Disney Plus’ Obi-Wan Kenobi Teases a Brother – Does Star Wars Need It?

For a franchise as massive as Star Wars, finding new ways to engage audiences is less of a duty and more of a savvy business. However, keeping the nearly 50-year-old series fresh has become an awkward kettle-run bog for Lucasfilm and its parent company Disney. What is really the way: to retrospectively fuse previously undisclosed stories to their lore, or to explore the uncharted cosmic expanses of this galaxy far, far away? Do you play the hits or gently remix them?

That brings us to Obi Wan Kenobi, the latest in an ever-expanding line of Star Wars televisions, that finds its way into this very binary history. not how The Mandalorian or Boba Fett’s book (with naked anti-hero dudes) Kenobi is paralyzed by the well-documented legend of his protagonist, the exiled Jedi Knight of the same name (Ewan McGregor). Finding something new about a character we’ve already seen fight, fail and die has always been the show’s biggest gamble, though Kenobi overturned the Dejarik table and expanded the space between episodes III and IV as far as it can go before breaking the immutable laws of A new hope.

One of the show’s biggest swings to date is its claim that the last time Obi-Wan and his former apprentice (Hayden Christensen) crossed lightsabers wasn’t actually at the raging hearths of Mustafar. Kenobi met Darth Vader for the first time since that fateful duel last week, and it looks like they’ll be swinging sticks at each other again. And last week presented another disturbing (and potentially game-changing) addition to the Kenobi lore, a leftist revelation made by Old Ben himself, in which Ewan McGregor frowned at the angelic Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) and voiced what might be a game-changing one Line: “I still have glimpses, real flashes… My mother’s scarf, my father’s hands. I remember a baby. […] I think I had a brother. I really don’t remember him. I wish I had.”

There is another. A little Kenobi brother. It could be nothing. A throw away line. Or it could be the Star Wars stories of the next 20 years. Who can tell? (Listen, absurd as it may sound, a tiny, chaotic part of me prays to the dark angel he worships that Disney just makes and produces Baby Kenobi Adventures.)

If this storytelling line is to bear fruit, then Lucasfilm’s ambitions to transform Obi-Wan Kenobi, a co-lead in the prequel trilogy and a supporting mentor figure from the OT, into a legacy character are assured. (And the Rey-Kenobi theorists will keep whining.) And if it’s a signal that neo-Kenobi stories are on the way, then one has to ask: does that encourage them war of stars Saga in any significant way? Aside from the financial incentives of introducing another red-headed Scotsman with a winning smile into the saga, how does that affect the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi? Does that help him or hurt him?

History may provide an answer. Long ago the original screenplay for Return of the Jedi contained a tempting Obi treat: The Jedi Hermit did have a brother, and his name was Owen Lars (formerly Phil Brown, now Joel Edgerton). That wild story beat was wisely left out of the film’s final cut (which might have added to the emotional stakes, after all Episode VI?), but it lived on in the novelized version of James Kahn’s 1983 film. It might have been a seemingly innocuous line – “Your mother and I knew it [Vader] would find out eventually, but we wanted to keep you both as safe as possible for as long as possible […] [so] I took you to my brother Owen on Tatooine…” – but it made a canon mess and has since been devolved war of stars legends Dump.

For a while, however, this Kenobi family soap opera reveal was repeated over and over again: it deserved mention in 1995 star wars customizable card deck, and Obi-Wan’s dreams of a brother named Owen found a home in a 1999 novel titled Jedi Apprentice: The Hidden Past. A dozen years later, Abel G. Peña would reuse the entire long-lost kenobi kerfuffle in a Star Wars Short story titled “Lone Wolf: A Tale of Obi-Wan and Luke”. There, grateful readers would discover that Obi-Wan’s visions of Owen Lars came from his post-Clone Wars future, not his distant past, effectively taking the burden of the legacy from Obi-Wan’s shoulders and allowing the character to rise freely into the elder to mature into Brother role in Anakin Skywalker’s life.

So Kenobi has reintroduced that dusty legacy, and it’s worth exploring, not just to determine what we know about Obi-Wan’s family history, but to consider what it adds to the character – or doesn’t. We know that he had at least one father and one mother and that his homeworld is called Stevjon. (And if that name sounds just ridiculous war of stars Standards, do you know that “Stewyon” is a hybrid of comedian Jon Stewart’s name, spontaneously invented by George Lucas himself during an on-air interview with the former Daily show Host. Totally serious.) More importantly, we know at least two other things about Obi-Wan Kenobi.

We know that Obi-Wan held his Jedi mentor, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), in high regard. We also know Ben’s continued spiritual quest for his fallen master, first introduced at the very end of Vengeance of the Sithintended to explain Ben’s sudden physical distraction after his death during this deadly reunion with Vader A new hope. But it’s also a clear indicator of how Qui-Gon fits into Obi-Wan’s life; more than a teacher, Qui-Gon was a father. The man who fathered Ben on Stewjon no longer matters. We don’t even know his name. But we do know who Qui-Gon was. We were with Obi-Wan the day he died. And if Ben is finally reunited with Qui-Gon in the second half Kenobi, we will be there too.

We also know who Anakin Skywalker is and what he meant to Obi-Wan: how things were when they first met (“The boy is dangerous,” Obi once said to his Master); how they clashed during Anakin’s formative years; how chance and war forged something powerful between these two Jedi Knights; and how eons of trust and trust ultimately led to betrayal. The break between Anakin and Obi-Wan left the kind of devastation only those who were family and are now not family can feel.

As for Obi-Wan Kenobi’s family, we know what matters. We know that Jedi practice takes children away from their families and that those children grow up to be heroes or villains. Their stories are great, not because of the little things in their lives, but because of their actions and failures. Star Wars is a grand opera, and delving into the minute details of titanic characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi only dilutes its power. Take Rey: did becoming a Skywalker define who she was or what she accomplished? No way. Would a kenobi have made their story richer? Absolutely not. What does knowing Obi-Wan had a younger brother mean to his story other than clumsily adding additional meaning to the nature of his brotherhood with Anakin Skywalker?

For now, Obi-Wan’s memories of his little brother are just that. How much emotion and meaning we can glean from this line remains to be seen, but there is reason for caution; History has proven that any addition to the Star Wars canon, if applied haphazardly, can easily become a bug rather than a feature. (Hi, solo.) The limits of the Skywalker saga have finally been reached, but Luke, Leia and their cyborg-fascist old man still tower above it all. Where does war of stars go from here? It seems, at least for now, Lucasfilm and Disney believe if this saga has anything to offer for generations to come, it will everyone Characters around them must bring their own unique value to the cause. legacy for eternity.