Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Writer Reveals His Frustration With the Disney+ Series

Obi-Wan Kenobi writer Andrew Stanton admits to feeling some frustration while writing for the Disney+ Star Wars series. Stanton is known best for his writing on Pixar films such as Finding Nemo and Wall-E, the latter of which won an Academy Award and is the first Pixar movie added to the Criterion Collection library.  However, while working on Obi-Wan Kenobi, Stanton felt a constraint he hadn’t felt in his other writing work. Speaking to io9, Stanton recalls how exciting it could be to write dialogue for iconic characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, but the pressure of always having to ask, “‘Does that fit the canon?’” feel “bittersweet,” he says. “[The reason that happens is] because people care, but it also kind of doesn’t allow, sometimes, things to venture beyond where maybe they should to tell a better story. So it can sometimes really handicap what I think are better narrative options.”

Stanton continues, “And so I was frustrated sometimes—not a lot— but I just felt it wasn’t as conducive to [the story]. So I love it when something like Andor is in a safe spot. And it can just do whatever the heck it wants. But I felt, you know, Joby [Harold, Obi-Wan Kenobi co-writer and executive producer], to his credit, kept the torch alive and kept trying to thread the needle so that the story wouldn’t suffer but it would please all the people that were trying to keep it in the canon. But I got some moments in there that I’m very happy with.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi did cause some debate within Star Wars fandom about certain aspects of the canon. These include how many people know about Darth Vader and that he is the fallen Jedi Kight, and Obi-Wan’s old padawan, Anakin Skywalker. That’s an issue born out of writing a series set between two major, foundational film trilogies, about two of the primary characters in those trilogies.

As Stanton alludes, Andor doesn’t have that problem. Instead, it follows a character who has only had one previous appearance in a spinoff movie through rarely explored corners of the Star Wars universe distant from the main thrust of the Skywalker Saga. Conversely, that lack of iconic characters and connections to Star Wars’ primary trilogy of trilogies may be why Andor isn’t drawing in the same number of viewers as Disney+’s previous Star Wars shows.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming now on Disney+. Andor debuts new episodes weekly on Wednesdays on Disney+.