The Kenobi Series Harvested my Kidneys and Sold Them on eBay (PART ONE)

well [ __ ] guys they actually did it they actually managed to [ __ ] it up the kenobi series is here ladies and gents and if you've been following this account for any significant portion of time you probably already know that i had a lot of reservations about this one the last several years of sludge that disney has produced and rather presumptuously referred to as storytelling has left me pretty jaded toward the franchise as a whole a statement that 2016 me who was still riding the hype train after having loved the force awakens and was waiting with giddy anticipation for the slam dunk of a follow-up ryan johnson was no doubt bound to deliver would not even believe if he heard me say it but here we are it's now been almost 10 full years since disney bought this franchise from george lucas and i can think of about three or four things to have come out of it that i can even say i liked let alone loved the book of boba fett was pretty much the icing on the cake for me and with that in mind i approached the kenobi series with about as much excitement as one might feel for a colonoscopy and for the inevitable comments that are going to tell me that i just went in expecting it to be bad and that's why i ended up not liking it i'm just gonna mention now that i already made a whole video back when the first trailer for this show dropped a few months ago wherein i expressed exactly what mindset i had going into this show i'm gonna link it down below and probably throw up a little card here somewhere i recommend just going ahead and watching it before continuing on with this video because i'll be referencing back to it quite a bit if you choose not to don't worry i'll still try to convey my points with as much clarity as i can so that you can still follow along without having to watch it but i recommend doing so just for the added context basically the argument that someone doesn't like a thing you like because they win and expecting to hate it might sound good at first but as soon as you plug your brain into the nearest outlet and flip the on switch you kind of realize just how backwards a mindset that really is i mean if your only justification for why a person might not enjoy your sacred cow is because they had the expectation of good storytelling then i guess you're not entirely wrong i i don't know what else you want me to say there and as i've already addressed before briefly the whole no one hates star wars more than star wars fans saying is a weird one because it operates under the assumption that criticism of a thing doesn't intrinsically come from a place of love why would i devote so much time to criticizing the newest star wars dreg if i didn't care about the overall quality produced in the franchise if i had an apathy or even deep-seated hatred for star wars then the fact that kenobi sucks would either leave me with immense joy or complete and utter indifference so please before you take to my comments to echo the same double speak that so many before you already have just do us all a favor and don't [ __ ] bother also you might have noticed already that this video is uh long each episode had just so many things wrong with them that i pretty much had no choice but to just start taking notes and i have quite a bit to say so before i even begin to make any actual points about the show i might as well address what some of you might have already taken to the comments to say yeah yeah long video bad shirt but i'm not interested in doing it the usual way where i spend anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes giving my overall thoughts on the thing while making extremely abridged points to elevate my case this is a show that had so much to work with and was tasked with handling my absolute favorite character in all of fiction and i refused to let it get off that easy no i intend to be ruthless just like disney was ruthless when they took the character of obi-wan kenobi and ragdolled him to a bloody pulp for the entire world to see i am what you made me but of course if you don't find long-form videos palatable you don't have to keep watching that's pretty much it for that point and seeing how long this video is after writing up a good majority of my script i decided to split this into two parts part one we'll talk about the first three episodes and part two the latter half of the series what you're watching right now is only part one there's much more to come so sit back relax grab a snack and a sodie pop and let all sheave pick apart this absolute mess for all of you lovely people to enjoy now in case my views on the kenobi series haven't been made entirely clear as of yet i did not like it one bit it fundamentally misunderstands the character of obi-wan kenobi as well as several other characters that i love contradicts a plethora of established elements of world building and it's just overall really pardon my french bad and my goal here is to go over just why that is by combing through each episode of the series in as chronological order as i can possibly manage so with all that out of the way let's dive right on in the show opens with a four minute recap of the prequel trilogy which i found to be a bit strange considering whoever is tuning in each week to watch this show is probably familiar with the story but in case you haven't popped revenge of the sith into your dvd player in a while or you're one of those aforementioned people who hate star wars and just decided to check in to see how it's doing these days i suppose this is a nice refresher unironically one of the only moments throughout this entire show that genuinely made me feel anything which is kinda sad when you realize it's the only part of the series that wasn't made by the people who worked on this show still though i found it touching though i will say that the music choice they decided to go with for this recap and subsequently for the rest of the show was pretty meh you'd think with disney's over reliance on nostalgia baiting they'd want to pull out all the stops in the music department which would have been especially welcome in scenes where that was called for namely the vader scenes which all have a distinct lack of imperial march right until the very end anyway they even had john williams compose his own obi-wan theme to play during the credits of each episode and i don't know maybe it's just me i found it shockingly bland [Music] i never thought i'd say that about a john williams score especially one that's composed for such an iconic character but it makes me pretty sad because even when star wars is bad you can usually expect the music accompanying the garbage to be great or at the very least serviceable but here there wasn't a single new composition that i latched onto hell even in the book of boba fett i couldn't help but find myself enjoying the main theme either way once the recap is done and all the excessively long self-congratulatory intros are done playing we finally get into the meat we find ourselves on coruscant at night watching a jedi master lead a group of younglings in a training session when the clones burst in and start shooting this scene is weird the fact that it serves as the opening to the show and ends without any resolution and doesn't even involve obi-wan in any way is just a really strange choice i guess kind of like the four [ __ ] minute prequel recap this intro is meant to remind casual audiences that the jedi were hunted down and defeated again i'm really not sure who this show was meant to be for if not for those familiar with the ip so i don't know why we needed reminders of this i don't know [ __ ] about star trek so i'm not gonna go out of my way to watch picard people watching this show know what happened why couldn't this intro have been about obi-wan also to those of you screaming at me right now that this intro was about riva and was meant to set up her backstory just hush this scene doesn't really do anything to add to her story anyway all of the and i hesitate to even call it this substantive flashbacks with her are isolated to episode 5 of this series making this intro feel honestly kind of redundant i say once again that it should have been about articular character what if it takes place like right after he convenes with yoda and bale and we watch him getting to tatooine and or settling into his new life after dropping luke off at the farm or why not just start us off 10 years later and give us some insight into what obi-wan's been up to in his day-to-day obi-wan doesn't even show up in this episode until 12 and a half minutes in which is a bit concerning for reasons that i feel are obvious but also kind of adds to what a lot of fans have been complaining about which is that this show is way too centered around riva i don't personally care that she has a lot of screen time like her or not she is one of the main villains on this show and i prefer when villains are fleshed out not that they really do much with her in this show but they absolutely should have and i would have been totally fine with them devoting so much screen time to her if they had but i also don't see why this scene had to exist even in the context of it serving to characterize arriva would it not have been better to leave her past ambiguous until the reveal in episode 5 that she was one of the younglings i mean after episode 1 everybody already knew this little girl was a riva we were all just waiting for the show to finally give us anything substantive about her character as it continued to draw it out for as long as it possibly could it was such a weird choice anywho this scene is also a bit nauseating because of how much shaky cam that they employ followed by how strangely the cameraman moves around it makes it really hard to tell what's happening you might tell me that that was the point to which i would say that regardless of what the director's intention was it comes off as cheap and frankly amateurish and that's going to come up a few different times throughout this assessment because there are a lot of moments like this that look like they were shot by film students with a budget of 50 dollars in a starbucks gift card and i have to ask how long has this battle been going on outside the clones seem to have gotten a pretty good ways into the temple by now and when we go out a couple seconds later there's a full-scale conflict happening like five feet out the door so did these people just not hear that or i guess they were so entranced by their force water aerobics dance thing that they somehow managed to remain serene while a [ __ ] battle was raging right outside it's pretty telling how bad this jedi master must be at her job that she didn't sense the death of any of her colleagues in the force but i don't know she was dancing the scene ends with the jedi master dying and the group of younglings just kind of standing over her body and then they walk off cut to 10 years later and we're back on tatooine everyone's favorite planet alright if i'm gonna address the boba fett in the room i know everyone's tired of tattooing at this point and so everyone was happy when they found out obi-wan was going to be leaving it but i disagree if anything these two things should be flipped entirely if one of them is going to take place almost exclusively on tatooine you'd imagine it'd be the one about obi-wan kenobi set during his exile on tatooine a show about boba fett after escaping the sarlacc pit should have followed him hopping around from planet to planet possibly revitalizing his reputation as the most notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy maybe after word got around that he got knocked out by a blind guy with a stick many of his former peers don't feel he commands respect anymore and the show could follow boba reminding them just what a badass he really is but i digress i suppose that's neither here nor there this is about the obi-wan show the reason i addressed it at all is because of the whole meta aspect of it people were cheering to see obi-wan go to new environments and planets because they were so tired of looking at the same bland uninteresting biome for seven episodes but despite the fact that i never intrinsically took any issue with obi-wan leaving for the right reasons as we'll soon get into i still think that after seeing the finished result i would easily prefer a much more self-contained character study following obi-wan and his exile facing mundane trials and tribulations to those of you saying that that would be boring i disagree strongly it doesn't have to be you can still have a conflict where maybe obi-wan has to get involved with some kind of gang war happening between the syndicates and power on tatooine maybe this conflict directly affects the lars family and obi-wan has no choice but to get involved and come up with new creative and interesting ways of defeating his enemies without exposing himself as a jedi what would be so wrong with that ultimately it would be a low stake story that doesn't connect to the larger universe and i don't see a single thing wrong with that just have most of the conflict centered around obi-wan and his doubts that he's the right person to train luke have him try and fail to communicate with qui-gon because of his own lack of belief in himself which is mentally blocking him from hearing his voice or i don't know something anything have him reflect on his past mistakes and apply the lessons he learned from them to navigate the current conflict in some way you guys know i love to do rewrites the problem is with this one it just makes me sad to try to fix the script in some way because they just had so much to work with and it's honestly heartbreaking to watch if i ever did a rewrite video for this i would probably have to go against my rule which is like i usually like to at least start with the basic premise and build off of it in a better way but with this i couldn't do that the premise of this show is fundamentally [ __ ] flawed and i would have to just completely tear it up and lay new soil and the thing is the show gives us tiny glimpses of that in episode one but that's pretty much all we get and it sucks the rest of the show is so rushed that once the plot really gets started there's precious little time for any of these quiet contemplative moments and i just feel like saying that even if this alternate version of the series was safe boring and ultimately forgettable i'd still greatly prefer that over a convoluted pile of [ __ ] that destroys any semblance of continuity any witch we find ourselves in most icely where an inquisitor ship flies overhead and lands in the middle of the road instead of like in one of the docking bays i don't know i guess this is as good a way as they need to assert your dominance but let's just hope the jawas don't try to strip your ship for parts guys i know that was a nitpick you don't have to tell me i know it's not really a big deal i just think it's funny three inquisitors step out and they look awful look at this dude wait till you see them no no no no oh ah look at the top of his head look at his lips this is another major point that i made in my other video but it's super relevant here because as expected this was not a sonic movie situation for the uninitiated this is the grand inquisitor and this is the fifth brother they both appeared in rebels and now these imposters are going to be the versions of them that the main populace of the star wars fandom know them for when your grandma flips on the tv to watch the hip new star wars show she's going to know the grand inquisitor as this [ __ ] aneurysm of a character i'm going to get into the character writing a bit later so i won't touch on it here but look at these [ __ ] designs they look so stupid and again if you're not aware this guy is a powen and we've seen what they look like in live action before so i don't want to hear any of that translation from animation to live action [ __ ] [ __ ] off here's a thing that i never hear anyone talk about when discussing the new stuff practical effects are overrated as [ __ ] the prequels got a lot of [ __ ] for overusing cgi and green screens for like every scene ignoring all the practical effects and miniature sets that they built in fact the amount of sets built for the phantom menace is actually more than the force awakens gave us i didn't know there was this much green in the whole galaxy but that's not something that anyone at disney wants to admit because they saw how much hate the prequels got for this and have decided to seriously double down on their use of practical effects to an overbearing degree my stance on the matter is that neither is intrinsically good or bad and if you have both options at your disposal you should apply it to each individual situation and pick whichever looks better for that thing if you can't be [ __ ] to make a practical grand inquisitor head even though the ones used in revenge of the sith were sculpted then [ __ ] it do cgi stop being afraid to use the prequels as inspiration especially in a show that relies so heavily on prequel nostalgia i've said it before and i'll say it again but a lot of the alien designs in these shows look like bad cosplays and it goes beyond that really i mean the volume this revolutionary piece of technology introduced for the mandalorian kind of looks like [ __ ] sometimes i think it's pretty telling that george lucas was able to capture the essence of tatooine better in 1977 than modern lucasfilm canon in 2022 because he wasn't afraid to just go out into the [ __ ] desert and film the scenes in real environments rather than this fake ass [ __ ] and an argument i've heard from some people is that in revenge of the sith the powens we see talking to obi-wan aren't really doing anything too physical and so they weren't designed with the idea in mind that the characters might have to do a bunch of jedi flips and fight with lightsabers i consider that to be a pretty lazy cop-out but i suppose i do see the reasoning behind that logic it's the same reason they made ahsoka's head tail so much shorter in the mandalorian because she had to do a lot of physical movements and they didn't think they could make that work with practical effects now they wouldn't have had this problem in either case if they just incorporated their budget of 25 million dollars an episode on cg effect work but let's just go ahead and be really generous here