Actor Ewan McGregor begged fans to petition Disney and Lucasfilm to greenlight a second season of their Obi-Wan Kenobi show.
(L-R): Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Tala Durith (Indira Varma) in Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
During an appearance at MegaCon Orlando last weekend, McGregor discussed the first season of the show and shared how it was turned into a television after being originally conceived as a film.
READ: Stranger Things Decimated Kenobi in 1st Weekend: 5x More Hours Watched
McGregor said, “It was originally going to be a movie and, you know, I’ve often thought, ‘Well, should it have been a movie?’ But I kind of think it’s kind of great we did it that way and it’s a longer story. And hopefully it’s more satisfying as a result. We got more time to weave a story.”
He then added, “I just hope we can do another one. Can everyone write to Disney? I’ll give you some email addresses at the end. It’ll just say, ‘Dear Disney, let’s have another. Let’s a have a bit more of Obi-Wan Kenobi please.’
(L-R): Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Princess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) in Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series received middling reviews from audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes the series currently has an audience score of 62%. The average rating is 3.5 out of 5.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Rotten Tomatoes score
On IMDb it has a middling 7.1 out of 10. The highest rated episode of the entire series was the sixth and final episode with an 8.4 while the lowest scored episode was the fourth one with a 6.4.
Obi-Wan Kenobi IMDb scores
READ: Obi-Wan Kenobi Finale Ratings Are Embarrassing: Star Wars’ Audience Is Gone
The series’ viewership, at least according to Nielsen, fared worse than both The Mandalorian Season 2, Loki, and WandaVision. Nielsen reported the show’s first three episodes garnered 958 million minutes viewed. By the week the sixth and final episode premiered, the only brought in 860 million minutes. It was best by Netflix’s Stranger Things and Umbrella Academy.
A week following the sixth and final episode debuted, the show had completely dropped off of Nielsen’s top 10 chart, meaning its total minutes viewed was below 10th place finisher Ozark’s 330 million minutes viewed.
In contrast, The Mandalorian drew in 1.336 billion minutes viewed the week of the Season 2 finale. The show continued to chart weeks after the finale’s premiere. The ensuing week the show raked in 1.024 billion minutes. The next week it did 707 million minutes. The week after that it still did 411 million minutes viewed.
(L-R): Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Princess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) in Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
The reason the review scores are so low and viewership tailed off can be attributed to the show’s lack of respect for Star Wars canon and continuity as well as just plain dumb ideas.
One of those dumb ideas was mocked by actress Vivien Lyra Blair, who played a young Leia Organa in the show. At Star Wars Celebration 2023, Blair pointed out how ridiculous it was to have Obi-Wan Kenobi attempt to smuggle her out of Fortress Inquisitorius underneath his cloak.
She said, ““I remember the scene where I was in the the coat. I was inside the Imperial officer’s coat and I kept poking my head out to look around at the set and he kept trying to push me back in, and it was really funny.”
“I kept just saying, ‘How is anyone believing that this random lump inside this guy’s coat is just normal? How is this happening?’ But it was a lot of fun,” she added.
As for the canon and continuity problems, one need look no further than the premise of the show being a rematch of the century between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
George Lucas made it abundantly clear that Kenobi and Vader never fought between their battle at Mustafar and the Death Star. In commentary for the release of the original Star Wars films on DVDs back in 2004 he said, “There’s another story going on here where Vader senses that Obi-Wan is on the Death Star. One of the fun things for me about this movie was that I was making it episode 4, which is why I was so adamant about having that on the film. There’s a lot of backstory that just–. You know, it’s interesting the film was successful as it is and I hardly told any of the story.”
He continued, “But the other backstory is they had this whole confrontation thing and Obi-Wan almost killed him and he put him in this suit and everything and now they’re confronting each other again after all these years.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) in Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
Lucas made similar comments back in 1981 during the Revenge of the Jedi Story Conference. The comments were collected and published in Star Wars Archives 1999-2005 by Paul Duncan in 2020.
Lucas said, “Ben takes one and gives him to a couple out there on Tatooine and he gets his little hideout in the hills and he watches him grow. Ben can’t raise Luke himself, because he’s a wanted man.”
“Leia and Luke’s mother go to Alderaan and are taken by the king there, who is a friend of Ben’s. She dies shortly thereafter and Leia is brought up by her foster parents. She knows that her real mother died,” he continued.
Lucas added, “I think you can make Ben take the blame for Vader. ‘I should have given him more training. I should have sent him to Yoda, but I thought I could be as good a teacher as Yoda. I wish that I could stop the pestilence that I’ve unleashed on the galaxy.’ His burden is that he feels responsible for everything that Vader has done.”
Star Wars Archives 1999-2005 (2020), TASCHEN Books
While Lucasfilm should completely scrap any kind of continuation from this first season of Obi-Wan Kenobi, if they were to do another limited series surrounding Obi-Wan Kenobi it should be set during The Clone Wars and follow Kenobi and Anakin as they fight against the Separatists.
What do you make of McGregor wanting fans to petition for a second season of Obi-Wan Kenobi?
NEXT: Obi-Wan Kenobi: The Full Series (?) Review and Discussion
