I don’t even know where to start with Obi-Wan Kenobi Part 3, because it gave me all the things I wanted, but not exactly the way I wanted them.

A couple of quick things. It’s called Part 3, and I’m not going to call it Episode 3. It’s part three of what I’m considering to be a roughly six hour Obi-Wan Kenobi movie. It’s a really long movie, each one is about an hour, and I believe that’s why they’re doing the parts. Spoilers from here on.

The short version: this one picks up literally where last week left off. Obi-Wan is trying to get little kid Leia back home to Alderaan after she was kidnapped. Meanwhile the Inquisitors, which include Reva, have gone back, and she gets Vader to back her up. That gives her all the street cred she needs to go back to the other kids at the Inquisitorium. Hey, they had a Jedi Temple, why wouldn’t the Empire have an academy? I want that word now.

After that, she follows and brings everything to bear on this one little planet. Obi-Wan and Leia are on an automated ship, the ship drops them off, and they end up having to face stormtroopers and some other obstacles. You see more of clever Leia, and eventually you get a really cool encounter.

Mrs. Know-It-All joined me again for this one, and she’s the one who called it.

She Went for the Jugular

I asked her what she liked. She liked it all. We got a lot of information, it’s moving along, she likes the story they’re telling. What she didn’t get was the explosion, the oh my gosh factor. She really did like the episode. She just couldn’t say she loved it.

I don’t know that I really loved it either, by the way. We got everything we wanted. It just didn’t unfold the way I wanted it to. She told me I sounded a little bit more like a Star Wars fan when I said that.

It went by fast, though. It was 47 minutes and it didn’t feel long, which means I was engaged and I liked it.

Then she went in for the jugular. I told her I’d already done my recap, so we could just talk about the cool stuff, and she said the fact that I’d just recapped the events tells her there wasn’t a wow. I literally went straight through it, beginning to end. The only thing I skipped was Vader.

She’s absolutely right. I never thought of it that way, and she gave me some perspective on the spot. Things happen in this episode, but it’s not even overcomplicated things.

Take the ship. It’s all automated. You can’t stop it, you can’t take it off course, you can’t do anything to it. I mean, somebody could probably hijack the thing, but at the end of the day it’s going specifically to one place, and that place is an almost completely deserted planet except for some small settlements. Cargo just gets dropped off on various hills and plateaus, and then someone comes and collects it all up.

Obi-Wan is in such a despondent place, man. He’s so not trusting of anyone. At one point Leia’s like, maybe we can find some help, and he tells her people aren’t trustworthy, people are going to betray you. And I’m like, dang, jaded Obi-Wan. It’s fear and jadedness all at the same time. He’s that one parent who’s like, don’t go out anywhere, everyone outside is going to hurt you.

The Minute Darth Vader Opens His Mouth

And then we get Vader, and I love that they came right out with him.

Anybody who watched Rogue One, and anyone who’s heard James Earl Jones in the Star Wars he’s done recently, knows he doesn’t sound like himself anymore. He sounds older, and you can tell. A great example is the line in Rogue One: “Be careful not to choke on your aspirations.” His voice is just off a hair when you compare it to Darth Vader in the originals. He’s aging, and you can hear it.

The minute Darth Vader opens his mouth here, it’s classic sounding James Earl Jones. They did a great job. I think they’re using that Luke Skywalker voice technology.

You could tell when we were watching The Mandalorian, because when you hear interviews with Mark Hamill you hear the inflection. What they did for The Book of Boba Fett is a computer, an AI, that they fed all of Mark Hamill’s dialogue. And it wasn’t only the movies. Back in the ’80s he did a series of audio adventures, fully dramatized with a full voice cast. I think the only person who didn’t do it was Harrison Ford. Mark Hamill also voiced a ton of actual audiobooks in that era, Star Wars and otherwise. So there was a slew of audio they could feed into the computer to get the voice.

I think they’ve done something similar with Vader, because he sounds amazing. He sounds like James Earl Jones hadn’t missed a beat. He sounds young and vibrant, and I was very pleased. You get a ton of new dialogue from Darth Vader this entire episode.

(Mrs. Know-It-All had a sidebar here, because talking about James Earl Jones and the voice made the episode of The Big Bang Theory pop into her head, the one where he’s talking to Sheldon. I love that episode. You think he’s going to be all stuffy, like a celebrity, and what does he do? He likes Star Wars, he likes Sheldon, and he takes Sheldon on an adventure. It’s hilarious.)

If you watch A New Hope, or any of the originals, you’ll see Vader walking differently. Here he’s young. He’s walking around like we saw in Rogue One, like he’s wrecking shop on some fools. You can tell he got out and did his own job, and then as time went on and the Empire grew, he just stepped back. He’s a silent owner. Darth Vader, silent owner. I’m here for that.

Tala, and Back When It Stood for Something

Then we meet Indira Varma, who plays Tala, even though she’s credited online as Tia. T-A-L-A is who she is.

I thought she was just some smuggler chick in an Empire outfit. You find out no, she joined the Empire. She thought it was a good thing, back when it stood for something.

I don’t care what side of the fandom fence you live on: this era of Star Wars is giving us a really difficult conversation. There are many people in Nazi Germany who thought they were doing good. Not by what they were doing, but because they believed in German nationalism, they believed in making life better for their people. And to be fair, they had absolutely been oppressed after World War I. Everybody was trying to squash them down because of their involvement in it. So I understand why she’d turn out the way she did.

