Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Director Reveals Why Series Is Set 10 Years After Revenge of the Sith

Before the Disney Star Wars spinoff movies and shows came along there wasn’t much, if any, representation in live-action about what occurred in-between the “Episodes” of the main saga. With the release of Rogue One, Solo, The Mandalorian, and the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi, the time before and after these pillars of the franchise is being readily explored (though the comics, novels, and Clone Wars cartoon were doing it for years). For the upcoming Obi-Wan series, the show will be set a decade after Episode III, putting it between Solo and Rogue One in the timeline, and giving them a place ripe for exploration.

“The story for us, it takes place 10 years after Revenge of the Sith. So we are right between the prequels and the original trilogy,” series director Deborah Chow told Entertainment Weekly. “And really, it’s a character story about Obi-Wan. And, in large part, the story that we’ve been trying to tell is his journey of how he went from the end of Revenge of the Sith, with all the pain and the tragedy that happened in that ending, to become the calm and the peaceful Alec Guinness that walked into A New Hope. So we’re trying to tell that moment of transition of how did he get from here to here.”

Regarding his relationship with Anakin, which sure seems like there’s going to be one hell of a rematch between them, Chow added: “At this point, both for (Obi-Wan) and for the galaxy, it’s quite a dark period. And that actually made it really interesting to be telling a story in this period. It’s a time when the Empire’s ascending, it’s post Order 66. So most of the Jedi have been killed. A lot of them are being hunted by the Inquisitors. So it’s a very dark time to be a Jedi and most of them are hiding or dead. So for him at this point 10 years later, we’re dealing with post Order 66 after Anakin, who he believes he killed, and then all his friends – everybody sort of gone or hiding. So it’s a tough period for Obi-Wan.”

Starring Ewan McGregor, Moses Ingram, Rupert Friend, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Indira Varma, Sung Kang, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Benny Safdie, Kumail Nanjiani, and Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres with two episodes Friday, May 27, on Disney+. New episodes will air on Wednesdays beginning June 1.