let's just say for the sake of argument that this is just how it is and there's nothing they could have done about it that doesn't change anything see when making rebels dave filoni and crew wouldn't have had to worry about this problem they could make the grain inquisitor any human adjacent species they wanted to and because the show was animated they weren't bogged down by the limitations of practical effects however you the writer have chosen to adapt this character into your live-action tv series despite the fact that you didn't have to hello and are now stubbornly refusing to use the resources at your disposal because prequel's bad this is not an excuse this is an explanation and a piss-poor one at that if you want to bring this character into the show but you do not have the viable means to make him look accurate or even good then simply don't [ __ ] bother as it stands he doesn't even really do all that much anyway so you could cut him out and very little of the story would change which i find hilarious because any of the physical maneuvers he does could easily have been done by jason isaacs in a taller head sculpt who knows though maybe they were worried that his head would fall if he bent down this far so this is where my writer's brain started itching again as i gave it more thought as i considered what i would do if i were in the shoes of the writer and i was tasked with incorporating the grand inquisitor but i knew we couldn't make him look good so we'd have to use him sparingly i would have definitely done things a bit differently i'd probably only have him show up for one maybe two scenes in the entire show but i would make sure not to waste a second of that screen time let's just say for this hypothetical that obi-wan still ends up leaving tatooine to embark on some mission whatever the reason the inciting incident would have to be completely different and have initially nothing to do with any inquisitors or imperial officials of any capacity and for the love of god let's not have it have anything to do with leia either that just just none of that none of that in this version of events he leaves the planet for some reason that involves protecting luke i would have him leave the planet at the end of episode 1 and then episode 2 would start off on some forest world with an ominous red sky fires blaze all around in the wake of some terrible battle or more accurately a massacre and we watch a pair of black boots walk past the injured and dead men then we get a pov shot of a wounded person sitting in front of a tree staring back at us as jason isaac's grand inquisitor looking correct he can still give a speech about how predictable the jedi code is and talk about how running is ultimately futile yadda yadda whatever then a jedi who's maybe no older than his early 20s jumps out from behind a tree and attempts to cut him down from behind only for the grand inquisitor to hold up his hand and freeze the jedi in place grand inquisitor is completely unperturbed and continues his speech without pausing and by the time he finishes it he's now turned and he's facing the jedi he then uses the force to make the jedi kill himself with his own lightsaber after this he tells riva or some other better character about a jedi who's been sighted on planet x and tells her to go take care of it saying that he has other matters to attend to and so he will not be joining her even says to her this is my masters master's command and she responds and so it will be done and that's it that's the whole scene i wouldn't put him in anymore after this this is he's perfect as is but i digress also it's absolutely worth mentioning that the actors who play these characters rupert friend and sung kang have gone on record saying that they never watched a single scene of these characters that they're playing in anything else that they've appeared in which i find to be quite telling they're so proud of this as if it's something that they shouldn't be completely embarrassed to admit they wanted to have their own takes on the characters without being influenced by past works but these are characters who exist and that has to be respected you don't have to do a direct impersonation but you have to at least try to emulate the essence of their character and how can you hope to do that if you haven't even seen them in action imagine if you and mcgregor was just like oh yeah i've never seen the original trilogy i have no idea what alec guinness brought to the table but i don't want to watch it because i don't want it to influence how i portray obi-wan lucas would have laughed him right out of the [ __ ] audition room i mean [ __ ] even hayden christensen watched the clone wars and rebels to see what additions they made to his character because he actually gives a [ __ ] these guys are proud of themselves for having no idea what they're doing and it clearly shows in their work not only does sung's version of fifth brother look nothing like him and is at least a foot shorter but he also does this like really goofy raspy she will gain voice by capturing kenobi like it's a really cartoonish and silly voice and it sounds nothing like he does in rebels i am the next in line i sense those we seek the grand inquisitor was right branding wizard he's already been informed he was most appreciative it sounds like the kind of voice you might give your evil character when you're playing make-believe with your brother at age 10. are you seriously telling me that this was given the old stamp of approval okay then anyway the inquisitors start slowly walking down this street and they enter a saloon and the grand inquisitor in the least intimidating voice rupert friend can possibly muster introduces himself you know what we do do you know what we do he then informs the saloon owner that they're looking for a jedi who they know was spotted saving him from some street thugs he does this by going on a really long winded and needlessly drawn out speech before riva gets impatient and throws a knife at the guy which is then caught by the hiding jedi using the force i just gotta say if you're a jedi who's sitting at one of these tables and you're extorted into using the force you could at least put your hand up under the table or just not at all because you don't actually need to extend any limbs to use the force all you need is your mind hand motions are really just conduits to help focus the direction of the power but i suppose you might argue that the inquisitors would just sense him using the force anyway and that's fair he could still at the very least try to hide it but whatever so the jedi tries to run and then riva jumps in front of him igniting her lightsaber and i think it's really funny how this guy doesn't react even slightly to having a lightsaber blade opened right in front of his face this is just another example of many of some pretty odd directing choices people are going to try to defend deborah chow but i mean there are just a lot of scenes like this i don't care who she is i don't care that she directed one of my favorite episodes of better call saul i think she did a pretty bad job with this show and i'm gonna be pointing it out more and more as we go riva tries to kill the jedi then and there but she's stopped by the grand inquisitor and this is really bizarre he stops her because just moments ago he said this prepare him for interrogation which tells me that he expects this jedi to lead him to other jedi just keep in mind for now that the grain inquisitor wants him alive and is ostensibly trying to capture him and put a pin in that right now we have a really awkward and confusing scene to dissect so after the grain inquisitor stops riva from killing nari he like slides her to the side allowing the jedi to just run free nari knocks over this little awning and then fifth brother goes after him by leisurely strolling yeah no rush dude take your time also nari ran this way past this little stand here and it kind of looks like the fifth brother isn't even going in that direction deb that's your job deb deb but we don't really see where he goes because it cuts to riva and the grand inquisitor just having a conversation like they're just standing there talking go after the jedi he's right there he just ran away why are you so bad at your jobs this wouldn't even be that big of a problem if fifth brother caught him anyway but we see later that he apparently was able to shake him off screen which i imagine probably wasn't even that hard considering none of these inquisitors are interested in capturing him apparently any what the actual [ __ ] the grand inquisitor tells riva that she's reckless which is an odd way of saying efficient she's the only one here who is actually doing anything at all to try to get the job done but for whatever reason the grain inquisitor wants to prolong it which means that riva is impatient and reckless now i don't know about you but if i were darth vader and i had two underlings bickering about how to get the job done i'd probably take the side of the one who actually cares about capturing and killing jedi why is this guy the great inquisitor again why of all of them is he the one they put in charge if he seems to have no interest in his only job this is completely out of character for him when you know him in rebels he never puts the mission at risk for the sake of a cheesy monologue i'm pretty sure the only time he even comes close to that is when he's interrogating kanan but even then that's after kanan's already restrained he's not going anywhere and besides there was actually a point to that speech beyond just being dramatic he was reminding kanan of his past failures and that he couldn't save his master from dying during order 66 because he was trying to get him to reveal what information he has on a larger rebellion the grand inquisitor is a character that's driven and focused he plays with his food sure but only when he knows they're not going anywhere you can fault him for being overconfident i'll grant you that but i'll tell you one thing i can't think of a single time he ever had a jedi directly in his sights and just casually watched him run away while standing there doing nothing i guess we're meant to believe that this is a lesson he learned from being stabbed by riva that he needs to start caring more about hunting jedi i i guess sure whatever we also find out from this scene that riva is hoping to capture obi-wan because she believes it will gain favor with darth vader later we find out that she knows vader is anakin and that's why she's so fixated on obi-wan specifically the grain inquisitor tells ariva that they've been trying for 10 years to find kenobi but have had little success and at this point it's not even worth trying which that's odd i mean dude you said it yourself all you have left are scraps watches after scratch scraps are all we have left i doubt you're so busy that you can at least try putting out some feelers for kenobi when you have the free time which is always especially if you're trying to win over vader but whatever either way i find it so incredibly interesting that they just so happen to be on tatooine while having this conversation there's such a delicious irony about all this now i assumed from the trailers that the inquisitors being on tatooine would either be somehow related to obi-wan or at the very least the inquisitors in question wouldn't be specifically devising a plan to lure him out of hiding but i guess that's what they've done with that interesting this contrivance only exists because later nari is going to wander out into the desert happen upon obi-wan and try to get him back into the fight only for obi-wan to give him the heart-wrenching speech about how the fight is over and the best thing for both of them to do is to bury their heads in the sand but i just feel like there are better ways of getting this information across you could easily have obi-wan run into a jedi at some point along the way somewhere other than tatooine to give this speech and i feel like the result would ultimately be the same but they decided to go a different route so that's all very neat and in case you were too busy thinking about all these things let me remind you that we still have a jedi to catch but once this conversation ends the grand inquisitor also slowly walks away in the wrong direction and what's worse riva just stands there sulking like go after him he's getting away well if you wanted to see how that gets resolved too bad we're cutting to the next scene finally we get our first look at obi-wan as he's working his mundane job harvesting meat out of this giant creature in the sand and i do actually like this scene like i said earlier a lot of this episode shows us obi-wan going about his daily life and this is exactly what i wanted to see more of in this show we see him not so discreetly cut a chunk of meat off of one of the blocks and pocket it so that he can feed his eop later indicating to us that he's barely getting by as is ah yes substance i almost forgot what you looked like i also like when their boss unfairly shorts one of his co-workers out of his rightful pay and you can tell obi-wan wants to do something about it but refrains and we get to see that look in his eye that signifies just how devoid of hope he's really become i'm gonna be raising issues with the way obi-wan's character is handled later but for now it's fine so i'll just move right along i'll even skip past some of these scenes because like i said much of it is just obi-wan going about his day-to-day and it's pretty solid and if you think i'm being unfair by only pointing out the bad stuff let me be clear i'm not necessarily saying any of this stuff with obi-wan is great just that it's serviceable given that it's exactly what you'd actually expect out of this show that's not exactly my standard for excellent writing though i will point out that watching obi-wan buy this toy from ajawa to give to luke later is really touching and i enjoy the added context it provides a new hope to know that that was gifted to him by obi-wan if anything it actually informs the type of approach obi-wan intends to take with how luke grows up trying to make it contrast with anakin's upbringing unlike anakin he wants to make sure that luke is properly fed and sheltered and loved and given toys to spark his imagination again that's all fine nothing outstanding as far as writing is concerned because it's exactly what you'd expect from a series with this premise but i don't take issue with it and at this point i guess that's saying a lot unfortunately after a nice reprieve we're back to the schluck as we watch obi-wan leave the lars homestead for the night he's approached by none other than nari who apparently did manage to escape the inquisitors though he mentions to obi-wan that he had thought he spotted him back in town but he couldn't be sure and this tells us that he was still in mos eisley when obi-wan went there after work to get his eop all while the inquisitors were hunting him well i guess we can't actually assume they were hunting him for all we know they were sitting at a cantina playing cards while all this was happening regardless i guess he managed to follow obi-wan without him noticing otherwise it's extremely convenient that he just happened to find him all the way out here isn't it and i'm pretty sure we're going with option two here because this wide shot here as kenobi leaves town indicates that nobody's following him and damn wait until riva finds out that the very jedi she's specifically hunting was so close that had she actually done her [ __ ] job and chased after nari she might have accidentally happened upon him that's extremely unlucky in any case i've already gone over the specific contrivance that allows this conversation to even happen so i won't rehash it but i can't help but find myself pulled right out of the experience because of it and that's a shame considering it's a scene that for all intents and purposes is actually not that bad nari wants obi-wan to help him against the empire but obi-wan knows better than to get involved so he tells nari to run and hide because the fight is done again we're gonna be getting into just how badly they mess up obi-wan's character at later points in the story and when we do i'm going to be referring back to these scenes in episode 1 where he went mostly unscathed so just keep that in mind it is at this point when we're treated to a change in scenery as we find ourselves on the planet alderaan and for those of you already having book of boba fett ptsd flashbacks keep your pants on this scene will eventually be relevant unfortunately we get to follow a young princess leia running through the forest and i don't have much problem with this scene it's fine though before we continue i will point out that this show takes place a year after solo so make of that what you will i suppose the next day obi-wan goes into town again after work which i think was a bit stupid on his part since he knows there are inquisitors hunting a jedi and he was already recognized by someone once but alas here he is and he's confronted by owen lars who throws the toy he gave luke back at him he tells obi-wan to stay away from them and that they don't need any of his help obi-wan asks how luke is doing to which owen responds that he doesn't care how he's doing he just wants to know if luke is showing any innate force abilities yet obi-wan persists that when the time comes luke must be trained and owen spits back like you trained his father i find it interesting that obi-wan says he intends to train luke despite the fact that we find out later he's spent the last 10 years completely shutting himself off from the force but self-doubt i don't know whatever the [ __ ] we're gonna get into it just give it time another thing this scene brings up that i'm gonna save for later is the next line where owen reminds obi-wan that anakin is dead and it's best if he leaves them alone yeah dead again i'm going to get into it but i'm totally fine with owen believing anakin is dead immediately after this interaction the inquisitors are back i'm uh i'm not sure where they went or what they've been doing since yesterday but now they're back and they're rounding up the citizens to find the missing jedi i find it funny that obi-wan is able to just hide behind this wall here and none of the inquisitors think to check like damn owen probably could have just hidden with him