Mrs. Know-It-All took it to Finn, from the last three movies. Something clicked for him too. By the time of the First Order they’re just taking kids and trying to raise them to be that. They’re basically Hitler children. So it’s not uncommon for Star Wars to show us that, and we’re both kind of glad they did it here.

Indira Varma is doing amazing work as an actress. I’m used to her from Game of Thrones and some other things, and I really like her. It’s funny, I almost saw her as someone Leia looks up to. Leia sees her change her outfit, she’s got a gun on her hip, and Tala even says it: that little girl’s going to be a fighter. You see Obi-Wan looking back like, yeah, you might be right. Dude, you’re totally right.

“Are You My Real Dad?”

The part Mrs. Know-It-All really liked is on the transport, when Leia starts questioning Obi-Wan about her real father.

That’s Freck, the one who looks like a mole man. He’s a super loyalist to the Empire, this guy’s ridiculous, and he’s so funny, because you don’t want to like him. He picks up some stormtroopers, and it’s a super tense moment. Obi-Wan tells them his wife died, and that he looks at his daughter’s face and sees so much of her.

Remember, Leia is still very Force sensitive. With her it’s all up here, in the head, where Luke eventually learns to be more physical with it. She can read a lot of things, and they’re making it very clear she’s always had that kind of prescience. So she looks at him, and she’s so innocent, and there’s this kid hope in it. You knew my mother. Are you my dad? She came flat out and said, are you my real dad? I’m okay with that. I wouldn’t expect anything less from her. Very direct.

She’s still a hair too clever for me. I don’t mean kids aren’t clever. I feel like she’s a character the writers are writing because they know who she’s eventually going to be. I love strong women, I love strong female characters, I’m down. I’ve just never been a fan of kids insulting adults. It always feels like a strange undermining that I don’t agree with, and I’ve never agreed with it in sitcoms or anywhere else.

But we need to see the journey, and when she meets Tala, that’s the first time I felt like, oh, Leia is beginning to build who her templates are.

The Rebel Symbol on the Wall

When Reva finally walks into those tunnels, there’s the rebel symbol carved into the wall. That told Reva that everyone kind of passes through there.

That’s where Mrs. Know-It-All’s most excitement was, and it was awesome, because it tells you where it’s going. It also tells us that in Star Wars history they started this real quick, because right now the Empire is pretty new.

The Fight We’ve Always Wanted

So you get the fight we’ve always wanted, and it was very lackluster. I believe that’s because this is the first fight. I hope it’s the first of a couple.

I won’t say it wasn’t a fair fight, but you have Obi-Wan having to pull on all his muscle memory just to use the Force. I think he’s also still very much in shock, because last episode he heard that Anakin was still alive, and that was less than a day ago.

When he’s walking through the village, all of a sudden you see Obi-Wan just kind of stop, like something’s wrong. He left those two back, and he knew. I’m convinced he woke up Anakin. The whole beginning of this episode is literally them dressing Vader and getting him ready, which is cool, because you don’t see that very often.

In prep for the series I watched Episode III, a few choice episodes of Clone Wars, and a couple from Rebels, just to refresh myself. The one thing I noticed is they used to have to add the glow for the lightsabers. Now the lightsabers are practical. They’re lit up themselves, so you get to see this practical light on the actors.

Obi-Wan’s saber is blue, Vader’s is red, they’re in a dark quarry facing each other, and there’s this sloppy factor to Obi-Wan.

Was the lightsaber battle what I wanted it to be? No. But Vader setting the ground on fire, grabbing Obi-Wan, slamming him into the thing, and being all, “Your pain has only just begun”? Wow. That raised it for me. The emotional stakes are here. The personal stakes are here. It’s Obi-Wan and Vader again. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.” Oh, it’s so good.

Backing Right Up to A New Hope

Where I think they’re going: by the end of this series you’ll have an Obi-Wan who’s decided to be who he’s supposed to be. Yes, I will hide, and yes, I will protect the child, but I am a Jedi first. That’s why he’s all buttoned up when we see him later. When Luke comes to him in A New Hope, he’s not this rough looking guy.

Luke’s 19 in A New Hope. They’re twins, so they’re both 19, and yes, I did look it up. That’s nine years between now and who Obi-Wan eventually becomes, the gray-haired older man, and I feel like it took a ton on him to get to the gray hair. He becomes the hermit Luke thinks he is. Life will do that. I believe we’re going to see much more of that personal journey, how he became who he was in A New Hope.

If you’re going to make this a true limited series, because there are only so many stories you can tell in this time period and this place, and if this is going to be his farewell, how awesome would it be to get Ewan McGregor right up to the moment? Rogue One backed us right up to A New Hope from Leia’s side. It’d be great if Obi-Wan backed us right up to it from Luke’s side. Then you’d have what George Lucas used to call symmetry. (I did a really bad George Lucas impression here. Mrs. Know-It-All told me to shut up.)

The Verdict

Obi-Wan Kenobi Part 3 is an 8.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

Mrs. Know-It-All originally said 7, because she got everything she wanted and it just didn’t explode in her face. The Vader and Obi-Wan stuff was really great, but her wow factor was the rebel symbol. That’s when it became real for her. She’s giving it an 8.

I’m going a hair better, because I got the encounter I wanted. I was originally a 9 in the room while we were watching it, and I’ve come back down a half. We kind of shifted toward each other, because she was much less and I was much more, and talking it through is what did it.

I’m in, man. Eight and a half.

Your turn. Was that the Vader and Obi-Wan fight you were waiting for, or do you think it’s the first of a couple like I do? Let us know what you thought, because we’d love to see where your head’s at on this one. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.