Ewan McGregor Says His Obi-Wan Kenobi Is “Broken, Faithless and Beaten”

Obi-Wan Kenobi begins with the titular Jedi “broken, faithless, and beaten,” says star Ewan McGregor. A decade after Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the Jedi Master remains haunted by his greatest failure: the downfall and corruption of his best friend and Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), turned evil Sith Lord Darth Vader. With the Jedi all but extinct after the Great Jedi Purge ordered by Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), Kenobi watches over a young Luke Skywalker in his self-exile on Tatooine. Nine years before A New Hope, Kenobi embarks on a galaxy-spanning adventure when he’s hunted by the Inquisitor Reva (Moses Ingram).

“We find Obi-Wan at the beginning of our story rather broken, and faithless, and beaten. [He’s] somewhat given up,” McGregor 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.”

Obi-Wan feels “his teaching wasn’t strong enough to be able to protect Anakin from that,” McGregor added. “I think it weighs, obviously, very heavily on him.” 

Years before their final encounter aboard the Death Star in A New Hope, master and padawan meet again in a lightsaber duel promised to be the rematch of the century. But Vader and the shadowy Emperor aren’t the only Dark Side users posing a threat to the young Luke, hidden on Tatooine with his Uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton) and Aunt Beru (Bonnie Piesse): on the hunt for surviving Jedi are the Inquisitors, among them The Fifth Brother (Sung Kang) and the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend). 

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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