Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Young Luke Skywalker Actor Recast After “Creative Overhaul”

A new report reveals a “creative overhaul” changed the child actor playing a young Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi. In 2020, Disney-Lucasfilm replaced original head writer Hossein Amini (Drive, The Snowman) with Joby Harold (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Army of the Dead), who reworked the scripts for the six-episode series set a decade after Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Following the disillusioned Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) into his exile on Tatooine, the Jedi Master watches over a 10-year-old Luke to protect him from Jedi-hunting Inquisitors and the boy’s Sith Lord father: Darth Vader, the fallen Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen).

Playing the young Luke Skywalker in Obi-Wan Kenobi is actor Grant Feely, who appeared in an episode of Creepshow. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lucasfilm chose another boy actor before the rework, but “no scenes” were filmed with the unnamed actor. (The creative overhaul reportedly replaced Ray Park’s Darth Maul with Christensen’s Darth Vader, but a Lucasfilm source disputes this claim, according to THR.) 

Feely, who appears briefly in the first Obi-Wan trailer released March 9, is the latest actor to portray Luke Skywalker in live-action. Famously played by Mark Hamill in the original Star Wars trilogy and Disney’s sequel trilogy,Aidan Barton appears as the newborn Luke in Episode III. Actors Max Lloyd-Jones and Graham Hamilton helped portray a Return of the Jedi-era Luke in episodes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, respectively. 

Obi-Wan returns to the sands of Tatooine, where the son of Darth Vader is in the care of his Aunt Beru (Bonnie Piesse) and his Uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton). Luke’s sister, Leia (reportedly played by Bird Box‘s Vivien Lyra Blair), was adopted by Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) and raised on Alderaan. 

“We find Obi-Wan at the beginning of our story rather broken, and faithless, and beaten. [He’s] somewhat given up,” McGregor recently told Entertainment Weekly. “He’s different because of what’s happened at the end of Episode III with Order 66 and the Jedi Order being slaughtered and everyone who survived going into hiding. After dealing with his personal failure with Anakin, he feels the responsibility that he allowed Anakin to be tempted over to the Dark Side.”

Starring Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Kumail Nanjiani, Sung Kang, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Moses Ingram, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, Simone Kessell, Benny Safdie, Bonnie Piesse, and Joel Edgerton, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming May 25 on Disney+.

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