Star Wars Celebration: 'A Look Back at Obi-Wan Kenobi' Panel Recap

Star Wars Celebration 2023 wasn't entirely about announcing and revealing new information about future movies and shows. A number of the casts and creative teams behind some of last year's biggest Star Wars releases also appeared to discuss their recent work. Tony Gilroy and some of the Andor cast spoke about their show on the convention's first day, and now Deborah Chow and some of the stars of the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries have had a chance to talk about theirs in similar depth.







Series director Deborah Chow and stars Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Vivien Lyra Blair, and Indira Varma sat down with host Amy Ratcliffe to look back at their time working on the series and talk about their favorite scenes from it. The cast kicked off the discussion by revealing how they each became involved with the show.



Each actor's story is worth listening to, but it's Vivien Lyra Blair's that stands out the most. The young performer revealed that she went through more than seven rounds of auditions before she got the part of Leia. The process was so secretive that there were 'codenames for the codenames' of the characters at first. It wasn't until she had made it through all those auditions and done a chemistry test with McGregor that she was finally offered the part -- her casting took nearly a year.



The panelists also took a moment to mention that this event was Blair's first time doing an interview for the series with the rest of the cast. Leia's inclusion in the story, while rumored, was intended to be a secret until the series released, so Blair wasn't able to participate in early interviews or to promote the show.







The actors then talked about their characters' emotional journeys and evolving relationships with each other. Indira Varma praised the complexity of her character, the Imperial double agent Tala Durith:

Because Obi-Wan Kenobi served as an interquel of sorts between the prequels and the original trilogy, it had a lot of backstory as well as future canon to keep in mind. Sure enough, Deborah Chow mentioned that telling a compelling narrative with emotional character relationships while respecting the established continuity posed a significant challenge:

Next, Christensen and McGregor spoke for a few minutes about the flashback scene between their characters in the show's fifth episode. McGregor said that scene was the first one that he and Christensen filmed together. Chow also revealed that neither actor used a stunt double for the sequence, and she praised McGregor for doing '99% of everything himself' in the series' action scenes.



While both prequel trilogy actors were enthusiastic to learn and film the lightsaber scenes, doing so came at a cost. Said McGregor:

Finally, each panelist had the opportunity to talk about their favorite scene from the show. Deborah Chow went first, and said that her favorite scene was Darth Vader's introduction on Mapuzo in the third episode. She spoke about the scene's importance in the series' overarching narrative:

As it turns out, the final scene that Chow briefly mentions here is Christensen's favorite from the show:

The final conversation between Obi-Wan and his former apprentice definitely impacts the broader saga. When Vader insists that he, not Obi-Wan, is responsible for Anakin's 'death', it has a dual meaning. It both absolves Obi-Wan of his guilt over Anakin's fate and lends new context to his claim to Luke years later that Vader betrayed and murdered his father.







Finally, McGregor revealed that his favorite scene is also one of the show's last: the farewell between Obi-Wan and Leia. He told the audience what it was like for him to watch that scene for the first time:

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his eopie in a scene from Lucasfilm's OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.



The panel concluded with everyone thanking Deborah Chow for making the series, and McGregor told everyone how much he appreciated getting the chance to return to the Star Wars universe after some time away:

It remains to be seen whether or not there will be more seasons of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kathleen Kennedy just said that no second season has been greenlit, and the show was introduced in this very panel as a limited series. Still, if the fan demand is there, we may yet see McGregor take up his lightsaber once again. He certainly seems eager to do so yet again.



If you want to watch the full Obi-Wan Kenobi retrospective panel, you can find it below:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_gh-iheFIs



And, as an extra, here's James Arnold Taylor (voice of Obi-Wan in animation) meeting Ewan McGregor for the first time (really!):



https://twitter.com/JATactor/status/1645126906960916480?s=20



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