12. Obi-Wan Kenobi

I desperately wanted the Obi-Wan Kenobi series to be good, as it promised to reunite actors Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor and to bridge a gap that was, for nearly two decades, only ever broached by the Clone Wars animated series. I had hoped that Kenobi would flesh out the Anakin/Obi-Wan dynamic in live-action and show us how their relationship was much more akin to that of brothers, rather than just merely master and apprentice, and that it would give Christensen a chance to enjoy some proper Star Wars love after he’d been the subject of so much ire as the prequels were released in the late ‘90s/early aughts.

But, alas, Obi-Wan Kenobi focused far too much on a young Leia and her relationship with Obi-Wan, bizarrely retreading tired characters and tropes while also trying to create new problems and plot points when there’s been a good story to be told sitting right there (Anakin and Obi-Wan’s bond during the Clone Wars), waiting patiently, for years.

Though McGregor deftly portrays an Obi-Wan so destroyed by the events of Episode 3 that he’s fully withdrawn from society, so scarred by the loss of his “brother” and his fellow Jedi that he can’t successfully keep his emotions from overwhelming him, we just don’t get enough of that. The show incessantly trots out child Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair, who is great) like a prized pony. “Look, remember her? She’s a kid now!” Yawn.

The brief scenes of Anakin and Obi-Wan together start to paint a clearer picture of their dynamic, but we never get a chance to see the finished painting. Instead we are repeatedly pulled back to young Leia and to a new Inquisitor struggling under the weight of Sith pressure (Reva, played by Moses Ingram), and told we should care about this, not that.

McGregor’s recent comments gave me some hope that a potential second season of the series could provide the live-action Clone Wars we’ve been searching for, but I won’t hold my breath. — AM