Part V (Obi-Wan Kenobi - S01E05) - Live Action Series

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"Did you really believe it I did not see it, youngling!" SPOILERS.

We have waited 17 years for this

Part V of Obi-Wan Kenobi has the Empire find out the location of the not quite yet rebels base, Darth Vader with Reva is en route to the planet. A compromised L0-LA droid manages to sabotage the hangar roof doors shortly before the Empire arrives and seals the not quite rebels yet in, they have no way of escaping with the hangar door sabotaged and the Empire rounding up troops in front of the entrance. The troopers set up a massive blaster cannon in order to breach the heavy door so the base can be stormed.

Both Vader and Kenobi think about the good old days

Throughout the first few minutes of the show first Vader and then Kenobi think back to the good old days and we see a flashback of a training duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin set around the Attack of Clones era, Anakin is still a padawan and hasn't lost his arm yet.

The Empire loves overkill

In the base Kenobi asks Leia if she can creep into a shaft to see what is wrong with the electronics. She's the only one small enough to fit inside and Leia of course agrees. But it will take time to override the hangar door so Obi-Wan tries to stall for time and has a little heart to heart chat with Reva through the massive front metal door. Here we finally find out what Reva's big deal is. She's basically the antihero of the story, chaotic evil antihero maybe, but certainly not an all out villain. Reva is all about revenge. She was indeed the little girl in the Orderr 66 flashback and the reason she knows about Anakin being Darth Vader is that she saw him kill younglings left and right. Kenobi realizes that Reva is really after Vader and wants to kill him. Obi-Wan offers his help but Reva is angry at everyone and petulant as always and instead thrusts her lightsaber into the massive metal door and opens it to go after Kenobi.

And poor Indira doesn't survive yet another show. Someone give her a hug please

With the door open the Empire storms the compound, blasters are fired left and right, Obi-Wan retreats to the inner courtyard that is sealed by yet another door. Tala is shot (a stormtrooper hit someone, please light a candle for this rare occasion!) and the severely wounded Tala decides to grab a thermal detonator and to kill herself alongside several stormtroopers. Obi-Wan gives his best "Noooooooooooo!" since The Phantom Menace, but it didn't change anything then, it doesn't change anything now. Poor Tala is history.

Darth Vader won't let Rey Palpatine be more powerful than him

Both the Empire and the not really rebels retreat and Kenobi finally decides that it's best to give himself up so he can have yet another nice chat with Reva, only face to face this time. Obi-Wan appeals to Reva and tells her that she is not bringing him to Vader, but that instead he is bringing Vader to her and that the two of them together can take down Vader if Reva uses Kenobi as a distraction. Kenobi's memory of his training duel has him convinced that Vader will be so focused on taking him down that he won't see Reva coming. Obi-Wan ups the ante when he appeals to Reva's conscience and asks her if she really wants Vader to kill all the young children in the hangar bay. And Reva, the secretly good person that she is, who only cuts off limbs and hands by accident, lets Kenobi go with two stormtroopers escorting him back to the hangar bay. Of course Obi-Wan makes short work of them five seconds later.

Darth Vader is not someone you want to see angry

Eventually Darth Vader arrives on the scene and enters the hangar bay just as a transport is about to lift off. He easily stops the launching ship in mid air and pulls it back down to the ground. He then violently rips open the hull but just then a second transport lifts off and Vader merely watches as it escapes. Apparently Darth Vader's midichlorians need some recharging after the previous stunt. Or whatever.

Vader doesn't need lightsabers...

As Vader watches the other transport ship fly off Reva sneaks up on him from the back and tries to kill him. Of course Darth Vader is fully aware of that and easily blocks Reva's saber with just the Force, Vader doesn't even need a lightsaber. What follows is the first fun action sequence in the entire series with Vader just toying with Reva and easily deflecting or dodging her furious lightsaber attacks.

She will get better...

Vader eventually disarms Reva but he is so curteous to offer her one half of her saber to defend herself. Vader really loves to play with his food... but of course Reva is no match for Darth Vader and he impales her with the lightsaber leaving her in the dust. But to add insult to injury the other troopers and the very much alive Grand Inquisitor arrive on the scene.

The Grand Inquisitor is in dire need of a moustache he can twirl

And boy, do Darth Vader and the Grand Inquisitor rub it in. Of course Darth Vader was aware of Reva's little revenge scheme and he just toyed with her. And in perfect James Bond villain manner they leave Reva behind in the dust and don't finish her off, because giving your enemies a chance to miraculously recover from near fatal wounds is what typical cartoon villains do.

An agonized Reva crawls across the ground and eventually finds Obi-Wan's holo communicator he left behind in all the chaos and hears fragments of one of Obi-Wan's former messages about Tatooine, Owen and the kids. So Reva now knows that something is brewing on Tatooine. Obi-Wan who is on the transport with the not really rebels yet somehow senses that danger is on the horizon for Luke. And now we have to wait one more week for the rematch of the century between Obi-Wan and Vader.

On the surface Part V of Obi-Wan Kenobi was fun. But boy, is this show stupid, as in really, really stupid. Just like last week. Your levels of enjoyment will entirely depend on whether or not you can switch off your brain while watching the show.

Here are some of the really dumb things that are very difficult to ignore.

