Disney Plus’s Original Series Obi-Wan Kenobi Season One Episode Three “Part 3” starts off with Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi meditating to try to talk to his master. Unfortunately, all he gets is a sense that his old friend Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is still alive. This comes as a shock to Obi-Wan due to how the series picks up years after the fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin had during the events of the prequel Star Wars movies of which Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen are known for playing younger versions of Anakin and Obi-Wan. The viewer can see by the look in his eyes that he is truly disturbed by what he senses in the force. In his mind, he feels great sorrow that he had to leave Anakin for dead due to his fall to the dark side. However, now that he feels him again, he can only feel complete darkness and fear at what Anakin has become. The interesting part is how the series shows the viewer how Anakin is regularly transformed into Darth Vader by means of putting robotic parts on him.
Furthermore, even though the viewer can tell by the sound of Vader’s voice that there is still some hatred left for Obi-Wan. This is demonstrated by how he tells the inquisitors that nothing matters other than capturing Obi-Wan. He even shows some anger in his tone when he threatens Moses Ingram’s Reva Sevander if she fails to capture him. This can be seen as him having an obsession with Obi-Wan and finally getting payback for everything he did to him when they fought years ago. Usually, Darth Vader can be seen as someone who keeps calm during stressful situations. However, when it comes to Obi-Wan he loses his temper and ignores everything else on solely focuses on him. Demonstrating that fighting Obi-Wan means everything to him it due to Obi-Wan representing his old life as well as his old weaknesses.
Later into the episode, the viewer sees Obi-Wan escorting Vivien Blair’s young Leia Skywalker through a mining planet. From here they have a moment when she asks him if he’s her real father. In her mind, she sees that he looks at her like she reminds him of someone he knows. Not to mention that he seems to know more about her than he lets on. So, she feels as if she finally has the opportunity to get to know this person who could be her real father. However, she does love her adaptive parents very much, it is just that she has always felt as if she has not belonged in their world of politics. Unfortunately, Obi-Wan tells her that he is not her father much to his dismay only that she has a lot of her father and mother’s aspects. Fortunately, he does talk about how he also wants to know about his parents as well due to the Jedi taking him as a child. This can be argued by the viewer as one of the mistakes that led to the Jedi being purged. Taking a child from their parents even for the right reasons doesn’t seem to be something good people do, especially if the parents are just people with a special child.
At the end of the episode, the viewer sees a small fight between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. The viewer sees Vader fighting with a more aggressive style and Obi-Wan is rusty by how unsteady he is. The interesting part is how Vader seems to not find his long-awaited fight with Obi-Wan as enjoyable as he thought it would be. This is due to how Obi-Wan has become extremely weak over the years since the empire took over the galaxy. A clear demonstration of this is when Obi-Wan runs away almost immediately when he sees Vader appear ready to fight and Vader just stands there almost in shock. The viewer can assume that Vader feels disgusted and disappointed by Obi-Wan’s cowardice. When in their early days he would have gladly fought any opponent with courage. Ultimately, Vader injures Obi-Wan in a similar way with fire as Obi-Wan did a long time ago. This leads to Obi-Wan being saved just in time for him to heal so he can once again save Leia as she is kidnapped by Reva.
Rating 8.5/10