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Was Obi-Wan Kenobi Worth Rewriting Star Wars Canon For?
Obi-Wan Kenobi added a lot to the characters of Obi-Wan and Darth Vader, but the price for it was creating a lot more Star Wars canon inconsistencies.

Was Obi-Wan Kenobi Worth Rewriting Star Wars Canon For?

WARNING: Spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1.

Obi-Wan Kenobi reunited Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen in a story about Obi-Wan and Darth Vader, but it did so at the cost of rewriting the Star Wars canon. Seventeen years after Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the Star Wars prequel trilogy is now perceived in a much better light than it did in the early 2000s, with the Anakin Skywalker story being a lot of people’s introduction to Star Wars. Still, there were always inconsistencies, both in terms of tone and story, between the prequels and the original trilogy – something that Obi-Wan Kenobi was always going to either help to fix or make worse.

While an Obi-Wan Kenobi season 2 has not been ruled out, the show was initially conceived as a limited series. That goes to prove how tricky tackling Obi-Wan’s story between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope could be, even though that was a time period in the Jedi master’s life that live-action Star Wars had yet to explore. Given how Star Wars Rebels had already shown how Obi-Wan’s history with Darth Maul ended, an Obi-Wan show would have to find other antagonists and storylines that could justify Obi-Wan leaving Tatooine. The choice was to place Obi-Wan on a mission to rescue Leia and have Darth Vader and the Inquisitors as the villains.

However, by dealing with such key Star Wars characters as Leia, Luke, and Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi placed itself in a very difficult spot regarding the Star Wars canon. There are several interactions and lines involving Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and the Skywalker twins in the original trilogy – which creates a lot of restrictions for a prequel story. Still, Obi-Wan Kenobi was not afraid of taking risks with its story, even if it meant both small and significant Star Wars retcon. Obviously, the show did its best not to contradict anything from the original trilogy and even tried to make some old canon inconsistencies more clear. However, in order to tell a compelling story about how Obi-Wan dealt with his failures and with Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side, Obi-Wan Kenobi had to create new Star Wars questions and headscratchers.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Tried To Fix Old Star Wars’ Canon Inconsistencies

As much as things like canon and continuity are crucial to Star Wars, the saga was built on inconsistencies and retcon. The reveal that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father, one of the most important moments in pop culture, hadn’t been planned out until the final draft of The Empire Strikes Back. Likewise, Leia being Luke’s sister was a last-minute change in the story that only came to be in Return of the Jedi. With the Star Wars prequel trilogy, George Lucas intended to expand the universe and reveal Anakin Skywalker’s backstory – but a lot more plot holes ended up being created. Padmé dying in childbirth despite Leia saying she remembered her mother or Tatooine’s local clothes being the same as the ones used by all the Jedi is just one of many examples.

In a subtle way, Obi-Wan Kenobi did try to address some of those inconsistencies. Obi-Wan reveals to Leia that he still has deep-buried memories of his family before joining the Jedi order, even though he was still a child, which could be interpreted as a way to explain how Leia could remember her mother. In addition, the final Obi-Wan and Darth Vader fight in Obi-Wan Kenobi also contributed to explaining a lot of things about the original trilogy. Vader proudly tells that he killed Anakin Skywalker, which explains why Obi-Wan tells Luke that Anakin was betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader. Likewise, Obi-Wan ironically refers to Anakin as “Darth” at the end of their fight, something he would repeat in A New Hope.

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Retcons Created New Star Wars Plot Holes

For almost every Star Wars plot hole that Obi-Wan tried to solve, another was created. In the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale alone, Luke went through an adventure way too dangerous for someone who claimed to have a boring life and was reluctant to believe he was part of something bigger, and Qui-Gon Jin’s cameo made him the first force ghost, despite Clone Wars revealing that he was only able to talk from beyond. Before that, Obi-Wan Kenobi had already created a major inconsistency in relation to Leia and Obi-Wan. Despite Leia naming her son after Ben Kenobi, the character never showed any sort of special affection towards Obi-Wan during the original trilogy, not even after his death. However, in Obi-Wan Kenobi, Leia created a connection with Obi-Wan that is perhaps bigger than Luke ever did in A New Hope.

Why It Was Impossible For Obi-Wan Not To Retcon Star Wars

A New Hope was meant to be the start of Luke’s hero’s journey – and the same can be said for Leia. That is why any story involving those two characters would always risk creating some sort of Star Wars plot hole. Not only that, but in order for Obi-Wan Kenobi to have any sort of stakes or conflict, Obi-Wan could not spend the entire show hiding in Tatooine – which by itself was already a retcon. Not even the rebel alliance knew that the Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi was alive, meaning that he could not have made much noise throughout the galaxy. In addition, while A New Hope was quite ambiguous regarding when was the last time Darth Vader and Obi-Wan had seen each other, having Vader appearing in the Obi-Wan series would naturally mean that the emotional Battle of the Heroes in Revenge of the Sith was not actually the last encounter between the two characters before the original trilogy.

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Best Moments Justify Its Retcons

More than being a tie-in piece of canon to better connect the prequels and the original trilogy, Obi-Wan Kenobi had the mission of offering an insight into its main character’s feelings after everything that had happened in the prequels, which the show delivered. Obi-Wan Kenobi also made the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin more tragic, and it added an extra layer to the redemption arc of Darth Vader. The show also contributed to making Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader feel like the same character and thus made both versions of the character more interesting. As seen during the original trilogy and the prequels, retcons are not an exclusivity of Obi-Wan Kenobi. George Lucas was willing to rewrite his own canon in order to tell the most interesting story impossible, and so has done every other Star Wars media. For that reason, Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s retcons were worth it.