TV Review: OBI WAN KENOBI FULL SEASON

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series has finished its run on Disney + was it worth the wait? Did it live up to the hype? Was it all pointless?

This was not the show we were looking for

There was something missing with this show. As a massive Star Wars fan I should’ve been excited with every episode, I should have been giddily awaiting the return of Obi-Wan and Darth Vader to my television screen, but for some reason, it left me mostly feeling cold and dare I say it uncaring.

Perhaps it was the musical score that was most disappointing throughout the entire series. There were only glimpses of John Williams superlative score and then it was used so sparingly that if you lost attention for but a moment it you’d miss it. Most of the time the music was bland, unemotive and well, boring. With some of the scenes that we get in this show it should have been soaring and emotive.

It’s not just the music that was a let down with this series but the special fx too. Some scenes looked good whilst other were laughably bad. Episode 4 in particular was just awful. For such an important story in the Star Wars saga you’d have thought Disney and Lucasfilm would’ve splashed the cash but alas no. Some of the sets just look cheap and even the costumes look like they were sourced on a budget.

The Writing is truly something of the Dark Side

By far my biggest issue with the show is the often terrible writing. It doesn’t help when one of the lead writers admits that they’d never Star Wars before. (Why the F do these studios keep hiring writers like this?) The plot is forced, filled with massive plot holes and so many coincidences that its a bit of an insult to the viewers intelligence.

There are so many examples to choose from but my favourite has to be when Vader simply let’s Obi-Wan escape after their first duel. Now, that episode was a major let down in itself but some of the decisions made by the characters are just stupid and obviously only occur so that the plot can continue.

Then there’s the character of Reva. Seriously what was the point of her character? She’s irritating and whiny all the way through and in the final episode her plot line ends so predictably it was boring. She added nothing at all to the plot save for being the intial catalyst and her role could easily have been taken up by another more established character like the Grand Inquisitor.

Some of the direction throughout was ropey at best which probably added to the feeling of blandness I felt towards the whole thing. Some of the actors did a good job, but again Reva was a huge let down and at times even Ewan McGregor looked bored stiff.

After a pretty good and promising start episodes 3 and 4 almost caused me to stop watching it entirely. Whoever wrote those episodes need to go back to writing school and they were filler of the worst kind. It was somewhat redeemed in episode 5 by a couple of good scenes and all in all it ended fairly strongly.

I guess my biggest issue with the show is that we fans know that it should’ve and could’ve been so much better than it turned out to be. Oh, and anyone saying this was amazing or the greatest thing ever, please tell them they’re an idiot. If that’s true then they’re standards are pretty darn low.

Overall I give Obi-Wan Kenobi an average score of 6/10. It could’ve been great, alas the writers were not up to the task and the story suffered greatly because of it.