Obi-Wan Episode 4 Review: A Jedi Strikes Back At the Empire

Obi-Wan Episode 4 had the daunting challenge of having to build on the big duel with Darth Vader in “Part III”, and in order to meet that challenge we got a big rescue mission episode, a la The Mandalorian. When Young Leia is taken back to the Inquisitors base by Reva, Obi-Wan has to get in there and get the girl back. As Kenobi is learning during the course of this limited series, keeping hope alive and destiny intact is much more than a one-man job – so he has to get some help from new friends. 

We finally got to meet O’Shea Jackson’s (Straight Outta Compton) Star Wars character, Roken, who was surprisingly deeper and more layered than the characters the actor is best known for portraying. That said, Jackson was really a major factor in the episode, and on the whole, Obi-Wan Kenobi felt like the episode most affected by the COVID-19 mandates. 

“Part IV” certainly offered an exciting rescue mission sequence that is by now a signature of animated series like Clone Wars and Rebels, or the aforementioned Mandalorian. At the same time, it was pretty clear how the sets were spacious (love a good Imperial hallway!) and used very limited personnel to pull off the illusion of a big rescue mission, when really it was just some split-screen trickery between Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) and Tala (Indira Varma). Even the “big finale” of the episode (which did pull in some extras for a bigger crowd scene) felt truncated and small – but then, in the end, this was just a transitional episode setting up for the finale arc of the series. 

Indeed, Reva planting a tracker on Leia’s droid has now set the stage for Darth Vader and his Inquisitors to strike back in Episode 5 – which then sets up the scene for Obi-Wan and Vader to have their big final duel in Episode 6. Does that make Episode 4 really just a filler episode in disguise? Arguably. But to be fair, Obi-Wan handled filler material better than most other series – including some of its close cousins in Star Wars (see: The Book of Boba Fett, or The Mandalorian). 

The only other criticism is that, at this point, it seems clear that Obi-Wan is more ofcused on the larger Star Wars Universe connections than the deeper internal story of how Obi-Wan Kenobi rekindled his faith, and finally communed with his master Qui-Gon Jinn to learn has to transcend death as a Force ghost. Hopefully Episode 5 can focus some time on that – or there will definitely need to be Obi-Wan Kenobi Season 2, to help that evolution feel more complete. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming on Disney+.