Why “Obi-Wan Kenobi” takes place ten years after the action of “Revenge of the Sith”, while seventeen years separate the release of the Star Wars series from Episode III?
Seventeen years after the release of the film Revenge of the Sith, Ewan McGregor is making a comeback as Obi-Wan Kenobi, on the occasion of a new series broadcast exclusively on Disney+. However, the program will take place “only” ten years after the outcome of Episode III, which saw Obi-Wan and his former padawan Anakin Skywalker engage in a duel to the death on the planet Mustafar.
Why is the Obi-Wan Kenobi series rerouted exactly ten years after the end of Revenge of the Sith? The answer lies in the Star Wars timeline. First of all, it should be remembered that we consider “year zero” the time in which the action of Episode IV takes place (and the famous battle of Yelvin concluded by the destruction of the Death Star) .
Thus, the action of Revenge of the Sith takes place in the year -19 before the Battle of Yelvin, and consequently that of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series in the year -9. A choice made so as not to conflict with the plot of the Star Wars Rebels animated series taking place a few years later, which notably saw old Kenobi (as he appears in Episode IV, under the traits of Alec Guiness) confront and kill Darth Maul on Tatooine in year -2.
In an interview with our colleagues fromEntertainment Weeklyscreenwriter Joby Harold returned to the temporality of the series, explaining how the choice to situate the action of Obi-Wan Kenobi ten years after The Revenge of the Sith is also justified for narrative issues:
The story we wanted to tell is that of the path taken by the character since the end of Revenge of the Sith, and all the pain and sadness that ensued, until the calmer and calmer version embodied by Alec Guiness at the start of A New Hope (Episode IV). We wanted to put this transition into images, and tell how it got there.
We also know that in the official comic book Star Wars: The Last of Its Kind, Luke Skywalker (just 8 years old) confronted Jabba the Hutt to protest the application of a new tax during the Great Drought on Tatooine. Knocked out by one of Jabba’s guards, the child was saved by Obi-Wan Kenobi, but has no memory of the events. This event took place in the year -11, two years before the starting point of the Disney+ series.
It is therefore a Jedi marked by a solitary exile of ten years that we will discover on the occasion of this new mini-series. Hidden protector of his former Padawan’s son, Kenobi will also have to come to terms with his past, with the arrival of Inquisitors deployed by Emperor Palpatine to hunt down and eliminate the galaxy’s last Jedi.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series can be discovered exclusively on the Disney+ platform from May 27.