This review contains spoilers.
Kenobi continues to deliver with its fourth episode, even though it’s a little shorter than the other ones. Though the anticipation of Obi-Wan and Vader meeting was fulfilled in the previous episode, this episode still has room for Obi-Wan’s grief and Vader’s rage.
Kenobi’s strength is that it’s taking it slow. As with the other episodes, there’s an alternating montage between Obi-Wan and Anakin. As Obi-Wan descends into a bacta tank to heal his burns, so does Anakin. The betrayal between the two of them is a familial one, and now that they are aware of each other’s lives, inescapable.
That Star Wars gives space for Kenobi to experience these feelings, these memories, the trauma, is so special, and I’m so glad we’re getting so much more from this episode than just a thrilling rescue.
Because, the rescue is thrilling. For people who have played Jedi Fallen Order, their mission to the fortress of the Inquisitors will look extremely familiar (including the horrible electric blasts from those droids), with the revelation it’s literally built on the corpses of dead Jedi. I believe the first Jedi revealed in their amber coffin was one familiar to fans of the Clone Wars: Tera Sinube who helped Ahsoka retrieve her stolen lightsaber. I didn’t recognize the others, but the closing shot on the final child Kenobi sees is a horrible reminder of the opening scenes of the first episode.
Despite its short length, this episode delivered so many fantastic moments I’m not sure where to begin.
Reva’s interactions with Leia are so good and so interesting. Reva’s soft voice, her knowledge and appreciation for Leia’s lies (and honestly lies in general, more on her brief conversation with Tala later). As before, Kenobi leans into Star Wars symmetry, and the viewer sees the strong inspirations from Leia’s encounter with Tarkin in A New Hope with Reva’s attempts to interrogate Leia. And Leia, though she’s scared, meets Reva every step of the way, even at one point trying to manipulate Reva to let her speak to her father since they are, after all, on the same side. Reva doesn’t fall for that though, and instead plants a tracker on Leia’s droid, even as she shares that she once had a droid, even as she’s whispering that no one is coming for Leia. The irony is that she now commands hundreds of seeker droids, but it’s just not the same, is it? Though it’s easy to imagine that the small pieces Reva shared about her past, marked by loss, with Leia might be a lie, the strongest lies actually are those within a framework of truth.
Reva’s moment with Tala is also great. “I do like a good liar,” Reva says. It makes me wonder what else Reva might be lying about. If her only ambition is to become Grand Inquisitor upon the capture of Kenobi and the other rebels, I’ll be greatly disappointed. I’m hoping her stated desire for the position is one of her greatest lies, especially if her former Jedi teacher is in the tombs below.
Obi-Wan always seems to find himself in the water at critical moments of the plot, and this episode is no exception. Like Cal, Obi-Wan gains entry through the water. He makes his way to Leia just in time, lighting his saber from the shadows, illuminating the soldier he’s going to kill before he disappears once more, which is all very reminiscent of the tactics Vader used against him in the previous episode. It’s no accident that Kenobi’s robes are actual Jedi robes. We see him practicing using the Force in Tala’s shuttle, and then the most impressive use of that Force is holding the water back so Tala and Leia can escape. In a way, he fully resurrects Obi-Wan in this episode, not only with the new clothes, the familiar lightsaber moves, and his impressive use of the Force, but because he holds Leia’s hand in a moment of tenderness. In the early episodes when he didn’t want to save Leia because he wasn’t the man. Look at how far he’s come. The Jedi cannot help what they are.
Tala, whom I already suspected would be a favorite character, also shone in this episode. She assumes her officer role to guide Kenobi through the fortress’s hallways with an authority she no longer believes in but that she wields to great effect. When Reva circles her, eying her as the traitor, Tala plays fast and loose with truth as she sidesteps Reva by admitting the truth in the context of a lie: of course, I’m a spy! What a great moment.
The daring rescue of the pilots was also so very Star Wars. Sully’s nervous and desperate “Get in, get in,” conveys a vulnerability that the original trilogy (and even to some extent the sequel trilogy) didn’t allow their rebels to always have. The fortress isn’t the death star, but these aren’t fighter pilots, and they aren’t Jedi either. That Tala and Sully were shone comforting each other in the closing shots is also special and needed. Despite Leia says as an adult, there must be time for grief.
As before, I love every callback to the prequel, the original trilogies, and Fallen Order, from every moment Obi-Wan remembers his relationship with Anakin and grieves it, to the generic plot points where they’re going to use a tracker to find the rebel location. It’s the same story, but also a different one, simply because of the emotional beats Kenobi has chosen to focus on. In a way, it’s like a metaphor of the Force, connecting and binding us together.