Last week on March 9th, the long-awaited trailer for the upcoming Disney+ Star Wars show, Obi-Wan Kenobi, finally dropped, and it certainly delivered. It did everything a trailer should by teasing what is coming without revealing too much. It gave old and new fans just enough to get them excited about the show’s eventual release in May. While the trailer contained things that fans had expected to see, it also grabbed those fans’ attention with live-action reveals of characters who originated in the animated show Star Wars: Rebels and showed off a plethora of new locations besides Tatooine. While these might not seem like much more than teases, especially since most of these scenes are only a few seconds long, they serve as subtle indicators of what direction the highly anticipated show may take.
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One of the main questions that older Star Wars fans asked when the Obi-Wan Kenobi series was first revealed was, “How much of Obi-Wan’s story still needs to be told?” Before the announcement, there was already a plethora of known canon knowledge about him, and there were very few mysteries left regarding his character. While the new trailer shows that Obi-Wan Kenobi will answer this question, from what it specifically showed, it does appear that it will go about it in an exciting way.
The very presence of the new, live-action inquisitors and locations other than Tatooine indicates that the story may not be confined to one place and hints at the possibility of Obi-Wan Kenobi himself traveling the galaxy as he used to do. The official reason for this has yet to be revealed, of course, but the scenes shown in the trailer provide some subtle hints as to why this may be if one knows what to look for.
New Inquisitors, Familiar Foes
Disney+
Prior to the release of the new trailer, the only confirmed cast members of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series were Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader (both of whom are reprising their roles from the prequel trilogy), and Joel Edgerton as Owen Lars (Luke Skywalker’s uncle). The revelation that Rupert Friend was being cast as the Grand Inquisitor was revealed only slightly before the trailer dropped. Since the trailer’s release, the known cast has since expanded to include Sung Kang as the Fifth Brother, Moses Ingram as the Third Sister, Bonnie Piesse as Beru Lars, and Indira Varma as an imperial officer. While all of those characters will undoubtedly have a role to play, the three known inquisitors will undoubtedly be the ones who drive the story forward.
They are featured heavily in the trailer, and their very presence alone indicates that they will have quite the task ahead of them if their paths are to cross with Obi-Wan Kenobi. While certainly intimidating, a little known fact about the inquisitors from Star Wars is that while they are tasked with hunting down Jedi, very few of them have the skills or training necessary to take down fully-fledged Jedi masters, as evidenced by the fact that characters like Kanan Jarrus and Cal Kestis, neither of whom ever reached the rank of Jedi knight, were able to take down multiple inquisitors.
Fans of Star Wars will know that while the Grand Inquisitor and the Fifth Brother may cause a lot of damage during their time in Obi-Wan Kenobi, neither of them will actually die, as they both show up and are subsequently defeated in the 2014 animated series Star Wars: Rebels, which takes place after the events Obi-Wan Kenobi. However, the presence of the Third Sister reveals quite a bit about the direction the series might take as not only is she a new inquisitor and therefore runs the risk of dying, but the scenes in which she appears are also very telling. When she is first shown in the trailer, she is seen on a desert planet that is very recognizably Tatooine hanging bodies while a crowd of onlookers, one of them being Owen Lars, watches on. The next time she is seen, she confronts Owen Lars with her lightsaber drawn.
Regardless of how this plays out, especially regarding the relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Owen Lars, if an inquisitor, any inquisitor, was able to track Obi-Wan Kenobi to Tatooine, then Obi-Wan Kenobi himself may decide to leave Tatooine for a time. After all, while they may know about him, none of them know about Luke, and if Obi-Wan Kenobi needs to leave Tatooine for a time to keep Luke safe, then it is very likely that he would.
New Locations, Familiar Battlegrounds
Aside from Tatooine, a total of two new planets were shown in the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer, a sprawling city, and a water planet. While the sprawling city could honestly be any planet within the Star Wars universe, fans of the videogame Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order might recognize the water planet as Nur, the moon of the planet Mustafar and home of the Fortress Inquisitorius, the home base of the Inquisitors.
After all, one of the scenes in the trailer shows the known inquisitors discussing the hunting of Jedi in a room that looks very much like one from the Fortress Inquisitorius. If this planet is indeed Nur and Obi-Wan Kenobi is on the run, then he likely will need help. Perhaps help could be provided by Cal Kestis, who is, after all, portrayed by the actual human actor Cameron Monaghan, so he could appear in Obi-Wan Kenobi if Disney wants him to.
