. George Lucas hadn't fully sketched out his backstory, so the man we encountered when Alec Guiness donned the robe and laser sword bore no mark from an order destroyed and a brother lost.

But Ewan McGregor’s version of Kenobi does. He is the afterimage of Revenge of the Sith, the man who believed in something, who took on a role of incredible importance, and watched it all crumble into dust and blood on his watch. The strongest choice in the first hour of the show that bears the old wizard’s name, is to make him a broken man.

The Inquisitors lay it out for us in the first scene. The Jedi hunt themselves because they cannot help but show compassion, and their altruism leaves a trail. It’s reasonable to ask how a Jedi as prominent as Obi-Wan (who only bothered to change his first name, mind you) stayed hidden for a decade. This series presents an answer -- because he gave up all the things that marked him as a Jedi. He gave up helping. He gave up caring.

A taskmaster hassles workers who complain about their unfair wages, and Obi-Wan starts as though to speak up for the man unjustly denied, but ultimately keeps his head down. A one-time padawan comes to him for help, and Obi-Wan tells him that is time to give up and move on, only to find him strung up in the streets as a warning. None other than the Organas reach out to him, asking him to find the kidnapped daughter of Kenobi’s former apprentice, and even then, he refuses to acquiesce, telling them, simply, that it’s been a long time, and he isn’t the man he used to be.

The sense is all of this is not of a man who won’t, but feels that he can’t. This version of Kenobi doesn’t strike you as someone who doesn’t care, or who wouldn’t help if he thought it might do any good. He cuts the image of someone who believes that he is a failure, that everything he tried to accomplish fell to ruin, that given how it all went to hell, no one should trust him, or want him to do anything on their behalf. He has his duty, and his meager existence, and it’s all he can stomach.

Thank god, then, for McGregor. He gave the best performance in the Prequels (with his only major competition being Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine), and proves again why he was the right man for the job here. Obi-Wan has very few lines in this opening episode: a warm but terse thank you, a handful of denials, and amusing conversation with a Jawa that shows some of that old twinkle. But most of the hour is spent in the spaces of what “Old Ben” doesn’t say, the actions he doesn’t take, the emotions he’d dare not vocalize.

McGregor sells the absolute pain in every moment and act of Obi-Wan’s life. His look of regret, of resignation, of quiet self-loathing and unworthiness in each moment fills the screen. In poetic fashion, he matches the presence of Mark Hamill’s Luke in The Last Jedi, a fallen monk convinced of his order’s brokenness and obsolescence. The same sense of an open wound personified pervades McGregor’s return to the role for the first time in seventeen years.

But he’s not alone. The first part of the mini-series also introduces the Third Sister, a member of the Inquisitorius who’s almost single-minded in her pursuit of Kenobi. Her harsh methods of intimidating and insistence on chasing this ghost earn her the rebukes of the Fifth Brother and even the Grand Inquisitor himself. She is the dastard here, lopping off hands, threatening people’s families, and orchestrating a kidnapping of the child of Kenobi’s old ally. She’s the one who acts to smoke him out, letting the compassion provide the trail she needs.

And that part’s all fine. The story makes sense, both as a way for a committed antagonist to track down our hero and as something to spur the self-excommunicated Kenobi to return to action. But right now her part of the story feels more like plot mechanics than anything infused with character. All we get is a brief “To get what I’m owed” explanation for her motivation, and with this first outing, Moses Ingram is just okay in the role. In brief, this is a necessary but generic villain in the early going.

Thankfully, the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries has a surprise in tow -- time spent with young Leia Organa. Vivien Lyra Blair is a revelation in the role, balancing out decades of unavailing child acting in Star Wars. Her confident, even confrontational bent calls to mind Lady Mormont of Game of Thrones. Without devolving into fanservice, the show conveys the sense in which her spunk, her defiance, her willingness to take chances that we saw in the Original Trilogy, has its roots in her childhood.

