Obi-Wan Kenobi Spoiler Review: Part IV
Well, you win some, you lose some I guess. Following last week’s ending, which saw Obi-Wan with a burnt arm and back after Vader tried to recreate his own torture on Mustafar, and Leia making a brave but foolish attempt to run from Reva, the internet was rife with speculation as to how this new episode would begin.
The most popular theory - the one I admit to gravitating towards, and possibly becoming so fixated with that I even dreamed it came true - was that Obi-Wan’s necessary bacta treatment would bring with it flashbacks to the Clone Wars era. It’s not the most baseless of theories. We did just get four episodes of The Book of Boba Fett with this exact premise. Long periods of submerged, semi-unconscious healing are great for those angst-ridden dreams.
Alas it wasn’t meant to be. The episode does however kick off with Obi-Wan undergoing bacta treatment on the base on Jabiim, haunted by flashes of what Vader did to him. In an interesting bit of editing, one we’ve seen since the beginning of the series, Obi-Wan’s pain parallels Vader’s and hints at the residual bond that exists between master and apprentice as the shot cuts back and forth between them. They aren’t “face to face” this time like they were last week, but instead are each suffering - submerged in bacta - through what the other one did to them.
Obi-Wan forces himself awake from his bacta nightmare despite Tala’s protests and demands to know what happened to Leia.
We get the answer soon enough as naturally there was no way Leia was actually going to manage to outrun Reva. The feisty little princess is taken to Fortress Inquisitorius and manages to mask her fear behind a stellar round of “don’t you know who I am? Don’t know know who my father is?” Reva, however, sees right through the ploy and casually tells Leia that with Obi-Wan dead, there’s no one to come get her.
To me, in the moment, her facial expression was so reminiscent of her expression after the Death Star blew up Alderaan. Couched within the unimaginable grief was the knowledge that with nearly everyone she ever knew and loved dead, and with no way of knowing if her message to Ben Kenobi and the Rebellion even made it, she probably didn’t think anyone was coming for her then either.
Back on Jabiim, Obi-Wan and Tala appeal to a man named Roken for help. Roken is reluctant to aid them, and even more reluctant to allow Ben to stay on base for even a moment longer. His presence there, as a Jedi, puts the whole movement at risk. It would be impossible to evacuate Jabiim since that’s the base for their entire operation. Roken continually insists he can’t help them, until Obi-Wan tries the angle of “you don’t know what the Empire is capable of”. Roken counters that he does actually know very well what they’re capable of, since following the war he met and married his wife “knowing what she was”, only to lose her when the Empire found out about her.
Sad as it was, this also caught my attention for a different reason. We know that the Empire is hunting down anyone with Force sensitivity, so that doesn’t necessarily mean tht Roken’s wife was a former Jedi based on that fact alone. However, during his argument with Obi-Wan, he at one point refers to him as “General”, a title used during the Clone Wars.
This means that eithers Roken remembers seeing the Jedi during the war and remembers that they were Generals, or more likely, his wife was not just Force-sensitive, but a former Jedi who spoke of her time in the Order and made mention of all the old heroes, including a certain General Kenobi.
Despite this, Roken agrees to help Obi-Wan extract Leia, and with the help of some of the others on the team, Obi-Wan and Tala get just enough schematics that they can fudge an entrance into Fortress Inquisitorius using Tala’s credentials.
Prompted by the ride to the Mustafar system, or his recent ordeal,, or some combination of the two, Obi-Wan struggles with connecting to the Force. Tala tells him his mind needs time to heal and to forget the past, which is something he must do if he wants to be able to help Leia.
Leia, meanwhile, is proving to be resilient all on her own. But then again we knew she would be. When Reva asks her to disclose information about the Path, she deflects and then denies any knowledge. When Reva tries to see inside Leia’s mind, Leia pushes back and won’t let the Inquisitor in - sassily asking her if it’s a staring contest. But she quickly loses her advantage when Reva catches Lola trying to slip out and confiscates the droid, telling Leia she had a droid of her own when she was younger until it was taken away. I’m struggling to think of which kind of droids Padawans would have, because I am still very much in my Padawan Reva theory, but I suppose we’ll find out.
