Director: Deborah Chow

Writers: Joby Harold, Hannah Friedman, Hossein Amini

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Vivien Lyra Blair, Moses Ingram, and James Earl Jones

Rating: ★★★★½

It’s finally happened, Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor reunited on screen as Obi-Wan and Darth Vader for the first time since their epic duel at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Episode two of Obi-Wan Kenobi ends with a tease of Vader, and this episode follows through and shows him in his palace on Mustafar, before joining the hunt for the legendary Jedi.

Like previous episodes, this one has a nice slow pace to it, slowly building up the story. It mostly follows Kenobi and Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) as they make their way across Mapuzo to get to a space port and back to Alderaan. Along the way we get glimpses of the planet under Empire control, with Kenobi trying to explain what it used to look like. Instead of checkpoints and guards, there were fields and families.

The best thing about the Star Wars TV shows, including the animated ones, is that you get to see glimpses of life outside of the main heroes, and while this show is about Kenobi first and foremost, there’s still glimpses of the wider world around them. A truck driver, Freck (voiced by Zach Braff), seems to be on the Empire’s side, liking how they bring order to the galaxy.

McGregor is absolutely brilliant in this episode, as he was in the first two. This is his best performance as Obi-Wan, showing the hero at his lowest point after the events of the prequel trilogy. After learning that Anakin didn’t die on Mustafar, knocks him back, with him reaching out for help and guidance early in the episode, but can’t quite find it. He’s almost cut-off from the force completely and is almost a shell of his former self. It’s exciting to see what happens in the next three episodes that renews him and brings him to the Alec Guinness Kenobi we meet in A New Hope.

Without spoiling too much, the last ten or so minutes of this episode gives us the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The rematch between Kenobi and Vader. It’s a brutal and ruthless scene, showing Vader with his full anger that we see again in Rogue One. He doesn’t hold back at all, choking out and killing locals on his way to find Kenobi. While the fight between Vader and Kenobi isn’t going to go down as the best fight in Star Wars history, it still has an incredibly dark moment. It shows that Kenobi is nowhere near his peak and doesn’t match Vader anymore in the slightest.  

This episode is absolutely filled with tension, from Kenobi and Leia making their way past guards, to the inevitable face-off, and it’s all excellent. It manages to keep up the momentum from the opening episodes and set up the second half of the series.

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