Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

Doesn't really fit into the Mandalorian/Boba Fett timeline, so why not.

A few surprises in Episode 1 (although not really that surprising). A couple characters not even alluded to in any of the trailers. A fairly big name they kept very quiet. (Announced several months back but not mentioned thereafter.)
One big name they talked about a LOT in the advance promo material: not even a whiff.
Until the end of E2.

 

Excited to watch. My wife marginally likes Star Wars. But she loves Ewan McGregor. So she’s making me wait to watch. Fridays and Saturdays are the absolute worst with my schedule. Hoping to get to it Sunday.

I think the rest of the episodes come out on Wednesdays. That’ll be better.

 

The first two episodes are a strong start. The show does a great job creating tension even though there shouldn't be any because we know the future of some characters.

 

The reference to the aquilian ranger was a nice fan service. Made me smile.

 

I was not nearly enough of a Star Wars geek to get that one.

 

Oh, I am. I’ve read the drafts. I admit. There are parts in them that I liked better.

 

I've read bits and pieces over the years, but not everything. I lost a little of my interest since they threw all of the Legends stuff out.

 

Between the casting and the writing, the young Leia character is just about perfection. I love her.

 

I’m still trying to figure out how they retconned the entire Zahn trilogy, except Thrawn.

 

They threw it out along with most of the novels written before Disney bought the franchise. They have pulled some elements from those novels, including Thrawn, but overall they claim that those stories are no longer canon.

I didn't read all of that stuff, but for the most part, the stories made more sense and they were far more satisfying than the movie sequels we got.

 

It is kinda cool how in the Disney Era of Star Wars, they latch onto seemingly trivial lines of dialogue or plot points of the earlier canonical movies and generate entire new shows out of them:

"Many Bothans died to bring us this information": becomes Rogue One.

"My wife and I will take the girl. She will be loved with us": becomes a major storyline of Kenobi.

The Empire had an entire army of clones identical to Boba Fett at the end of Revenge of the Sith. By the time of A New Hope 18-20 years later, they're apparently all gone. In Kenobi, we see essentially why.

 

That last storyline was fleshed out more in the animated series, especially The Bad Batch. Overall, it's not very good, but it does have the Empire replacing the clones with the Stormtroopers we know from the original trilogy.