- the Empire assembles troops around the front gate of the base and sets up this massive blaster in order to break the door open. So far so good, makes sense. You need some siege equipment to break walls or doors. Reva watches everything, so she is present and with the troops. But when Kenobi has his heart to heart chat with Reva through the closed door she easily cuts it open with her lightsaber. Which is nothing too surprising, because in The Phantom Menace we see that Qui-Gon can easily destroy a massive door by just sticking his lightsaber in it. Here Reva merely needs to cut through the door and slice open some kind of deadbolt. Now my question: why would Reva have the stormtroopers set up that massive blaster and let them fire away shot after shot, a very long and tedious procedure, when the not really rebels could find a way to override the hangar bay doors and escape at any minute... when she can easily cut open the front gate with her lightsaber in 5 seconds? This is Pink Panther levels of absurdity. Do the writers actually read their own scripts or do they just make up stuff as they go along and never think about anything?

- Darth Vader can easily pull down a ship. But is apparently so surprised when yet another ship is launching that he does nothing. Why? Are his batteries flat? Have his midichlorians run out of power? Apparently not, because mere seconds later he uses his Force powers to stop Reva from killing him

- Reva is either very, very dumb or very, very courageous. How could she ever think her revenge scheme would not be found out about by Vader, that man is a Force powerhouse and Jedi/Sith have a knack of sensing things and even getting visions of the future. But that results in the next question: why would Vader let Reva do her thing at all? Why not just kill her as soon as he finds out about her plan? Now one might argue he doesn't kill her right away so he can toy with her and later taunt and ridicule her, which may certainly be something the eternally angry Darth Vader might do. But that also means Vader is quite stupid, because there would always be the rare chance that Reva might succeed.

- so the Grand Inquisitor lives, canon is saved, hooray! That still doesn't explain why Vader let Reva do her thing. Why bother? Does he think she is the only one who can find Kenobi because everyone else is too stupid so he uses her as a tool? You can certainly write that but that in return means everyone on the villain's side is incompetent and stupid, including Darth Vader, and only Reva is smart enough to find Kenobi.

. the scene with Grand Inquistor was laughably bad. I mean sure, you can have cartoon villains in Star Wars, but it feels really off when your intention is to create a live action series with serious drama. Maybe the writers shouldn't have consulted with Spinal Tap to write this particular scene. And if Obi-Wan Kenobi is instead meant to be an absurd comedy of sorts it's not funny enough.

- why does Vader not kill Reva and instead leaves her behind in the dust? I mean, if this was Austin Powers or James Bond it would be par for the course, but does Star Wars REALLY have to be so dumb and cartoony? If they sorely need Reva alive for the finale change the script. Also, do massive lightsaber wounds count for anything anymore in Star Wars? Why did Qui-Gon not simply shrug off his wound in The Phantom Menace when both the Grand Inquisitor and Reva can survive the same wound? The Grand Inquisitor's return was just plain silly. I expected him to burst out laughing like a maniac eventually, twirling an imaginary moustache.

On the plus side the Vader vs Reva duel was the very fist well executed action scene and fun to watch. We know of Vader and what he can do, but rarely did we see it in live action. Here Vader is even more vicious and powerful than in Rogue One.

The big Reva reveal is probably something that only surprises you if you have slept throughout the entire series. So lil orphan Reva is angry at Anakin for murdering everyone she ever knew and angry at Obi-Wan for not doing something. But her plan to become an inquisitor, get close to Vader and then to kill him is at best hare-brained or at worst just plain suicidal. So is Reva dumb after all? And again, why would anyone let her even try? Why doesn't Vader squash her? She certainly can't be the only one who is capable of finding Obi-Wan. Yes, Vader is a sadist and enjoys seeing Reva squirm, so maybe he is just that dumb and lets her do her thing, but in my opinion that is a weak excuse and just a plot device for things to unfold in the series or else Reva would have been dead in Part IV at the latest.

All in all Part V was ok, it was fun in certain ways, the action was good for a change and seeing Vader in action is always a treat. His scenes here were the absolute highlights. And of course the Coruscant flashback with Anakin was really nice to see. But I really wonder why Lucasfilm opted NOT to de-age Hayden Christensen. Yes, he's not that old, but he's 20 years too old for the role he's meant to play in the flashback. In fact a simple YouTuber and complete amateur posted his homemade de-aged deep fake of the scene mere hours after Part V aired. When some fan can do that on his PC you would guess Lucasfilm would have the resources to de-age Hayden for a flashback. It was not super terrible, as I say, Hayden still looks quite young and he has the same boyish charm in the flashback as he had in the prequels, but he's visibly too old. Which once more makes me wonder why Kenobi feels so cheap at times, they allegedly have a budget of $15 million per episode or about $90 million in total and unless they spent it all on Ewan McGregor I cannot understand why they didn't invest the money to de-age Hayden Christensen in the flashback. Also, the lightsabers in the flashback were once more awfully short, but at least the fight choreography was on point this time and as quick and rapid as in the prequels, not the typical slowmo fights we get in other episodes or Disney Star Wars movies.

So where does that leave things? Obi-Wan Kenobi, while fun at times, is very much in the dreaded territory called "mediocrity". It won't bore you to tears but it will have you roll your eyes almost incessantly because the writing is very dumb. The action falls flat many times with rare exceptions and the series is MUCH too short - excluding recap and credits Part V is barely 32 minutes long - and doesn't spend nearly enough time on the characterization of Obi-Wan. Unless the final part is 90 minutes long everything will probably feel incredibly rushed.

Obi-Wan Kenobi had the potential to be great, but the end result is somewhat of a disappointment. Part V was at least fun and maybe the best episode yet, but that is all down to Darth Vader and his scenes.

Also, please let's have one minute of silence for Indira Varma who didn't survive yet another series. I wonder what would happen if she and Sean Bean shared a scene in the same movie or series. Maybe the universe would collapse in on itself and every living being would die instantly. Hopefully, we will never find out!