and then we wouldn't have had riva single him out specifically wait why did she single him out specifically in this scene she seems to sense that owen knows something about a jedi hiding on this planet and she threatens to [ __ ] kill him and his family that's extremely unlucky and if this ended up being the reason obi-wan had to get involved i'd be calling this a contrivance and a half it's not though fifth brother stops her from doing anything rash which again i find really weird because once again she's the only one trying to actually get anything done and that's apparently a bad thing but i guess it's lucky for the fate of the entire [ __ ] galaxy that this guy's an idiot and as it stands this wasn't a contrivance that's fundamental to the plot of the show but it still is one because of all the people in this town riva just happens to single out the one person who is not only harboring a jedi but the very same one that she's specifically looking for unrelated to her current mission man we've got all sorts of coincidences today don't we i also feel it's worth mentioning that riva is shown to have the ability to extract thoughts from people's minds later on in the show so i don't see why she didn't do it here to owen since she was so adamant that this random [ __ ] farmer knew more than he was letting on if she had then so much of everything would have been [ __ ] so i guess it's a good thing that she's a [ __ ] idiot too i guess i also have to wonder what the huts think about all this because this one lady actually makes a pretty good point before riva gets angry and cuts off her hand this is the outer rim you have no rights here we're not under the empire the book of boba fett tells us that jabba's territories lie in moses but i mean there were other huts on tatooine what about gardula the empire really doesn't have a strong footing in this part of the galaxy and i would really think that the gangsters in control of this world might have a thing or two to say about these inquisitors just showing up and accosting citizens but i guess not either way they just fly away without having accomplished their mission and where are you going why don't you people care about catching this jedi it's kind of hard for me to take these guys seriously as an opposing force when they very clearly just do not give a [ __ ] also again i just really love that riva's obsessed with finding obi-wan and she and fifth brother are talking about how they're never gonna find him meanwhile he's like right around the corner that's pretty awkward you still want kenobi but he's gone and you won't find him we spent the last 10 years looking for him i just don't see why we couldn't be getting these scenes on an entirely different planet so that it's less contrived but then just like whiplash we're thrust right back to alderaan where we get to see basil oregano played by jimmy smits he's leia's non-biological father c-3po and r2d2 showed up and i clown in this scene leia is talking to one of her cousins who's being a total dick he tells her that according to his father her parents don't ever let her leave the planet because she's not a real organa and they don't want anyone to know about her which i find to be a bit perplexing the reason this confuses me is because i don't know if that's actually what the show wants us to believe or if it's just meant to be something that some bratty kids said to get under leia's skin because i think if bail and brija didn't want people to know about leia then they wouldn't display her for all the world to see right like why is she at this gala and not being hidden away in her room somewhere i'm bringing up this issue now because it will be relevant in just a bit but i feel like now is a better time to explore it because it doesn't make any sense the organas make it no secret that leia exists or that she was adopted otherwise how would riva even know about her how do you explain this scene where she's waving to the citizens of alderaan as the crown princess of their world if she's not meant to be known about and why wouldn't they want anyone to know about her i doubt the empire finding out that they adopted a child is gonna make them suspicious she's actually anakin's daughter why would that be the conclusion anyone jumps to unless they have a meta knowledge of the story and so you might be chalking it up to just something that a stupid kid said which means it doesn't actually have to be true he just thinks it for whatever reason and that's all fine and good but i have seen people use this as an excuse as to why later on in the episode bale tells obi-wan that her kidnapping must be kept under wraps and trust me we're gonna get to that soon but i just find this particular excuse to be a pretty lackluster one that doesn't make any sense if you want me to believe that leia's existence is not meant to be public information then don't blatantly show me that it is that's all i'm saying anyway as a rebuttal leia gives her cousin an insightful speech about how he's scared of his father which is why he repeats things he says without actually knowing what they mean and overall his attempts to intimidate people are born of his own insecurities this promptly shuts him up and causes bale to smirk proudly at his daughter and this scene does a great job establishing that even at 10 years old she's still that precocious silver-tongued rebel that we all know and love hopefully later points in the show don't come in and tell us anything otherwise that would be embarrassing i read that jedi can make things float make me float what so then obviously her parents have to give her a stern talking to for being mean to her cousin and we get a scene that i actually love where bail assures leia that she's his daughter and that makes her just as much an organa as any flesh and blood child would be some things are stronger than blood and all that and i really enjoy this scene it's actually good i feel this is worth highlighting because as i was saying earlier there are some scenes in this episode that i don't hate but i'm not gonna go out of my way to praise them for doing exactly what should be expected given the premise of the series this is probably the first example of a scene in this show that goes above and beyond and is actually genuinely well written of course stories are more than just a few good moments in isolation and unfortunately there's more to talk about here so bail leaves her alone after this and she runs off into the woods again which is when the actual plot of the show finally kicks off she gets captured by these goons in a really funny chase scene these grown adults are trying their very best to make it look plausible that a small child can outrun all of them and it's just so goofy there are a few scenes like this in the coming episodes and i literally can't think of any other explanation than bad directing sorry again deb what i especially find so funny about this scene is that you didn't even need the whole chase at all the ultimate result of this scene is leia getting a bag thrown over her head signifying her capture and that could just as easily have been accomplished by having her run into this guy take a few steps back and one of the goons sneaks up behind her and bags her it's as simple as that but either way lei has been kidnapped and bale and brija decide to call obi-wan obi-wan asks them why they don't inform the senate and bale says that this needs to be kept secret which why i already went over how it can't be because the public can't be allowed to know she exists because that's just clearly not the [ __ ] case i mean unless you want me to believe that bail organa somehow thinks leia's existence is a secret even after she's kidnapped by people who clearly know about her alternatively bale might not want this information getting out because maybe he thinks the empire might figure out she's anakin's daughter i don't know how you would come to that conclusion but it's really the only explanation i can think of if anything the empire knowing about leia's kidnapping would increase your chances of finding her by a significant margin given that you're an official member of the galactic government that's in league with the empire we learned later that her capture was orchestrated by riva but she did so in an unofficial capacity without even the support of her boss which is why she had to resort to hired guns rather than a unit of stormtroopers or just herself so you can't really use that as a reason why bale can't expend every resource the empire has to offer in order to rescue her if anything riva's goals here are oriented around the assumption that the ends justify the means she thinks that by capturing leia she'll be able to lure kenobi out of hiding to come rescue her and she figures that once this goal is accomplished the grand inquisitor will have no grounds to punish her because vader will have seen her actions as necessary if bale hadn't gone to obi-wan and obi-wan hadn't shown up to rescue her then riva's entire plan would have fallen apart which means that if bale had just gone to the senate for help finding her then once the empire discovered what riva had done something which we see that they do independently of obi-wan's actions then they would order her to give leia back and then reprimand her to the harshest extent and of course you might be arguing that there's no way that bale would have known any of this but that's exactly my point we're looking at this from an objective perspective having seen all the moving parts ahead of time that the characters are not privy to as far as the organas are aware their child was kidnapped by some unknown faction presumably to hold her for ransom and if anything employing the full might of the empire or even just their own personal guard as obi-wan also suggests is the logical thing to do in response to this especially when as we're going to find out in a bit you have a way of tracking the exact ship of the people who took her straight to daiu he's headed for daru they hid their signature behind the freight transport the ship is on its way there now if you sent a full brigade of stormtroopers into this meth lab they would have successfully been able to recover leia without any real issue and they would have been able to do so within the confines of the law which is much more than can be said about obi-wan and then the conflict would be over like sure to an objective omniscient viewer it would make logical sense for bail to employ his army or enlist help from the galactic military and then there would be no conflict and no drama leia would be rescued the conflict would be over and obi-wan would never leave tatooine and there would be no story the same goes for hiring a bounty hunter which obi-wan also suggests even if we take seriously that they're concerned about leia's kidnapping becoming public information you could at least hire someone to rescue her in a discreet fashion who was also able to operate freely without imperial scrutiny unlike obi-wan some have argued that bale and brija don't feel like they can trust a bounty hunter who are typically seen as low lives with dubious morals but that's not intrinsically the case as we've seen some bounty hunters are simply honest people trying to make a living with the skills they have and at this point desperate times call for desperate measures besides even if we were dealing with someone as ruthless as cad bane you'd be hard-pressed to find any bounty hunter who wouldn't want to rescue leia and get her home as safely as possible when dealing with the prospect of a handsome reward as well as being in good standing with the monarchs of a beautiful planet such as alderaan all i'm saying is they could have at least tried i would be much more accepting of them contacting obi-wan for this if say they hired a handful of bounty hunters said to be the best of the best and then had the hunters severed heads delivered back to them not only would this discourage any other bounty hunters from taking the job but it would prompt bale to believe that the only one suited to deal with these kidnappers is someone as skilled as a jedi knight all that to say there are certainly better ways of writing it to where this conflict is believable their main justification is that only obi-wan knows just how important leia is and that even though he has a duty to protect luke he has an equal responsibility to his sister who is just as potentially important to saving the galaxy and that's fair but again just because your own personal guard wouldn't realize that leia might end up saving the universe that doesn't mean they wouldn't understand her importance at least on a surface level she is after all their princess any one of them would lay down their lives in order to rescue her and even if we have to resort to a jedi and specifically one who understands why leia is significant then why not ask yoda at this point in the timeline he's just kind of chilling on dagobah doing [ __ ] all i've seen your daily routine you're not busy why not ask him instead of pulling obi-wan away from his responsibility to protect luke but naturally obi-wan refuses and tells them to find someone else as leia will ultimately be better off the next day he goes into town where a crowd of people are looking up at nari's corpse suspended by these little wire things call this a nitpick all you will but it's pretty obvious to me that they clearly shot this with him being hung by a noose given that his head isn't slumped over like it would be and they decided to cg it out in place of all this noise which is fine i suppose wouldn't want it getting too dark or we might not be able to play it on disney plus but it looks really goofy and it does wonders in revealing the mindset of the people working on this show you may not know this but this show was actually meant to be a lot more bleak and depressing than it ended up as evidently they decided a character study about a broken man who's lost everything and has to deal with his past mistakes isn't quite family friendly enough so we can't have that it's such a shame this moment also hits obi-wan right in the fields as he starts to wonder if maybe he could have made a difference had he gone to help we're meant to be developing how he comes to finally make the decision to go rescue leia despite that putting everything in jeopardy so we had to have this moment this was the emotional payoff born of the contrivance that allowed obi-wan and nari to have that conversation earlier he then goes back home and finds bale waiting for him in his cave and just this show the show is testing me become agitated so obi-wan told him to [ __ ] off and bale's big bright idea was to go to tatooine in person to try to convince him to rescue leia putting everything in jeopardy and risking exposure it's a good thing riva who knows bale is friends with obi-wan and is in fact relying on him to bring him out of hiding didn't decide to have him followed that would have been the smart thing to do right after kidnapping his daughter and it would have led you straight to the grand prize cutting out the middleman entirely but she didn't so thank god i guess i know bale couldn't have known riva was using him to find obi-wan but it is still really stupid to pay him a personal visit he's a famous senator what if someone recognized him what if someone somehow followed him and found him visiting a mysterious man hiding out in a cave don't you think the empire might want to know about that i cannot believe bale would be this incompetent i know he's desperate but as we've already gone over obi-wan is basically the last person to ask for help so i don't [ __ ] buy that either either way he manages to convince obi-wan to help him by basically saying yeah i know you [ __ ] up but [ __ ] happens now will you please help me and just like that obi-wan's on board as the scene establishes the real reason he didn't want to go save leia wasn't due to his responsibility to be there for luke i can't leave the boy this isn't about the boy and you know it no no no it was because he doubted his own abilities but bale says that there's no one he trusts more with his daughter's life than obi-wan i've been waiting to talk about how exactly obi-wan is characterized in the show so far until it was more relevant and as we go and find ourselves with more examples of him acting out of character i'm gonna get into it more but i want to develop part of it now because this was the first sign for me that something was wrong everything he'd done throughout this episode not helping his co-worker refusing to take up arms with a fellow jedi initially refusing to save leia had all been done because obi-wan knows he can't he has a duty to protect luke and to eventually train him and no matter how much he might want to no matter how unjust a circumstance is he knows better than to get involved because to do so is to put everything at risk i think i said in my other video there were theories going around before the show even came out saying that obi-wan was going to leave tatooine to save leia and it would have nothing at all to do with luke and i remember not wanting that to be the case because i really just do not believe obi-wan would do anything that risks exposure or death if it doesn't in some way serve to protect luke i know leia is just as important as he is but again bale has other options besides if obi-wan dies saving leia then there's no one around to train either of them even if he succeeds in rescuing her well i mean there is yoda but if this show is not going to acknowledge him as an option then neither am i and that's all without getting into the fact that he could be captured and that could potentially lead vader right to luke's doorstep and he simply wouldn't risk that without good enough reason and i'm sorry i don't think rescuing leia is a good enough reason but for now i'll put a pin in this because like i said the further along we go the worse it's gonna get so obi-wan agrees to go and he goes out in the middle of the desert to dig his lightsaber out of the sand i find it really amusing that there are now two different times where anakin's lightsaber was buried underneath the sands of tatooine but that's neither here nor there he then strides into town and gets on a public transport of some kind brandishing his lightsaber for everyone to see why why this is such a small moment in the episode and yet there's just so much wrong with it so