This review contains spoilers
Despite being a well done episode, this is the first installment I found disappointing, primarily because of Reva’s reveal.
It opens with a memory of Obi-Wan and Anakin sparring with each other. They don’t de-age Anakin, which I appreciate, and he appears as he did in Attack of the Clones with his padawan braid. The entire episode settles into this framework, because even though there are Inquisitors and stormtroopers against force sensitives and other rebels, it really is about Obi-Wan and Anakin. The spar becomes a metaphor for the course of the episode, and foreshadows how this is going to end. Obi-Wan tricks Anakin because he knows there are other ways to fight, and Vader, desperate to prove himself, is right back to feeling small and helpless, so he steps into Obi-Wan’s place as Reva attempts to take him on by herself, alone.
Divorced from the Original Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy, it’s easy to see Vader top of the chain. We see him playing the same mind games as the Emperor played on him, with just a little more bloodshed, but inside, beneath the mask, beneath the name, it’s Anakin Skywalker, craving self determination, family, acceptance, love. Just as easily replaced and disposable as the Sith before him, waiting for some young upstart to kill him, just as he killed Dooku and all the other Jedi. Proving himself over, and over, and over.
It’s why he can’t let Obi-Wan go. Though memory of the spar is shared by both of them, it’s also a reminder of their very final spar, their final duel, when Obi-Wan was very much in a position to kill Anakin. Anakin’s words, “Mercy doesn’t defeat an enemy, Master” echo through their every encounter, past, present, and future. Whether it was mercy, cruelty, or both that caused Obi-Wan to walk away, leaving Anakin to burn, that choice does allow a final victory for the Sith and the Empire. Yet, it’s interesting that Vader occupies the Obi-Wan role with Reva in more ways than mirroring his final moments during the spar. Vader walks away from her to let the burns of the lightsaber do their work…or not.
Though I had begun to suspect Reva’s true intention was killing Vader after she said how much she appreciated a good liar, I hoped it wasn’t because she was one of the younglings during Order 66.
I had seen the speculation floating around, of course, but I didn’t think the timeline matched up with Moses Ingram’s age. If she had been a youngling, Reva would have been a late teenager or in her very early twenties during the events in the Kenobi series. Ingram is twenty-eight, and though it’s not unusual for older actors to portray younger characters, that Reva was present at the purge is so desperately boring to me I hoped they were going to go in a different direction. No offense, but I’m sure that Vader made plenty of lifelong enemies along the way both before and after Order 66.
Reva’s driving motivation is to hunt Vader, to take revenge upon the slaughter of her family, and so she becomes exactly who she hates to accomplish that goal. Even though Anakin did the same thing in the sequel trilogies, there were three feature length movies to build up to that decision so it was believable and in character for Anakin. With Kenobi, Reva spends the majority of five episodes terrorizing and murdering families, with the indication her death count includes children, and the viewers are supposed to accept it was all so she could kill Anakin? The establishment of her character makes Obi-Wan’s plea, do you really want to see him do it again, sound hollow because she’s done it herself over and over. She knows there’s a chance that Vader will see her betrayal coming, but still the writers have her decide to take him on alone, when there isn’t even Obi-Wan to distract him. Why didn’t she strike when he was pulling the ship down at the very least? It doesn’t make sense.
The only thing about the reveal that makes sense is her deep distrust of Obi-Wan. It sounds like she doesn’t know what happened on Mustafar, but she is right–he doesn’t want to kill Anakin. He never has, and he’ll never come close to killing him again, choosing, instead, at the end, to have Anakin kill him. She’s right to question him, and I would have loved to have seen more of their conflicting needs played out in a more complicated way.
Reva’s confession to Obi-Wan through the closed door, the grief she still bears for the family that was taken from her, the extreme reaction to the Jedi symbol–it does not make sense she would turn against that same family for a chance at Vader even if she felt weak and thought only the dark side could strengthen her. There could have been so many other ways for her to worm inside the Empire and get close to him, if the writers wanted to invest time and energy into her character.
We see glimpses of what Reva’s character could have been. Glimpses of the vulnerable, scared child she holds in her trauma. With the reveal that the Grand Inquisitor is still alive, he reiterates that she belongs in the gutter. Stories like Star Wars aren’t supposed to prove the bad guys right.
I guess there’s still Part VI to turn the train wreck of her character around, especially now that she knows about Luke, but I feel no matter what choice she makes, it will be inconsistent with her character because the writers didn’t put enough thought towards her in the first place.
Star Wars has a bad habit of this. They put so little thought towards their Black characters. Their character arcs and motivations deflate because they are just after thoughts towards the larger plot. And yes, I do understand that Kenobi is first and foremost about Obi-Wan, it is not impossible to write layered and thoughtful secondary characters along the way, and it would not be such a problem if there was not a pattern to Star Wars doing this.
There were many good moments to the episode, and I’ll try not to let my disappointment with Reva overshadow them. Last week I said Tala was rapidly becoming a favorite character, so that she died in this episode isn’t surprising. Her death was well done. Shielded by the droid (Star Wars and its loveable, tragic droids), she pulls the same trick Leia pulls in Return of the Jedi, only this time, Tala lets the bomb go off, sacrificing herself to save the others.
The fight between Vader and Reva is probably one of the coolest we’ve seen Vader have with an appointment. The use of the Force, the sheer amount of power (yet still powerless in many ways) he projects is great.
If you’re here primarily to relish in the angst of Anakin and Obi-Wan, the episode continues to deliver. We’ll see if it’s able to course correct the more disappointing elements in its final episode next week.