“Part 4” never quite returns to the potent mix of history, character, emotion and world-building provided by that opening bacta scene. At least it’s using the bacta tank to much better effect than The Book of Boba Fett did. While I’m not particularly interested in ranking the TV shows (especially two with such different lengths), Obi-Wan Kenobi does pull off its Imperial base infiltration sequence a bit more competently than the one in The Mandalorian season 2.
And this episode has plenty of confidence. Director Deborah Chow, cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung, and the rest of the crew go off when it comes to the episode’s lighting (to use a professional term). Every scene in which Obi-Wan ignites his lightsaber casts beautiful neon glows and shimmering reflections. They know they have a good thing going with the use of a lightsaber in the dark and use it to great effect in this episode, at one point casting Obi-Wan as the monster in the shadows, taking down scared stormtroopers one by one. The water in this episode also looks great, full of greens and whites. The base itself doesn’t quite feel like a real place yet, but it’s getting very close. Look at that sea creature stuck to the door of the underwater entrance.
It’s almost impossible to imagine this show without Ewan McGregor. His performance is stellar, his expressions and body language alone selling how haunted his character feels. But it’s also his presence that makes a difference. He provides an effective visual bridge between the Original and Prequel Trilogies, his costume, makeup and affect all arguing against that much-discussed subject of Star Wars recasting. At the same time, it retroactively justifies putting him in as a younger Alec Guinness in the first place.
That The Mandalorian episode I mentioned earlier, “The Believer”? Forcing Din Djarin to take his helmet off near the end of that episode helped the emotional arc land. Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t quite do that. By the time the green water started rushing into Fortress Inquisitorius, the script puts character beats aside in favor of action. Sacrificing one of the charming proto-rebel soldiers to the cause doesn’t raise the stakes for Obi-Wan or Leia personally enough. Tala mentions that Obi-Wan might have to forget some of his past to get Leia out alive, but the specter of Vader never really comes back to haunt him. Instead, Vader seems to have missed the whole adventure by a minute, appearing conveniently later to threaten Reva.
The script does give the Third Sister more to work with. Moses Ingram nails a mix of threatening evil and almost intentional awkwardness as little Leia snarkily resists her interrogation. It’s easy to believe that Reva is trying to get her own bitter self-sufficiency to sink into Leia, as if she believes it’s possible to come out of this with the two of them as friends. Their scenes together needed to come off as frightening but not terrifying, revealing but restrained, and I think they worked. Although the show doesn’t go quite so far as showing Leia actually being tortured, it very effectively threatens her. (I also particularly enjoyed Ingram’s delivery of “Was it worth it?”)
The one-off rebels are also fun, a diverse band that manage some characterization in a few lines. Their inclusion at the end still took too much away from what could have been a major decision point for Obi-Wan, but Star Wars continues to excel at making you wonder what adventures the minor characters have just off screen.