the lady asks if he's coming or not and not only is he hanging his lightsaber on his belt but he like moves his cloak aside right in front of her as if he just doesn't [ __ ] care who sees it my dude my guy this is the weapon of a jedi knight you might as well wear a neon sign that says enemy of the empire for [ __ ] sake there are ways of taking your lightsaber apart and reassembling it when the time comes that you might need it but you honestly probably wouldn't even need to do that if you weren't getting on a public transport don't they check for weapons don't they recognize lightsabers as weapons and confiscate them accordingly they deliberately skip past showing him getting onto this flight because if they had to [ __ ] show it then he would have been promptly arrested and become a prisoner of the empire which would have ruined everything maybe he mind tricked the conductor i don't [ __ ] know i mean the one in the book of boba fett who stopped den was a droid which means that wouldn't have worked but maybe the one working on tatooine is an actual person who [ __ ] cares i mean if that's the case all they'd have to do was show it and this wouldn't be nearly as big a deal still though there's a reason that in a new hope he hired a cd criminal for a pilot to take him to alderaan because he knew han wasn't going to ask him questions or check for weapons as long as the price was right myself the boy two droids and no questions asked i don't see why he couldn't have just done the same here hell why didn't bale just lend him a ship to use if bale is sending him on this mission i would expect him to provide whatever resources might be necessary to get the job done which means a reliable ship some money and probably even a change of clothes so that he doesn't wander around everywhere dressed as a jedi but bale just doesn't wonderful meanwhile leia's in the bad guy ship and she's struggling to get free of her binds but aha lola's here have we i established too lola is right i mostly skipped past the earlier leia scenes but basically she has this cute little merchandising op um droid this little droid and apparently when she was taken by the kidnappers it wasn't confiscated off of her person which i find interesting and also incredibly stupid as we see with this scene lola is equipped with this little power saw and it almost cuts her free before the head kidnapper comes in and stops it he grabs lola and throws it to the ground breaking it i just want you guys to keep track of this droid throughout this video because this is not the last time we see lola i [ __ ] hate lola also leia tells the kidnapper guy that her father will send a whole army after them to rescue her and i think it's funny how we as the audience are meant to view this as a naive and childish thing for her to think even though she'd be completely right in assuming that bale would send his most trusted enforcers to rescue her silly child it's right after this that the head kidnapper guy goes and opens a call to his benefactor and it's none other than riva yeah i already said that earlier so this wasn't a big reveal but now we can finally talk about riva's plan so basically she wants to capture obi-wan and bring him to vader so that he'll recognize her and promote her to grand inquisitor and apparently by studying the jedi archives she was able to find out that obi-wan and bale were friends back during the days of the old republic now that's a pretty weak connection she's making and she's doing a few leaps in logic because of it so it's lucky for her that she was right i guess so she decides to kidnap leia so that bale will ask obi-wan to go rescue her and since we've already gone over why him picking obi-wan for the task should have been the last-ditch effort this is also extremely lucky on her part and it's lucky that bale was able to track the signature of the ship the kidnappers were using to get to daiyu otherwise he and obi-wan would have been sitting around with their thumbs up their asses trying to figure out where leia was taken and then riva's plan falls apart my point is she's making a lot of pretty baseless assumptions and has a pretty weak plan but thanks to a little thing called convenience we're right where we need to be for the story to happen you gotta love it but it's worth mentioning that because this flimsy connection between obi-wan and bale that riva somehow happened upon turned out to actually strike oil the empire should now be fully aware that the organas are jedi sympathizers and it even goes as far as they knew where one of the most infamous jedi of all time was hiding out and how to contact him and that pretty much [ __ ] with everything because now there's no getting back to the status quo of the original trilogy it's all [ __ ] now in a new hope it's definitely implied that vader suspected leia and her family of having at least some involvement with the rebellion don't act so surprised your highness you weren't on any mercy mission this time several transmissions were beamed to the ship by rebel spies but was never able to move against them because i assumed that palpatine would demand he find proof before doing so remember at the time the imperial senate was still a thing and palpatine did still have to answer to them the chancellor will not be able to control the thousands of star systems without keeping the senate intact holding her is dangerous word of this gets out it could generate sympathy for the rebellion in the senate so arresting a high-ranking senator for treason against the empire needs to be justified with irrefutable evidence which vader finally managed to get a hold of when he caught leia red-handed with the death star plans but now you're telling me that they knew bale had a direct link to obi-wan kenobi for 10 years and said nothing it's provable under any reasonable doubt which i would think is grounds for a rest and probably even execution at minimum we're looking at him being removed from office and the senate and alderaan would probably have been made an example of as the empire turned it into a mining world or labor camp or something like that there's definitely no way bale's standing with the empire remains intact after this and what's ironic here is that if bale had allowed it to become public information that leia was kidnapped then he would at least have plausible deniability here he could reasonably plead the case that obi-wan must have heard about her kidnapping on the news somewhere and came out of hiding to rescue her but because he wanted to keep things under wraps the only way obi-wan would have known about it would have been through the organas so there's literally no world where they get out of this it's all [ __ ] broken also and maybe this is a bit out there but if vader came to learn that bale had a direct link to obi-wan for all those years and he knows bale was a good friend of padmes and he knows that bail and brija adopted a baby 10 years ago around the same time that his own child would have been born had padme survived then wouldn't he at least suspect that leia is his daughter especially after this scene i feel like at the very least he would get her dna tested or something just to make sure vader's not an idiot he absolutely should have put two and two together but i guess not and you know what with everything i've just said in mind i think after this conflict is over the best thing for the organist to do should be to go into hiding i mean even if we pretend that their status within the senate is somehow unscathed the empire at least still knows that leia is a person who for whatever reason is of interest to obi-wan taking her prisoner and threatening her safety is now confirmed to be a guaranteed way to bait obi-wan out of hiding and they know exactly where she lives so i don't see why they don't just do it again in any case that's the end of episode 1 aka the best episode on the show simply by default i'm telling you now it only gets worse from here episode 2 starts off with obi-wan arriving on daiyu and from here he loses the tracking signature of the kidnapper ship because apparently all signals in or out are blocked for privacy reasons our convenient tracker that allowed bale to figure out where leia was going is now no longer an option for reasons that i find to be a bit arbitrary but now this means that instead of just immediately going where he needs to go he has to kind of wander around for a bit until he stumbles into the plot guys i promise this is this is good writing now there are definitely ways to give your main protagonist a challenge to overcome but i think it's a pretty weak obstacle when you tell me that his magic tracking device is just suddenly no longer an option and you leave him completely directionless for the next few minutes this is treated like a video game quest obi-wan just has to go around talking with whichever npc is interactable until one of them gives him information on how to progress the story and i find it pretty sloppy and wouldn't you know it he runs into this npc character who gives him a special item for no reason at all and it's something which might come in handy for him later on in the quest very neat anyway he's finally approached by some kid on the streets who tells him about a jedi in the area who can help him find the missing daughter that he's looking for obi-wan follows the kid back to the supposed jedi and were introduced to hajja estri a con man masquerading as a jedi in order to scam helpless people in need of safe passage off world now here's the thing i like hajja as a concept i think it's interesting to see how some people might exploit the myths of the fabled jedi knights for their own monetary gain we caught a small glimpse of that in the clone wars when cadbane was pretending to be a jedi to kidnap young force-sensitive children for palpatine it was explored a little bit in a mace windu comic a few years back but i like what they do with it here he's a greedy and selfish man taking money from people who need it more than he does in exchange for a service he could easily give for free out of the kindness of his heart as any actual jedi would my only real criticism here would be that if you're gonna run this con maybe try something other than a jedi i mean you do realize you're currently being ruled by the empire who hunt and kill jedi right and there's established to be a strong stormtrooper force on your planet so i don't know i'm just spitballing here maybe cut out the middle man and just say hey lady i have a ship i can take you off world all you have to do is pay me the results is ultimately the same i bring this up because if haja was smart and had decided to run his khan any other way it's entirely possible that obi-wan never would have been intrigued enough to investigate him he never would have found leia or at least not as quickly and he wouldn't have found a way off world after all was said and done he would surely have been captured had haja gone with any other con so once again we're dealing with insane amounts of luck generated by characters acting stupidly regardless he watches the false jedi scam a mother and her force-sensitive child and he waits until they leave to confront him about being a fraud he gets pretty high and mighty judging hajja for taking money from a desperate impoverished family but like i didn't see you doing anything to stop him you could have confronted him while they were still there and made him help the mother and son for free but you waited until after they'd already paid in gone so i was a little weird i didn't like that very much and gee i sure hope obi-wan doesn't do anything else that might be considered morally questionable on an unrelated note he pulls a gun on haja and threatens to kill him if he doesn't give him the information he wants his logic here is pretty faulty he calls hajja a rat and surmises that because rats tend to know more about the sewer than most that he must know where leia's kidnappers are hiding and he's right what are the odds i really love it when things just kind of happen randomly by chance and aren't built on cause and effect it's my favorite so hajja sends him to gustavo fring's meth lab and obi-wan walks right into riva's trap entering a cell and finding a decoy leia awaiting him before being ambushed by the kidnappers and pinned against the wall the head batty gets a hold of his lightsaber with little difficulty which makes sense because obi-wan made no effort whatsoever to conceal it in any kind of reasonable way and so we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle don't we i mean surely obi wan's [ __ ] right he was clearly out of practice while fighting those goons earlier so i doubt he'll be getting out of this one without some of that clever maneuvering he's typically known for yeah yeah we probably should do that or remember that quest item that he was gifted earlier yeah uh this is this is what that was for this was the gun to that scene's chekhov or however that writing tool goes i mean i guess the one thing they have going for them is that they actually bothered to have a setup and payoff which is pretty impressive for disney star wars still though setup and payoff only really works if the setup makes any [ __ ] sense and this one doesn't she just kind of gave it to him for free like like for no reason it was really bizarre this is not a myth after this he finds the real leia in a different cell and gets her out of there just before riva shows up and finds her goons shit-faced in the fake cell your father sent me i'm here to help you where's the army good question and i guess now's about the time to address the fact that this show has now canonically established the fact that obi-wan and leia know each other and have met by the time of a new hope i take issue with this it's a little weird that leia decided to mention his service to her father in the clone wars during her message rather than the much more recent and personal thing that happened between them both and obviously i don't fault a new hope for not keeping accurate to a stupid-ass show that decides to retroactively change things about the established world 45 years after the fact but it would have made a lot more sense in universe for her to say something like ben it's leia years ago you rescued me from those inquisitors and now i need your help again or something like that also she doesn't really seem to mourn his death or react to it at all if anything she was closer to him than luke so it should have been him comforting her right i think the only context this adds in a positive sense is that it now makes much more sense that she would name her son after him before it was kind of weird because she seemingly only knew him through reputation like i'm sure luke probably told her what little he knew about him and maybe her father might have given her stories and about his feats during the war but he was essentially a stranger to her and i don't think han cared enough about him in the brief time that he knew him to what meant to be the namesake of his only child it's just a bit odd to name your son after a guy you barely know but however you feel on the subject that's just how it happened now obi-wan rescues leia and immediately after we get this moment where obi-wan is changing out of his meth lab disguise and back into his far more conspicuous jedi attire and he lets his lightsaber just hang there completely visible for everyone to view at their leisure obi-wan for the love of god put your [ __ ] shirt down interestingly leia points out the weapon and he tells her not to draw attention to it yeah obi-wan we sure wouldn't want that you know a lot of people told me to just be grateful that we were getting an obi-wan show as if that just intrinsically means that it is without flaw because the main character is daddy kenobi space jesus man hello there but [ __ ] this show it really thinks it's gonna tell me that obi-wan [ __ ] kenobi is stupider than a ten-year-old child and i refuse to buy that [ __ ] [ __ ] you i actually don't even really know why obi-wan bothered to bring the stupid thing with him anyway if he couldn't be [ __ ] to find a decent place to hide it i mean as far as he and bale knew this was a simple enough rescue mission against some regular gun-toting criminals looking to make a quick buck ransoming a child of royal descent he seems handy enough with a blaster so why even risk exposure by walking around with the one thing that immediately tells everyone in your immediate surroundings that you're a goddamn jedi just take your blaster i have a strange feeling the only reason he brought it was because without it it couldn't be used in any of the marketing and because then we couldn't have a certain duel with a certain someone as a matter of fact many of the stupid decisions he makes throughout this entire series are done for marketing reasons it would have made much more logical sense for obi-wan to leave his lightsaber behind on tatooine so as not to risk exposing himself as a jedi but then we couldn't have a duel against vader and we couldn't market it as the rematch of the century it would have actually been smart for obi-wan to keep this other disguise during moments where stealth is key and to pretty much just never have him dressed like a jedi or show his face unless absolutely necessary but then we wouldn't get to market the iconic obi-wan kenobi look that'll get viewers excited to see the show i [ __ ] hate that we live in a world where marketing to appeal to larger audiences who only care about fan service and thing i like as in thing i'm watching is being prioritized over good storytelling this is certainly nothing new but that doesn't make me any less angry about it so then riva is confronted by the grand inquisitor and his lackeys and how did they get here apparently they found out about her playing to kidnap leia somehow and managed to figure out that she was on daiu i mean i doubt riva told them to come here and the only other people who knew where leia was were obi-wan and bale and i know they didn't tell the inquisitors so i like to think that they just like to follow riva around to bully her for no reason that honestly seems consistent with this watered-down imposter of a great character in any case they're here now and the grand inquisitor is quite displeased with riva for kidnapping an imperial senator's daughter which makes sense but it's not like he's gonna tell her to release her or