She appeals to Leia’s reason, telling her that the people who let Obi-Wan die are who she is trying to apprehend, and that otherwise they’re all on the same side. For a minute, it seems to be working, until Leia points out that if they’re on the same side then she should be allowed to pass the information on to Bail first. Frustrated, Reva has Leia taken away to have the information tortured out of her.
While this is going on, Obi-Wan and Tala have managed to sneak into the fortress, with Tala taking a legitimate way in as an Imperial officer, and Obi-Wan entering from one of the underwater bays. He is pulled towards something mysterious on the lower levels, which turns out to be - in one of the more chilling scenes in Star Wars - Jedi and Padawans (including Tera Sinube, RIP) encased in what looks like amber.
Obi-Wan doesn’t have time to linger in this morbid tomb, as he senses Leia needs his help and appeals to Tala for a distraction. She sends an officer down to where Leia is being tortured to pull Reva away long enough for Obi-Wan to get Leia out.
Together, the two of them go on the run through the facility, and I’m not sure if it’s the presence of inquisitors or if the Fortress was an in-game location (it’s been a while) but the whole escape scene had a distinct Jedi: Fallen Order vibe.
Earlier in the episode, and indeed throughout the season, we’ve seen Obi-Wan struggle to connect to the Force. His response time is nowhere near what it once was, though he is gradually beginning to reconnect with it. He holds a cracked, underwater window together long enough to be able to deflect the damage for maximum impact against their pursuers, so it seems like things might be getting a little easier for him.
It is interesting to me, however, that although he struggles with the Force, the same hesitation is never shown in his use of the lightsaber. That, he has no problems using when the time comes. It wasn’t a grand “moment” when he switched it back on for the first time on Mapuzo, it was just something he did.
To me, this scene reads like a man whose body still remembers how to be a Jedi, even when his mind struggles with the task. He can wield the Force insofar as the use of a lightsaber requires it, but the actual connection isn’t there the way it used to be.
Just as it looks like they’re about to escape, Obi-Wan, Leia and Tala find themselves surrounded by the Empire. But all hope is not lost as Tala’s colleagues show up to rescue them at the last minute.
The loss does not sit well with Vader, who nearly kills Reva in anger until she tells him that she let them escape and planted a tracker on their ship. Impressed, Vader lets her go. I admit, I thought Reva was just stalling, as I was hardpressed to figure out when exactly she had time to put a tracker on the ship while everything was going pew pew. It wasn’t until the final shot, when Lola slides halfway out of Leia’s pocket and switches on, her eyes now red instead of a soothing blue, that I realized what we were in for.
Though the episode was light on the kinds of conversations that had us all emotional last week, it does still end on the sweet, yet silent note of Leia and Ben sitting side by side on the ship, where she places her little hand on his injured one. The gesture reads like her offering him comfort - he is burnt after all - before he snaps out of it and realizes that after her ordeal, she probably needs comforting too. He subtly flips their hands around so it’s now him holding on to her, silently comforting her where words are in no way adequate.
I know Star Wars is told out of order, but this whole thing is only serving to make me roll my eyes that much harder when Luke needs Leia to feel sorry for him after Obi-Wan dies on the Death Star. Before, my annoyance stemmed from Luke needing comfort from a woman whose whole planet just blew up. Add to that now the fact that Leia did know Obi-Wan quite well - arguably better and longer than Luke did - and I’m really going to need Mr. Skywalker to pull himself together.
Despite the audience already knowing that Leia and Ben will make it out of this series just fine, this episode was still one of the more tense ones of the series. Neither of them are safe from getting injured, as we saw last week. The only guarantee is that Leia and Ben will live, but the same cannot be said for everyone else. I thought on several occasions that we had seen the last of Tala, and I’m still not convinced that she’s safe in the long run. I’m also not convinced Reva is making it out of this show alive, though in both cases I’d be happy to be wrong.
What did you think? Are you still team Padawan Reva? Do you still think we’ll get our flashback at some point? Did you yell when Lola’s eyes went red? Check back here every week for my Obi-Wan Kenobi recaps, and be sure to tune into Space Waffles for our series recap “This Fixation With Kenobi”!