It also has its roots in her family. This is a part of the story we’ve never had much of a glimpse of before. Seeing Alderaan in all its glory is a treat, but more to the point, it’s nice to have a glimpse of the life that made Leia who she is, the people that she was fighting for. The proper, occasionally disapproving, but clearly loving mother is a bit of a cliche, but their dynamic pops on screen. Even better, the inimitable Jimmy Smits reprises the role of Bail Organa, and his encouraging, understanding, a bit mischievous himself connection to his daughter provides another pillar of who this little girl would one day become.

When she confesses her insecurity over a jerky cousin’s recrimination that she’s not a “real” Organa, and her father affirms her as an Organa in every way, it warms the heart and fills in the connection between parent and child that's only been faintly alluded to until now. Seeing it in action, understanding the recalcitrant young child with an itch for adventure, not only paves the way for Carrie Fisher’s grown-up version of the famed princess, but makes for an enjoyable and endearing character to follow in the here and now.

It’s a twist, because the few hints we’ve had, not just from trailers but from the franchise’s past, suggests Obi-Wan’s focus was on Luke. It’s a bold, admirable choice to turn away from the well-trodden territory of Luke’s upbringing, and connect Kenobi and Leia in a meaningful fashion, filling in more of the unknown in the process. Even in our stop on Tatooine, hearing Uncle Owen warning off Obi-Wan from Luke, given what happened to Anakin, deepens the character’s generic, “No, don’t answer the call to adventure” reaction in Episode IV, and serves as a reminder of the thing that haunts Kenobi the most.

Beyond the character dynamics and plotting, the craft here is outstanding. Despite employing familiar settings and environment, “Part I” expands the scope of Star Wars, not just in the motley collection of sand-swept men and beasts wandering the desert, but in the constraining opulence of the Alderaanian estates. New visions like an industrial effort to carve up a giant beast in the sand, or the believable movements of an alien camel bending down to let its rider alight bring this universe to life. Appropriately, director Deborah Chow channels the Alec Guinness-starring Lawrence of Arabia with wide shots of Obi-Wan traipsing through an empty, arid landscape, conveying his loneliness and isolation in his self-sworn seclusion.

The elements aren’t all perfect. True-to-form, “Part I” includes some Prequel-esque dialogue (“What happened to you?” “You don’t go far enough”) and imagery in the form of unreal-looking buildings on Alderaan. On the other hand, what McGregor cannot convey with his piercing performance alone, Natalie Holt’s score makes the difference in emotion. Her backing music captures both the heart-pumping panic in dramatic moments like a lookback at Order 66 or Leia’s escape attempt, but more importantly the languid, hollowing moments of Kenobi’s spiritual surrender, his renouncement of all that used to drive him and move him in a lifelong devotion.

The beauty of the first hour of Obi-Wan Kenobi is the way it draws the eponymous Jedi’s first steps back toward who he used to be, and who he will one day become. This is not a one-time hero who leaps at the chance to return to action and right what went wrong. It is someone haunted by his failures, who deems himself undeserving, incapable of stepping back into those shoes. This all-important opening act of Kenobi’s return does not skimp on what pains the man, the decade of regret that left him marinating in his own mistakes, his own defeats, his greatest failures until he was worn down to a nub of a person.

What spurs him back to life is not injustice or the pleas of a member of his order. It is a personal appeal from an old friend, that only he can save Bail’s daughter, the child of his former apprentice, and the girl who will one day help save the galaxy. Obi-Wan buried his sword and with it his old life. When a vestige of that old life returns, even he cannot deny the call for long. It is not the vows Kenobi once took or the duties he swore that rouse him from his hollowed-out stupor. It is, ironically, his attachments, his compassion, his need to help those who need it most that even ten years of stewing in failure cannot fully snuff out, These are the undeniable parts of Ob-Wan that are poised to revive him, heal him, and restore him back to the man he once was, and will be again.