anything of that sort it's not like he knows she's already escaped reeva hasn't told him anything yet but he hasn't cared about anything up until this point so why start now i guess he then starts berating her for her brash recklessness again and reminds her that she is from the gutter and is therefore beneath them all and that rank may have gained her station but it will only go so far now this is all stuff that she would presumably know being that she's the character in question that they're talking about but see we the audience might not have been aware in which case it makes total sense to convey this information by simply having one character state it to another character who already knows it and we gotta plant the seeds for riva's characterization you understand all the power in the world can't mask the stench beneath maybe that stench is your failure so then rupert orders thing one and thing two to lock down the city so that he may capture kenobi himself riva tries to protest that this whole operation was her idea to which the grand imposter tells her to stand down and that she'll be dealt with when they return we're setting up for this [ __ ] to happen by showcasing how much of a dick the other inquisitors are to reva for no reason like i know they're evil and [ __ ] but god damn all the other inquisitors seem pretty chill with each other or at least harbor a grudging respect for one another i just want to know whose cheerios she pissed in i like to think they all just hate her because they really like their cushy little lives working for the empire with a whole 401k and a dental plan which is why they never actually bothered trying to catch any jedi and then riva comes along and is actually trying to get [ __ ] done and they just can't stand it she's like that one kid in class who reminds the teacher about the homework when nobody else but her actually did it and that would be a wonderful little story if this were an episode of the office but i happen to want the motivations of characters to make sense and i honestly don't see what the grand inquisitor thinks he's gaining by just overtly being an [ __ ] to someone who works for him not to victim blame or anything but it's like he [ __ ] asked to get stabbed also don't think i'm just gonna skip past the fact that they're now telling me the grand inquisitor is a pompous glory hog he's fine with giving dramatic speeches and then pointlessly letting his quarry go as long as he gets to take credit for the final result that's such a fundamental misread of his character that i'm starting to realize it's actually not a joke not a single person who worked on the show has seen rebels you can't convince me otherwise wait a minute pablo hidalgo was a lore advisor on this show wasn't this the guy who was on like every episode of rebels recon then again i really shouldn't be surprised he's pretty good at conveniently forgetting the things that he says if it fits the agenda of whoever is currently filling his greedy little pockets either way dude that's a pretty [ __ ] embarrassing thing to have on your resume given some of the things that this show fundamentally contradicts about the original star wars trilogy but at this point i'm just assuming he's never actually seen those nobody who worked on the show has they just read the plot summaries on wookipedia and figured they were all set right after this riva puts out an apb for obi-wan and she decides not to tell any of the other inquisitors about this which i thought was a bit weird but apparently she was right to do so because later when the grain inquisitor finds out about this he gets like [ __ ] angry my dude she's making your job easier why why are you so [ __ ] stupid when obi-wan finds this out he makes a face that kind of gives off slightly inconvenienced vibes rather than oh god i'm [ __ ] and he goes to a merchant to buy some clothes for leia to disguise herself in he tells her that their cover story is that they're farmers from the planet tall and that she's his daughter to which she retorts granddaughter maybe what nothing oh yeah leia she's pretty insufferable in this show and in this episode particularly like i don't know what the [ __ ] the writers were trying to do with her but they did not do a good job of it remember how i was talking about earlier how she told off her cousin by being observant and intelligent showcasing that she was very precocious given her young age well yeah all of that just decides to kind of go out the window at certain points for like no reason she keeps shouting out loud [ __ ] like why aren't you using your lightsaber it's because you're not a real jedi isn't it i read that jedi can make things float make me float what i wanna float see the writers want leia to be this child prodigy to better reflect the version of her we knew in the ot who was cool and didn't take anyone's [ __ ] and seemed to always know what she was doing at all times through any adversity even the loss of her home planet but the thing is it's pretty hard to write a clever character when you yourself are a [ __ ] imbecile case in point leia she's smart and insightful when they want her to be usually by having her point out really obvious things but it's more impressive when she does it because she's a child but when the plot demands that she be stupid then all that just kind of gets thrown into the [ __ ] trash compactor and as we're going to get into in just a second the plot will soon require her to be very very stupid how old are you 10. i don't sound like you're 10. now some people have defended the way leia has handled in this series by saying oh come on now she's just a kid kids aren't expected to be smart all the time yeah that's a pretty bad excuse to try to cover up piss-poor writing and as a former child myself i take personal offense from the notion that just because she's a kid she's somehow not able to understand the severity of the situation she's in she was just kidnapped by bad people and her rescuer is a jedi knight who are the most hunted people in the entire galaxy she's in very real danger and should be trying her damnedest not to draw any attention to herself but instead she's the exact opposite she's cavalier even she genuinely just does not give a [ __ ] apparently also i don't typically make this disclaimer because i assume we're all reasonable adults who understand the concept of separating characters from actors but on the very small chance that vivian lyra blair happens upon this video and makes it all the way to this point i know i came off a little harsh just now you did a great job and you have a very promising career ahead of you my issues are simply with the way they wrote the character you play that's all also you really shouldn't be watching this i say a lot of swear words in this video anyway obi-wan and leia stop into an alleyway that's [ __ ] obi-wan kenobi and while obi-wan is dragging this body leia [ __ ] pulls out lola remember when i told you to keep track of this droid yeah i'm not kidding so after she was somehow allowed to keep it by her kidnappers and then almost broke free of her restraints with its help it was thrown on the floor and broken and this happened on the kidnapper ship mind you they hadn't even arrived on daiyu yet so this means that after that leia was able to just scoop the damn thing up off the floor either that or they just decided to let her keep it and both options are laughable but i suppose if i'm forced to pick between the two i'd prefer to go with that they just somehow didn't see her pick it up when taking her out of the ship rather than that they just gave it back to her keep an eye on that thing i'm telling you it's important i let your parents know you're safe wait what i thought this episode established earlier that communications on this planet were impossible for arbitrary privacy reasons that was the entire reason obi-wan had to find hajja and get the information from him because he could no longer track the ship of leia's kidnappers can you please keep track of your own script for [ __ ] sake so then the dude that obi-wan knocked out little bounty puck thing starts going off all of a sudden displaying a stock image of obi-wan's character model from battlefront 2017 and obi-wan goes to turn it off which is when leia sees it and deduces that there's some kind of bounty put on obi-wan now i need you to really follow along here because the absolute leaps in logic she's about to make are incredible and honestly it's gonna take some seriously hardcore mental parkour to keep up that's what you were hiding you're the reason i'm here they took me to get to you holy [ __ ] leia wow she just made so many major inferences based on absolutely nothing in order to come to that conclusion leia did you just forget that obi-wan rescued you their captive if they put a bounty on his head that would make perfect sense considering you're a pretty high level target why would you just assume that your kidnapping was meant to lure him out of hiding i mean she's actually correct in her assessment but this is the equivalent of you somehow getting the right answer to an equation but your work is just a very descriptive oil painting of patrick starr for some reason because of this leia doesn't believe that obi-wan is a jedi which is pretty baseless but hey she's just a kid [ __ ] off she has no reason to believe any of this but like i was saying earlier this is one of those moments where the show needs her to be dumb so that the plot can happen which means she's gonna see that obi-wan is a wanted man and despite the fact that he's a [ __ ] jedi knight somehow didn't expect this look we gotta get her to not trust him somehow so that a chase scene can ensue and why bother putting in the legwork to have that happen naturally it's not like story progression is built on logical cause and effect or anything so anyway leia runs away like a [ __ ] idiot and uh we get this really awkward chase scene that's akin to the one in the previous episode only this one is arguably even more absurd because it's [ __ ] obi-wan kenobi jedi knight and he can't keep up with a [ __ ] child he tries to grab her at one point and you watch in real time as ewan mcgregor tries to convincingly allow her to escape despite the fact that all he has to do is you know move his fingers this chase scene is so [ __ ] dumb like just grab her she's a little girl she somehow gets so far ahead of him that she's able to climb all the way up this ladder and wait why is she going up there leia why are you putting yourself at a disadvantage by climbing up on the [ __ ] rooftops i guess she was assuming she'd managed to lose obi-wan up there which i suppose is fair considering at this rate she could outrun [ __ ] barry allen but he does follow her up the ladder and now she's jumping from rooftop to rooftop peter parker style to get away from him what the [ __ ] is happening right now also did i mention that because leia's [ __ ] stupid she ran right into a bounty hunter a minute ago forcing obi-wan to shoot the guy and now every bounty hunter knows exactly where they are so a couple of them are just also on the roofs now but you see they're on different roofs and they're shooting at obi-wan and obi-wan's ducking for cover but leia just keeps on trucking she doesn't get shot or even stunned at any point though by now it would honestly be ignorant of me to assume a blaster bolt could possibly catch up to her riva's also here but she's on some rooftops that are kind of far away but she hears the commotion from way off in the distance and she starts hardcore parkouring her way over to them and it just looks really [ __ ] goofy oh and this guy he's uh he's also up on the rooftops everybody's up on the rooftops it's just the place to be i find it so weird that they decided to even include shots of him here because he doesn't end up doing anything as we're gonna get into in just a minute this whole sequence is edited in a way that i can't help feeling like a scene was definitely cut for now though leia's still running and she comes to the edge of a roof with a pretty wide gap between it and the necks with a pretty steep drop below her whatever will she do to get away from the guy she mistrusts for no reason despite him actively working to save her life well she just kind of walks off like obviously they didn't actually have this little girl jump off the side of a building this was all done on green screen but they could have at least tried making it look like she's jumping like she just she just kind of steps off the side of the okay uh obi-wan once this is all said and done and you get her safely back to alderaan you should probably let her parents know that she's suicidal she might do something reckless like kill herself to momentarily distract her son during a fight causing him to get stabbed at some point later in her life just as a random example but don't you worry dear friends leia doesn't die here she instead manages to catch herself on a line and obi-wan has to tap into the force to save her he does this with extreme difficulty because apparently he's been shutting himself off from the force for some time now and it's only in this moment of desperation that he finally opens himself back up to it again i have so much to say about this plot development but give me just a minute because we're not done with this sequence quite yet once he finally manages to catch her with the force he lowers her down to the ground below and i gotta say it was nice of the bounty hunters to just stop shooting to let him do this and moments later he's down on the ground below to join her like i was saying it feels like we're definitely missing a scene here because one second he was up on the roof being pinned down by bounty hunters the next bounty hunters are just nowhere to be found riva somehow hasn't managed to catch up to him yet and he's just down here on the ground with leia it's good for the writers that they just decided to not show us how all this happened because i have a feeling it would have been [ __ ] anyway but still i'm pretty sure anything would have been better than this cop-out so then leia goes you you really are a jedi [ __ ] you did i miss something why was that ever in question i thought leia just randomly decided not to trust obi-wan because he had a bounty placed on him for whatever reason that was a red flag despite the fact that the same people who put a bounty on him are also trying to capture her but then again she somehow used that information to deduce that she'd only been captured as bait for him which was such an incredible leap that i actually thought i must have missed a scene if only she could jump across large gaps as successfully as she's able to jump to baseless conclusions but at no point did any of this indicate to me that she didn't believe he was really a jedi leia i know you're young but you do know what a jedi is don't you why aren't you using your lightsaber maybe it's because you're not really a jedi i heard they all died you seem to have at the very least a basic understanding of what they are so how do you not know that they're the most hunted people in the galaxy at this point in time why wouldn't bale have told her about the wrongful persecution of the jedi by now what if she grew up believing anti-jedi rhetoric because you failed to instill the true information into her at a young age you dumb [ __ ] but apparently obi-wan proving that he really is a jedi is all leia needed in order to trust him so clearly she's been taught that they're the good guys although it's lucky she wasn't saved by riva because apparently all you need is to show an impressive display in the force and leia will trust you blindly great cool awesome awesome awesome awesome and obi-wan buddy what the [ __ ] are you doing cutting yourself off from the force how do you expect to train luke to become a jedi if you're not even keeping up with your own training fans of the show have tried their hardest to defend this by saying that obi-wan simply couldn't handle the weight of depression caused by his own failures so he spent the last 10 years wallowing in his own self-pity this is why he closed himself off from the force and this is why he was very clearly out of practice against vader but i simply do not believe that's the case obi-wan kenobi is the paragon of what it means to be a true jedi steadfast in the righteous duty of protecting peace and justice he has devoted the rest of his life to biding his time on tatooine waiting for luke to be old enough to begin training in the ways of the force if you want me to believe that he reached some kind of breaking point and decided to not fulfill his last purpose in life just because he was sad then i'm sorry you're gonna have to do better than this because i simply do not believe that obi-wan would ever do that when we meet him in rebels my dude is straight up prepared for anything it takes him all of three seconds to make quick work of maul because he spent all these years making sure to keep himself as physically fit as possible should the need arise for him to protect luke if god forbid vader were to show up but i guess this is supposed to be where he learned that lesson [ __ ] off show also apparently he didn't even know vader was still alive at this point which we're gonna get to episode three is when obi-wan's character really starts to break so i'm gonna stop right here for now but one last thing i will say hey obi my guy my dude you spent the last 10 years trying and failing to communicate with qui-gon and i'm not sure what exactly you were [ __ ] expecting to happen if you won't even allow the force inside with what was established in revenge of the sith it's pretty explicit that in order to communicate with qui-gon you have to train yourself to listen to him through the force in your solitude on tatooine training i have for you training an old friend has learned the path to immortality how to commune with him i will teach you i simply refuse to believe obi-wan wouldn't already know this stop trying to convince me that he's stupid it's not gonna earn you any favor from actual fans of this character if you turn him into a directionless idiot so that was a whole bunch of [ __ ] and the episode's not even close to done they finally make it to the spaceport they've been trying to get to only to find that it's been locked down with a bunch of inquisitors standing right outside then just as one of the bounty hunters is about to attack them it gets shot in the back by none other than hajja estri who apparently is here to help he just had a complete 180 character shift after finding out obi-wan had a bounty put on his head even though the only impression he has of the guy he's decided to risk everything for is him pointing a gun at his chest he has no reason to stick his neck out for obi-wan and in fact has every reason to try to turn him in ah but this is star wars and we all love us a scoundrel who deep down has a heart of gold contextually of course the difference between hajja and han is that han had a whole character arc and a new hope and decided that he was tired of always being out for himself he found community among the rebels after spending time with them and seeing firsthand what they're up against i know nothing about hajja aside from the fact that he likes money and is somehow connected to this larger organization of path people though it's weird because they seem to be altruistic doing what they do simply because it's the right thing to do yet hajja charges people money for his services so i don't know i guess they're cool with that desperate times or whatever anyway hajja tells obi-wan about the cargo port that he uses to smuggle people off world informing him that it will take him to the planet mapuzo where they'll be waiting for them before giving them any actual useful information he says that he'll buy them some time which not really sure what he intends to do or why he even sees the need to do so since none of their opposition currently know where obi-wan and leia are but i guess we'll see what happens won't we so while obi-wan and leia are making their way up to the cargo port hajja goes and confronts riva pretending to be a jedi and revealing himself by his own [ __ ] name as a means of distraction this was really stupid and completely unnecessary considering had he simply done nothing riva would have kept running around in alleyways looking for her quarry and even if she eventually figured out where they were going they would have been long gone by the time she got there and that seriously could have made all the difference because even if she figured out where they had gone it would have probably been several hours if not days later and by then obi-wan and leia would have been safely to mapuzo and then to jabim leia would never have gotten captured at the end of episode 3 so obi-wan would never have to go rescue her and i think you can paint a pretty good picture from there this conflict could have been wrapped up halfway through episode three had hajja not [ __ ] done this instead he did the stupidest possible thing you can imagine which allowed riva to pull the information out of his head and again really good thing she didn't decide to do this [ __ ] to owen and she manages to catch up to them right as they're entering the cargo port before i get to that i do want to quickly mention that leia gives us this line if somebody is offering us help i think we should take it now come on and it prompts obi-wan to think about padme for some reason i'm really not sure what i actually want to highlight here is just how funny it is that she says this despite having randomly decided not to trust obi-wan like an hour earlier for no [ __ ] reason but hey guys she's meant to be saying something insightful here she's so precocious anyway riva catches up to them and so obi-wan and leia hide behind this little crate here obi-wan tells leia to run to the ship but decides to stay behind for some reason dude just go with her just whatever like it's not like there's a scheduled lift-off time which is what i was thinking at first obi-wan hands her this little device that hodja gave him and it's what activates the controls of the ship so they could take off at any time just go with her then riva tells obi-wan not to worry as he's not going to die today going on to reveal the truth that obi-wan somehow didn't already know that anakin skywalker is still alive and has been looking for him for some time now pause pause pause pause pause are you really telling me that obi-wan actually managed to go 10 full years without finding out that anakin survived because that seems next to impossible considering that at this point vader is one of the most prominent figures in the galaxy you'd think obi-wan would have caught him on a news feed at some point i know he lives out in a cave but he goes into town every [ __ ] day and to those of you arguing that ahsoka didn't know anakin was alive until rebels that made sense she didn't know anakin was vader as far as she would have been aware darth vader was this mysterious figurehead in the empire who was the boss of the inquisitors it wasn't until she sensed him through the force that she realized who he was and he subsequently learned that she still lived obi-wan knew vader was anakin the boy you trained gandhi is consumed by darth vader so that excuse doesn't work i refuse to believe that he somehow managed to never once see him on the news at any point in the last 10 years and besides that's all operating under the pretty misguided assumption a lot of people seem to have made that obi-wan wasn't actively looking just like with his whole not training thing defenders of the show like to argue that he was just too depressed to keep up with the news of what was going on in the galaxy lest he be reminded of his past failures good god again it's obi-wan's sole purpose at this point in his life to watch over luke and protect him from any and all dangers that might befall him and to eventually train him when the time is right that includes keeping up with all the latest news so that luke can be best prepared when the time comes to face them what if the empire decided to put an outpost on tatooine don't you think obi-wan might want to know about that this whole argument is pointless anyway of course obi-wan knew anakin survived that's the whole reason he chose tatooine to bring luke to the last place in the universe vader would ever willingly go back to why the [ __ ] would you choose to live there for 20 years if not for a strategic advantage well then again some people just seem to like it there i grew up surrounded by water this whole moment could have been so impactful if it had made any sense whatsoever and that's the real frustrating part watching obi-wan come to grips with the fact that the apprentice he failed is alive and back with a vengeance would be so powerful now imagine if this scene had been the prologue to the show rather than the stupid [ __ ] riva flashback just imagine it's been like a couple days since revenge of the sith give or take obi-wan has just dropped luke off with owen and beru he goes into town maybe looking for a job and he sees someone watching a news feed of vader being sworn in as like the new commander-in-chief of the imperial army that would have been so much better because we still could have gotten that emotional payoff and it would have happened in a way that actually made sense so anyway just as riva is about to find obi-wan she gets interrupted by none other than this [ __ ] tumor he tells her that he can stand the reek of her ambition no longer riva then starts quoting the audience as they're screaming at their tvs that obi-wan is right there and so the grand inquisitor tells riva that he can't risk her losing him again telling her to move aside and to watch and learn if it isn't already clear this is a version of the grain inquisitor who cares more about glory and recognition than he does about getting the job done and if i haven't already made my stance on that evident i really don't like it you can't just take an established character and change him up entirely it reads like you've never actually seen the source material and that's not a good thing but the worst part is that this doesn't seem to bother that many fans they get to see the cool character from the thing they like in live action and that's all that matters to them it's so superficial like i was saying earlier i remember some people arguing that maybe this was meant to be how he learned to not be so vain but he doesn't seem to be any less petty when he makes his eventual comeback so i don't know you do you but i'm just going to chalk it up to bad writing and a fundamental misunderstanding of the character you can go write the scripts for them all you want oh yeah sorry i forgot to mention refa stabs the grand inquisitor she just [ __ ] stabs him and he falls over and this is what allows obi-wan to get away obi-wan escaped the empire because two inquisitors chasing him were bickering amongst themselves instead of being unified in their singular goal what a [ __ ] joke and uh to address the obvious the grand inquisitor getting stabbed raises some pretty inherent issues i remember there was a lot of discourse surrounding this when the episode came out some that i myself joined in now a lot of people were concerned that the grand inquisitor was actually dead and that the show had actually gone so far as to de-canonize rebels and if you've seen my dave felony video you might understand why i even humored the possibility and why it seemed so likely to so many people the the short answer is that nobody at lucasfilm gives a single [ __ ] about keeping the continuity now i myself never really thought he was dead i understood from the moment that this happened that it was just a cheap fake out death but that's still bad so to those of you who were defending this by saying [ __ ] like he's obviously alive stop looking for reasons to hate i really need you to understand that this was a bad call from a writing standpoint no matter which way you spin it fake out deaths lower the stakes simply by nature of their beings so you definitely want to avoid showing a character getting stabbed in the stomach and simply walking it off thank god it only happened once right i mean how embarrassing might that have been but seriously a lot of people were being pretty arrogant in their defense of the show and acting like the people who considered it a possibility that rebels had actually just been contradicted were just mindless haters you might want to climb right off that high horse of yours and stop acting like there wasn't at least precedent to that belief that's all i'm saying it's really not a good look and i don't really want to go too far down this rabbit hole but most of the people i've seen defending this show have that common thread of being extremely condescending not sure why people who like the show feel the need to be so aggressive against those who don't but i don't know maybe they're compensating for something all i'm saying is it goes hand in hand with the concept of toxic positivity which i talked about in my last kenobi video anyway after murdering her boss reeva calls out to obi-wan as his ship is flying away yelling that he can't run and that they will find him cut to obi-wan he's still reeling over the revelation that anakin is alive and right after whispering his name we get our first glimpse of darth vader floating in his back to tank as his eyes flip open and we get his iconic breathing punctuated by really overbearing and intense music cut to credits so all in all pretty terrible episode i'm exhausted and that was only episode 2. episode 3 starts right where the last one left off with obi-wan reflecting about having just learned that anakin is still alive and trying to communicate with qui-gon who is still eluding him all the while cutting between him and vader as the latter suits up it's all fine stuff though i feel it's worth pointing out that we got a shot of vader's arm being fitted onto his stump of a limb and then a few seconds later we see that neither arm has been attached this is absolutely a nitpick but i'm pointing it out anyway because i think it's funny after vader finishes suiting up he gets on a call with riva where a couple odd things happen firstly riva says that obi-wan will pay for the grand inquisitors before being cut off by vader who tells her that the grand inquisitor means nothing and that kenobi is all that matters this episode is purposely continuing to leave it up in the air how everything went down but we have the benefit of hindsight we know that the grand inquisitor survived which means not only is this a fake out death but it's also being needlessly drawn out to an excruciating degree i'm just imagining being someone who hasn't seen rebels watching him come back at the end of episode 5 just completely fine fake out deaths are seriously the worst because no matter how you execute it you're automatically taking a hit as far as stakes are concerned i don't understand why so many shows and films these days feel the need to do this and why this very show does it as many times as it does this is not the last time i'm going to make this comparison throughout this assessment but the rise of skywalker all i'm saying anyway another thing we know from hindsight is that vader knows riva is secretly out to get him a reveal that we're gonna get to later so i'm wondering what exactly riva told him or how any of this went down really i imagine she told him that it was obi-wan who stabbed the grand inquisitor and he knows she's lying but is cool with it because he's waiting for her to eventually betray him i don't really get why he even needs to keep her around at this point she's already drawn kenobi out of hiding so just imprison and kill her and let one of the other inquisitors hunt him down or hell just do it yourself like you do anyway in this very episode which we will get to this is also the scene that establishes that riva's goals in finding kenobi were to be promoted to grand inquisitor a position vader offers her should she succeed in finding obi-wan again not really sure why he's tasking her to this and not one of his more loyal lackeys but the question i really want to ask is how the [ __ ] does the ranking system work in the inquisitorius in a later scene we see the fifth brother vying for the position of grand inquisitor establishing himself as something of a rival for riva but it's a bit weird for one thing i always assumed that they were all equally ranked and the only one who was above any other was the grand inquisitor himself and above him vader but my roommate brought up the point that it could be that they go by their number rankings which is why we found it particularly odd that fifth brother was barking orders at third sister i suppose that only proves then that your number is nothing more than your new name a symbol of having shed your old identity when you join the empire and it has no bearing on your ring my main issue with this whole thing is that we see the grand inquisitor die for realsies and rebels and fifth brother is in that show so why didn't he elevate to the grand inquisitor after the original one died never at any point following the grain inquisitor's actual death in that show does he or any other inquisitor take its place so now i'm just confused as to how any of this works anyway obi-wan and leia arrive on mapuzo but not before he fixes up lola and gives it back to her just keep that in the back of your mind for now they sneak off of the ship and make for the rendezvous point where hajj's contacts will be waiting for them interestingly i don't remember hajja ever giving them an exact rendezvous spot to head to once they arrive but semantics i suppose i guess he contacted them after they took off somehow now i could have sworn you're not able to make transmissions off of daiyu but then again they broke that rule anyway with obi-wan so i whatever they wander around for a bit in the desert until finally reaching the rendezvous point and they wait for all of like eight seconds until obi-wan decides haji's contact isn't coming leia insists that they don't know anything for sure to which obi-wan barks no one is coming here leo jesus christ this is such a weird conclusion to come to when despite all reason haja has been nothing but helpful thus far even when it was anything but beneficial to himself i understand suspecting a trap but you'd think if he was planning to sell them out he'd have done so on daiyu where he could much better monitor the situation why would he send them to a different planet with so many unknown variables in the hopes that the empire captures them regardless we're not going to spend any time actually having this discussion instead leia just decides that if they're on their own then they're going to need help and so she hails a ride from a transport off in the distance and it stops for them now keep in mind that obi-wan does nothing to try to stop her despite the fact that he clearly doesn't like this idea but it's not safe i guess he's learned by now that the script doesn't want him to stop her so he's powerless to do anything about it i suppose it's nice to see characters learn and grow we're then introduced to a beautiful hunk of mass named freck who kindly greets them and asks them what it is they're doing out here leia then explains that her name is luma and obi-wan is her father ordon and that they were going on a trip but accidentally got lost out here in this field freck says that's a weird story and uh yeah yeah it's a pretty weird story uh hey obi-wan maybe you should have been the one to do the talking you know since you're the adult it's just a thought he did tell leia not to say anything a minute ago remember you don't talk but then the second they approach the transport he just kind of stands there awkwardly and doesn't make even the slightest effort to place himself in front of the situation sure thing man just let the 10 year old do all the negotiating it's not like that's a skill you're known for galaxy galaxy-wide or anything the negotiator general kenobi if it hasn't already been made clear obi-wan in this series and in this episode particularly is not an active protagonist he's continually just reacting to situations instead of making any decisions of his own and being dragged every which way by the goddamn child who seems to be more capable of quick thinking than he is it's embarrassing truly it's genuinely hard to watch and it's only going to get worse as we progress meanwhile at the legion of doom riva enters the inquisitor's conference room where fifth brother and fourth sister are sitting at a table she informs them that she's narrowed down obi-wan's location to one of the mining systems to which fifth brother replies you do not know that i just find this line so amusing it's such a funny way to gaslight someone they tell you a thing that they've learned and before they have a chance to explain how they came across this information you just go l plus ratio plus you're the least of us plus who's in the gutter now it's just very funny she explains that she traced the manifests of the cargo ships and tracked where each of them went and orders them to send out probe droids to every system on the list and you know what i hadn't actually thought of that but that's totally right ships have manifests and they track where ships are going and where they've come from gee i hope there aren't any security cameras in the daiyu spaceport otherwise they might be able to check which ship obi-wan arrived on and trace him back to tatooine that would be embarrassing wow bill you really should have just given him a private ship i don't know what you were thinking back to the scene we get the part where the fifth brother tells her that he's next in line to become grand inquisitor which we've already gone over and so protests that riva is not in charge of them and can therefore not give them orders riva then says that she spoke directly to lord vader and it was he who put her in charge this is a claim that she simply makes with no evidence to back it up and the other inquisitors don't bother trying to verify it they're just like ah well [ __ ] i guess she's in charge now this is the most mom said it's my turn on the xbox [ __ ] i've ever seen as he's leaving the room the fifth brother tells riva that he will get what he deserves and so will she to which she says under her breath i hope so i certainly hope so dialogue pretty soon a group of stormtroopers hit a ride on forex transport as well and are promptly introduced to ordon and luma they tell freck that they're being moved around as they're now on the hunt for a jedi now the stormtroopers have no idea that the jedi for which they're searching is sitting right in front of them which i find to be a bit odd in the last episode obi-wan's face was plastered all around the city so that everyone can get a good visual on who exactly they're looking for are you telling me that the stormtroopers were ordered to keep an eye out for a jedi and weren't even so much as given a description i would think the empire would give them the exact faces and names of the people they're after and that includes the little tidbit that the jedi is traveling with a little girl and not just any little girl but princess leia of alderaan but evidently not as we're going to see more as this scene unfolds the lead stormtrooper then asks obi-wan if he's a minor to which obi-wan answers that he's a farmer from tall the trooper asks what they're doing all the way out here on mapuzo and obi-wan says that it's a long story the trooper then says it's a long way which i just felt like bringing up because the scene ends with them getting off the transport which is like two minutes from now i just love this show's sense of time and scale it only gets worse later on anyway he asks them if they've seen any jedi and obi-wan says that he wouldn't even know one if he saw one the stormtrooper says you haven't heard anything which prompts leia into asking if they're sure there's even a jedi on the planet and uh obi-wan says this they know what they're doing leia i just [Music] obi-wan kenobi really just did that that's that's brilliant i love it man i miss the obi-wan who was smart during intense situations and could think quickly on his feet because he'd spent his entire life training for situations exactly like this one where did that obi-wan go and to anyone saying that he's a broken man and he's out of practice no i still don't buy that he wouldn't have spent the last 10 years training for every single inevitability if anything obi-wan would be at his sharpest at this point in his life when his sole purpose is to protect luke and train him as a jedi instead we got this worthless sack of bones and i already know some of you were gonna say it was an honest mistake that happened in the heat of the moment but the point i'm trying to make here is that he's literally been trained his entire life for situations like this to not make those kinds of mistakes and also it really wasn't nothing too intense had even happened at this point leia simply asked a question obi-wan wanted her to keep quiet so he told her that the stormtroopers know what they're doing there's nothing about this that justifies the slip up if anything the only explanation for this abomination would be that obi-wan simply forgot that they were operating under assumed names and that's just annoyingly stupid also again i simply refuse to believe that the stormtroopers weren't informed that obi-wan was traveling with a little girl named leia even if for whatever reason they wanted to keep it under wraps that the leia in question is the princess of alderaan you can still give a description and a name at the bear [ __ ] minimum why are the empires sending their troopers in blind when this is the most important jedi to have survived the purge it's so stupid the lead stormtrooper then says i thought you said her name was luma and so obi-wan has to try to save the situation by explaining that leia was the name of luma's dead mother and that he gets confused sometimes he says that sometimes when looking at her he sees her mother's face this is a line that will make leia realize that obi-wan knew her real mother and prompt her to ask him about it after the stormtroopers get off the transport she asks him if he's her real father and obi-wan tells her that he wishes he could say he was which is a bit of a weird thing to say i think what they were going for with that line is that he just wishes for her sake that the answer was that simple but when i first heard it i thought they were trying to imply that he wishes he was padme's lover which whatever it's just a weird line that i wish had been written differently there are a few different lines like that honestly both were exceptional people who bore an exceptional daughter like there's nothing inherently wrong with what you just said there but man i wish you'd worded it in a less creepy way shortly after they arrive at the outpost obi-wan calls up to freck asking if they can just get off there but freck yells back that this will only take a minute before getting out to greet one of the troopers and this is when freck turns traitor man just when you think you know a guy i mean not really he just thinks that the passengers he picked up are a little suspicious which is understandable considering obi-wan allowed a literal child to provide their fabricated story and she came up with something that's pretty weird maybe if obi-wan had [ __ ] bothered to talk the real reason they even threw this moment in was to set up something that's gonna happen in just a minute so i want you to keep it in the back of your mind freck is a traitor and anyone who works for the empire in any capacity is inherently evil now i don't know about any of you but if i was obi-wan i'd be grabbing leia and [ __ ] running i'd try to find another way into the outpost or failing that try to find a different town and get on a ship there something i can tell you one thing the last thing i'd be doing while a group of stormtroopers are approaching to inspect me one of the most famous jedi in the entire universe is just sit there and wait for them to approach and i sure as [ __ ] wouldn't pull my hood over my head because that looks hella suspicious but i suppose i'm not obi-wan kenobi so what do i know well then again neither is this guy so there's that instead what he does is step out of the vehicle and act as suspiciously as he possibly can while the stormtroopers order him to remove his hood so that a probe droid can scan his face then he whips out his blaster and shoots the droid which by the way i'll quickly remind you just how many blaster shots one of these things can take and then starts fighting the two stormtroopers on either side of him if you slow down this scene at all you're treated to a nice visual of the stormtrooper on the right just kind of standing there waiting for obi-wan to make his move and then obi-wan grabs his blaster spins around and shoots the other one he then goes for another stormtrooper before taking out the one whose blaster he stole and then has to flip him over to knock him off of himself which i would actually say is fine he prioritized the one with the weapon who was actively shooting at him only he took out that trooper then flipped the other one and then the stormtrooper was just back on his feet and had to be killed again this fight scene is so awkwardly edited because i'm pretty sure this is just two different takes superimposed together and it shows if you're watching this at normal speed everything is moving way too fast for little stuff like that to be noticed but in the back of your brain you're gonna pick stuff like this up and realize something's wrong even if you can't place your finger on exactly what that is i'm here to slow it down for you to show you what it was that your subconscious picked up while watching this dumpster fire of an action scene what happens next though goes beyond stupid it's downright infuriating so obi-wan and freck are hiding behind the transport as the latter is cowering in fear of having been caught in the middle of a firefight up on the tower is one stormtrooper shooting down at them and instead of just continuing to use the transporter's cover as he fires off a shot to take the trooper out obi-wan takes freck as a [ __ ] human shield i kid you not obi-wan kenobi just took a god damn hostage i'd be angry enough about that under normal circumstances but like i just laid out it wasn't even necessary in this case i mean even if the transport wasn't available for you to hide behind and you can't [ __ ] use the force because you stupidly close yourself off from it you have a [ __ ] lightsaber you can use those to deflect blaster bolts what the [ __ ] are you doing well i'll tell you what they're doing there are plenty of moments throughout the first three episodes where obi-wan might need to use a lightsaber and i still argue that he shouldn't have even brought it along if he couldn't be bothered to find any way of concealing it but he did he has it in his arsenal and therefore should [ __ ] use it but he doesn't because they want to save the moment where they finally have him turn it on for this scene it's all about the drama the logistics can go [ __ ] themselves i mean sure to an objective omniscient viewer it would make logical sense for obi-wan to use his best [ __ ] weapon which he's trained with his entire life during dire situations and then there would be no conflict he'd cut up the stormtroopers with ease and then they'd have made it into the outpost and the story would be really [ __ ] boring it's so much better watching obi-wan kenobi take an innocent man hostage this is what you wanted to see right guys this is why we set freck up as a traitor just a minute ago so that it would be seen as okay [ __ ] kill me you know you really would think that in a galaxy this large there would be some people in league with the empire either those who serve it or at the very least just see it as a good thing who are also actually good people they paid lip service to it in the mandalorian the empire improves every system it touches safety prosperity trade opportunity peace but never bothered to develop that idea any further it's pretty cut and dry with disney star wars the empire is bad and anyone who works for them or supports them in any capacity is automatically a bad person in a meta sense i'm almost certain that this was the reason bale didn't enlist the help of the empire to find his daughter even though that would have been the smarter thing to do the empire are the baddies and we're not allowed any bit of nuance on the matter it would send mixed messages to the audience if we showed the empire saving princess leia leia's a good guy the empire are evil this breaks cannon so then the stormtrooper that obi-wan flipped over got back up while obi-wan was busy endangering a civilian and he managed to get a hold of a blaster and has now taken leia hostage i should congratulate him for actually being proactive considering how embarrassingly he blundered through the beginning of this fight but i'm more worried with the fact that obi-wan didn't just kill him thereby avoiding this exact situation i mean he mowed down the rest of these stormtroopers with no problem and don't give me any of that jedi don't kill unarmed men crap because he just took an innocent unarmed man hostage five seconds ago regardless the trooper has taken leia hostage and is demanding that obi-wan lower his weapon obi-wan goes to do just this and then surprise attacks him shooting him right in the chest and just above leia's head damn dude it's a good thing you didn't accidentally fry her i feel like there are a lot of different safer things he could have gone with before resorting to that why not use a mind trick you don't want to kill the girl you could have at least tried that first it's all i'm saying after taking out all the stormtroopers obi-wan goes over to the laser grid that's blocking their entrance and tries to deactivate it but to no avail he then resorts to just shooting it and as he and leia are passing through were given a wide shot overhead to show us just how easily either of them could have gone around it in either direction it's just really funny this is such a small thing really like it's dumb but i think most people criticizing it were just kind of poking fun it was the icing on top of a really poorly constructed cake but the fact that people actually ran to defend this moment just really shows the cognitive dissonance that some people have if you're someone who likes this show i would have so much more respect for you if you went yeah that part's kind of dumb but it's not really a big deal and i would even agree with you but the fact that there are people who refuse to even do that is one of the reasons this video is as thorough as it is i had also just assumed he wanted the laser grid down because he wanted to take the transport into town which would have been smart put on one of the stormtrooper's armor and have leia hide on the floorboard or something and you're good to go but then they just walk through and leave it behind so i [ __ ] that i guess but just in case you thought this dumbass sequence was over just you wait there's more then another transport arrives carrying more stormtroopers and an imperial officer this stops obi-wan and leia right in their tracks as the overwhelming forces that step off to greet them are just too much for even a jedi master gee i wonder how many stormtroopers have come to aid their fallen brethren surely quite a bit considering they're all on the lookout for a jedi you definitely want as many hands on deck as possible there's three actually yes you heard me right folks three stormtroopers step off this transport and are enough to cause obi-wan [ __ ] kenobi to surrender this man just took out five stormtroopers a minute ago plus a probe droid and now that three show up well he's toast you must understand of course it's funny they don't even order him to drop the blaster or anything they just tell him to get on the ground and as he's kneeling awaiting his impending arrest he's just pointing his weapon right at the lead stormtrooper hey deb deb were you awake deb so i'm sure you're all wondering how do our intrepid heroes manage to skate their way out of this conundrum well you know that imperial officer who accompanied the three musketeers over here we get a long drawn-out sequence of suspense and then hear three distinct blaster shots as it turns out this woman is a turncoat i'm the spy it may already be apparent to some of you but this was the reason there were only three stormtroopers we had to have a force that this woman could realistically beat by taking them by surprise any more than three and one of them would probably have figured out what was going on and shot her of course obi-wan might have also been able to take one of them out considering he was still holding his [ __ ] blaster but nah this is tala's moment oh her name is tala by the way i'm matching that into your brains now because she's such a forgettable character tala takes them into town and we learn that she's the one who haja meant for them to meet before obi-wan randomly decided that she simply wasn't coming there's still no good reason given the context of obi-wan situation why he wouldn't trust hajja but i suppose we shouldn't forget that the man was a con artist who cheated impoverished families out of what little money they had to get them off world and i'm wondering how exactly he got mixed in with this organization i already touched on this briefly but as we learn more from this episode and the next the group that tala and hajo work with are a group of pathfinders who basically have an underground network that helps smuggle jedi and other people in need out of whatever systems they're on and they're trying to connect the paths of each world into a legitimate network i'm not sure how haja found out about these guys or ended up deciding to join their noble cause but i'm much more curious if they know he's scamming people i feel like there could absolutely be a conversation to be had there between obi-wan and tala he could ask her why she allows him to charge people and she could explain that they're desperate for anyone who will help on any world no matter if some of them scam good people but the problem is we don't get anything substantive like that the entire scene of tala explaining her network does nothing more to explore any further than this is how it works and we leave it nightfall it's just yet another example of how fast the pacing is in the show there's never any time for real conversations we're only three episodes in and already we've had leia get kidnapped forcing obi-wan to leave tatooine then he rescued her then they got away from the inquisitors and now we're here and we're about to have our first encounter between obi-wan and darth vader no time to breathe just jumping from plot point to plot point at breakneck speeds as they're suiting up to get going tala hoists a blaster around her waist which prompts leia to ask if she can teach her how to shoot obi-wan ushers her away and tells her to get ready and tala says that she'll make a good fighter one day to which obi-wan replies yes i think you might be right this was so ham-fisted and overt that i almost vomited like we get it she's a rebel in the good star wars is you know you really don't want to keep reminding us of those movies if you're going to so blatantly disrespect them anyway as the trio are about to head into the tunnel obi-wan feels a disturbance in the force a present so overwhelming that it causes him to double over tulla asks him what's wrong and so he stumbles over to the window to look outside and who should round the corner other than darth mother [ __ ] vader he immediately starts attacking citizens and even snaps a child's neck in order to draw obi-wan out now a lot of people were saying when this episode came out that this part was cool intense and i'm just sitting there completely flabbergasted at how fundamentally misunderstood vader is here see people always like to cite the original trilogy as an example of vader being this ruthless badass who killed his subordinates every time they [ __ ] up because he don't take [ __ ] from no one but they failed to realize that the killing he does in the ot is always done purposefully and deliberately nowadays it's the new stereotype of an evil mustache twirling villain to just kill one of their lackeys for delivering bad news or for failing them in some extremely minute way that's what evil people do after all hell this is what they did with kylo ren the people who write these villains are trying to emulate darth vader without really understanding that vader killed the officers beneath him to make an example out of them a team is only as strong as its weakest link and cutting it out will make the whole organization better for it he doesn't just go around brutally murdering people for no reason and you're gonna argue that what he's doing here is meant to draw out kenobi but torture them don't kill them this is like watching a 12 year old smash a vader action figure around and it's honestly embarrassing we're also dealing with some pretty weird character work for obi-wan as he's elected to just stand there and watch vader commit these atrocities i guess he's deciding what the best course of action is i don't know that's the best explanation i can come up with because as it stands he's not doing anything to get leia to safety nor is he doing anything to help these people he's simply just watching from a window as helpless as the rest of them finally after a few long moments he decides that leia is to go with tala through the tunnels where a pilot will be waiting for them on the other side and he will stay behind which what are you doing go with her she's your responsibility don't rely on a complete stranger you just met to finish your mission get her to safety and get on a ship out of there before vader realizes where you are and if you want to argue that going with leia will only lead vader directly to her well [ __ ] probably would have been great if she'd had at least one adult with her when riva showed up but we'll get to that but here's a funny thing that nobody seems to have even noticed yet what danger is leia really in exactly she was only kidnapped in order to lure kenobi out and i would assume that once obi-wan is in custody she would simply be returned to alderaan in some discreet fashion it's one thing to kidnap the daughter of a known and respected senator but another entirely to [ __ ] kill her and they would have no reason to because obi-wan would be caught well i guess they might actually have one reason to kill her she is an organa and the organas have just been confirmed to be jedi sympathizers but if the show's not treating that as a real option then neither am i what i'm saying is that if obi-wan had gone with her even if vader and the inquisitors eventually did catch up to them she'd be in very little danger that would be the moment to sacrifice yourself in order to ensure leia's safety not here when there's still a chance to escape and wait a minute what about luke did you [ __ ] forget about him who's gonna be there to protect him if you [ __ ] die facing vader in earlier episodes i was saying that i like seeing moments of obi-wan refusing to intervene in conflicts because he knows better than to get involved and jeopardize exposing everything he kept his head down when his boss was being rude to his co-worker he refused to help bail initially until the [ __ ] showed up on his doorstep and he didn't help nari fight against the inquisitors these decisions were all seemingly made out of practicality he wants to help but he knows that by doing anything that might risk exposure or his own death he would doom the entire galaxy to eternal darkness nobody would be around to train luke up to be a jedi other than yoda who again this show forgot about but alas this is what obi-wan decides to do even though there's still a good chance of escape if he leaves right now and he has ample reason to stay alive but [ __ ] it we gotta have him face off against vader so we can market this [ __ ] so what's the plan are we gonna go out there and face vader down or wait what's he doing where's he going did he what's happening did he just run away is he a coward as well as a [ __ ] did he just bail well you see shiv he's leading vader away from the town oh okay why what advantage does that give you if obi-wan was trying to isolate the fight to just vader and cut out the inquisitors then i'm not sure what this accomplishes if vader wanted the inquisitors to follow they would have breva almost did and why doesn't vader just continue torturing the people to force kenobi back into town the whole reason he's abandoned his sole purpose in life was to protect them so why wouldn't vader keep brutalizing them he has all the cards in this game and yet he decides to follow obi-wan to a second location so vader goes to follow him and orders the inquisitors to sweep the town and search for others or whatever the [ __ ] he then follows him out into a quarry where somehow he managed to get ahead of him that was some shortcut anakin and then the moment we've all been waiting for obi-wan takes his lightsaber off the hilt and he turns it on it's it's on now that's that was it that was the moment they've been savoring these last three episodes he's uh he's just he's he turned the lightsaber on there was no gravitas no epic score just fine so glad we waited to have obi-wan turn his lightsaber on until he fought the head honcho himself glad we saved that even if it did mean him having a disadvantage during various fight scenes where a lightsaber would have come in handy vader approaches from off in the distance and obi-wan gets a good look at him he asks what have you become to which vader replies i am what you made me is it just me or does anyone else feel like the dialogue in the scene is just really uninspired i don't even necessarily think it's bad it's just very surface level and we never get anything with any more depth at any point during this encounter it's all very one note generic [ __ ] like you should have killed me when you had the chance now you will suffer obi-wan i mean i guess they're saving the real impactful stuff for the second fight but this is the reunion between two of the most iconic characters in all of star wars the last time they saw each other was when their friendship was utterly shattered when anakin was burned alive and obi-wan left him for dead i feel like these characters would have a plethora of things to say to each other beyond this shallow fill-in-the-blank [ __ ] if i was tasked with writing the scene where obi-wan and vader meet between this moment and this moment i would be agonizing over every single detail trying to make sure everything was perfect this feels like the writers didn't even try and that doesn't exactly do much to change my initial beliefs that an encounter between these two at this point in the timeline would only serve to undermine their eventual reunion in a new hope it's only enforced it if anything the fight itself really isn't that great either the choreography is laughable and the cinematography looks so cheap that i'm wondering where exactly that 25 million per episode budget went because it sure as [ __ ] wasn't put into the special effects people have said this plenty of times already but this whole sequence feels like a fan film and a bad one at that if anything i've seen fan films that are on par with or better than what we're given here and that's extremely sad and i'm sure some of you are going to say that the choreography is bad because obi-wan is out of practice but i have issues with that too just like with him having cut himself off from the force being something that i fundamentally just do not believe obi-wan would do i refuse to accept that he wouldn't have kept up with his combat training and it's for the exact same reason he needs to be prepared should some lightsaber-wielding maniac come to harm luke i refuse to believe obi-wan is not in peak physical condition plus the second fight between these two has pretty [ __ ] choreography as well and that's when obi-wan supposed to be at the top of his game in this show so yeah i think it's just a matter of bad choreography and some [ __ ] directing the fight ends with vader using the force to knock over a barrel and these little rocks come sprawling out onto the ground then he lifts obi-wan up with the force causing him to drop his lightsaber and dips his own lightsaber onto the rock so that they light on fire he drops kenobi into the fire promising that he will burn just like he did and that his pain has only just begun which again just feels so uninspired like i just don't believe that vader's been waiting all these years just to light obi-wan on fire this feels like if you handed the script over to the prequel meme subreddit and just let them run wild although that's nothing compared to the stupid that's to come but before i get into that we must first jump back again to what's been going on during this fight so remember how obi-wan entrusted leia to the care of someone he barely knows well turns out that was a bad idea she just kind of abandons leia like halfway through the tunnels because she wants to go help obi-wan um tala he he's a jedi she's a defenseless child she also somehow managed to slip right on pas riva who found the hidden tunnel and was in hot pursuit of them but people have argued that there's more than one tunnel which is how they excuse a certain other thing all in good time it's all just so terrible anyway this is how we explain the fact that tala and her loader droid are just here now conveniently in time to save obi-wan's life vader puts out the flames with the force and as obi-wan lies there somehow with minimal burn damage he orders his troopers to bring him to me but then one of the stormtroopers gets shot by tala who has the high ground and she shoots the rocks and the fire blazes anew then we see vader watching through the flames as the loader droid very slowly makes its way to obi-wan and picks him up carrying him to safety vader could just put the fire out with the force like he did literally five seconds ago but then we wouldn't have this dramatic shot of vader looking into the flames and we gotta have that how many have argued that the reason vader didn't just put the fire out or why none of the stormtroopers just walked around it was because vader actually wanted obi-wan to escape the theorized reasons for why have varied but the two main ones i heard were he wants to torture obi-wan so he wants him to limp away and lick his wounds and the other was he was so disappointed by how out of practice obi-wan was and he wanted to give him time to train up so that their fight to the death could be more challenging i don't know neither one of these explanations work considering what vader said all of five seconds ago bring him to me or what he does in later episodes of this series when kenobi escapes the empire yet again but let's put that aside for just a moment and explore these explanations shall we i find them interesting as they put on full display the kinds of mental gymnastics defenders of the show are forced to go through for any of this to make sense excuse number one he wants obi-wan to suffer cool so capture him and torture him maybe give him a false means of escape so that you can crush his soul with the realization that he's never getting out no matter how hard he tries and that it's only a matter of time before vader stops playing with his food that's a much better form of torture than letting him go so that he can live to fight another day so yeah that explanation obviously doesn't make sense but believe it or not it's actually the more competent of the two excuse number two vader wants obi-wan to get stronger so that he may become an opponent worthy to fight that's a really weird one first of all again capturing him and forcing him to train by sicking assassin droids on him would do the trick just fine but i take issue with this more from a standpoint of what it would do to vader's character that would be a decision born of pride and arrogance and that's something i had thought he'd grown out of considering the last time he was prideful and overconfident with his abilities this happened you underestimate my power i would expect a bit more caution from a much more seasoned and wise vader he knows firsthand where pride gets you and it's why he spent the last 10 years training to be a [ __ ] machine in combat just a relentless fighter who tears through his enemies without remorse or pause or mercy because of this moment right here so to tell me that he let obi-wan go so that he could get stronger and potentially do that again is just very frustrating it tells me that vader is not a character capable of learning or adapting and that's stupid that's never been who darth vader is he's a very cunning and resilient warrior and he's very calculated he never does anything without knowing exactly how it's going to play out if anything him going against this nature in his final moments when he killed the emperor and saved his son was a literal showcase of him breaking from darth vader he made a spur of the moment decision born not of logic but of love and i mean it's not like any of this really matters anyway considering there's basically no way obi-wan and tala will be able to escape i know the show wants you to think that they lost him he had help where to sweep the planet now we'll never fight them but just because the next episode starts off with them suddenly on jabim with no explanation for how they got off mapuzo doesn't mean that it actually makes sense it doesn't all that really happened here was the loader droid carried obi-wan up a hill there's still a sith lord several inquisitors and a [ __ ] ton of stormtroopers searching for this guy and i highly doubt there isn't some kind of imperial blockade overhead there's gotta be at least one star destroyer up there in orbit so there's no [ __ ] way they're getting out of here no matter what the show tries to tell you hey where's leia oh there's leia she's reached the end of the tunnel and oh look reeva's here she somehow managed to get past leia presumably through a different tunnel i guess although i'm a little confused was the tunnel that she took faster if so then why would tala lead leia through the tunnel that takes longer to get through when they're clearly in a hurry maybe each tunnel leads out to a separate location and this was the tunnel they needed to go through to get to the spaceport but then how did riva know which tunnel leia would come out of whatever doesn't matter leia has been captured and obi-wan has been burned alive and there's no way he or tala are getting off world so that's it guys empire one find out next time how our daring heroes manage to get out of this scrape i'm being serious that's the end of episode three this has been part one of the overly long obi-wan kenobi video that i promised you all part two is already in the works and i will get it out to you all as fast as i possibly can but just like for this one i ask you to please be patient with me believe it or not these were the good episodes the latter half of this show is a [ __ ] dumpster fire it's actually some of the worst storytelling i've ever seen rematch of the sentry my ass i've already said in the past that i don't think there was ever a reality where i would have accepted a reunion between these two that takes place between revenge of the sith and a new hope not even if the fight was good but they didn't even give us that instead we got a fan film-esque pissing match between two iconic characters with bad choreography and it ended with obi-wan limping away in defeat while vader just [ __ ] let that happen good [ __ ] every time i think about this show i genuinely wonder how anyone who considers themselves a fan of star wars can enjoy it i'm not trying to gatekeep either this is a genuine question is it that they're not thinking about it or do they just genuinely believe this is how all these characters would be acting if the latter is the case then i guess we really just don't like star wars for the same reasons i thought we did but if you really truly believe that this is something that obi-wan invader would do then i'm not sure we were ever watching the same movies i'm just gonna call this video here so that i can get to work immediately on part two thank you all so very much for watching and have yourselves a wonderful international women's day hi guys i'm in the end screen uh just before you go i one more thing i wanted to show you um everyone this is lola everyone say hi to lola um stick around for part two because i'm going to [ __ ] destroy this thing with a hammer all right toodles

Channel: Sheev Talks

Views: 898,139

Keywords: Star Wars, Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi, Jedi Master, Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett, Boba Fett, Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, Sith, Sith Lord, Palpatine, Sheev, Sheev Palpatine, Emperor Palpatine, Chancellor Palpatine, Darth Maul, Count Dooku, Jango Fett, The Mandalorian, Mandalore, Mandalorian, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Clone Wars, TCW, The Clone Wars Movie, Rebels, Star Wars Rebels, Rogue One, Solo, A New Hope

Id: xyVjdOIUBiw

Length: 129min 3sec (7743 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022