Portrayed by: Ewan McGregor (Prequel Trilogy, Obi-Wan Kenobi), Alec Guinness (Original Trilogy), James Arnold Taylor (Voiceover)
Movie I Show: The Star Wars Saga
If Star Wars is a tragedy, and I’d argue more often than not it is, then Obi-Wan Kenobi is the living embodiment of it. A character who suffers loss after unimaginable loss and always manages to find his way back to the light. A man who is calm so those around him don’t have to be, who is gentle in a world that doesn’t necessarily reward that, and who can (almost) always tell when a situation calls for kindness and when it demands ferocity.
When Obi-Wan Kenobi first appears on our screens, he is introduced as the “crazy old” hermit, Ben Kenobi, a man rapidly approaching the end of his life, called to action one final time ostensibly to aid his old comrade Bail Organa, but really to serve as a mentor to Luke Skywalker, and to set him on his path. But even though his early appearances largely served to deliver exposition, we see hints at the life he lived before Luke ever crossed his path in the desert, hints that were thankfully picked up on enough to make him a central figure in the Star Wars saga going forward, and easily one of the most compelling.
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Life Is Marked by Loss
The tragedy of Obi-Wan’s life is truly how many people he loses long before their time and long before he’s ready to say goodbye. Attachment might be frowned upon in the Jedi Order, but I would challenge even Master Yoda to define what that means in a satisfactory way. Friendship, partnership, the camaraderie of the Jedi Order, and most especially the Master-Apprentice dynamic are all attachments in their own way, and all come with their own degree of love, something Obi-Wan gives freely, even if he hardly ever uses those exact words.
The first loss we see him experience is that of his Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, and though he ought to have been prepared for that eventuality — it is a duel, after all — we see how much it catches him off-guard. He’s spent the better part of his life training for this exact thing, and when it finally happens, it ends in the most devastating way it can. Though it’s the first major loss of its kind he’s likely suffered, he doesn’t have time to wallow in his pain. There’s a little boy in need of Jedi training, and Obi-Wan promised Qui-Gon to do so. He started the movie as a young man prepared to face the trials for knighthood and wound up doing so in the most tragic way the Force could provide.
This is also when we see him rally his strength for the sake of others, burying his grief so that Anakin isn’t left to fall victim to his own uncertainty over the precarious position he finds himself in. It won’t be until several years later, when he’s living in a cave on Tatooine to keep an eye on a young Luke Skywalker, that he properly has the chance to get in touch with his own grief, calling on Qui-Gon for guidance, even as his former master doesn’t appear to him.
The Clone Wars mark the greatest period of loss in Obi-Wan’s life. Years after denying himself a chance at romance with Satine, the Duchess of Mandalore, Obi-Wan is forced to watch her die in his arms, and in that moment, comes as close as he ever has to letting the Dark Side in. Here, there is no immediate demand for his time, no immediate need to serve save for his own desire for revenge. It’s only the memory of Satine’s belief in him and her love for him — as well as his for her — that pulls Obi-Wan back from the brink. And then, of course, there is the loss that defined him — the loss of Anakin Skywalker.
It’s in his mentorship of Anakin that Obi-Wan’s remarkable ability to focus on the task at hand at the expense of his own feelings becomes a fatal flaw. Their relationship was fraught from the get-go, less a father-son dynamic like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan shared and more like a strained relationship between reluctant brothers. The two grow closer, of course, becoming inseparable on the battlefield and working incredibly well in tandem. But it’s in trying to do right by Anakin to the standards of the Jedi order, instead of in the way a traumatized young boy needs, that Obi-Wan fails him and loses him to the Dark side. This final loss is most tragic, perhaps, because Obi-Wan is, in part, the architect of his own pain.
Obi-Wan Is Ultimately Driven by Love For Those Around Him
His self-confessed failure where Anakin is concerned aside — because even then he tried to do right by him and only realized too late it wasn’t what he needed — Obi-Wan is the type to step up and do what is right by everyone around him, no matter how foolish a thing that may be. Take, for instance, diving out of a hundreds-of-stories high window to pursue a probe that set two deadly slugs on Padmé. And he has the nerve to suggest, Anakin “I always buckle my seatbelt” Skywalker, is reckless?
Though the decision was ultimately bookended in loss, even taking on Anakin as a student was his attempt to do right by a boy who was removed from his home and his loved ones and promised the world, only for that promise to meet an untimely end at the hands of the Sith. He does it for the love of Qui-Gon Jinn, as even we can admit he didn’t care all that much about Anakin at the outset. That indifference and begrudging acceptance would eventually turn into a brotherly love that both initially misconstrue as paternal. It’s not hard to see why they’d make that mistake, with Obi-Wan essentially having to step in and begrudgingly take over the paternal role that Qui-Gon was meant to fill. But as the pair grew closer, as they became the duo of Kenobi and Skywalker renowned through the Clone Wars, that bond strengthened and went from a begrudging one to a genuine one.
It’s this same love of both Anakin and Padmé that drives Obi-Wan to help out his old colleague, Bail Organa, when his daughter, Princess Leia, is kidnapped. Like with Anakin in the beginning, his assistance is driven loosely by a sense of moral right, but more for the love of someone else, not the love of the person in question.
But as he and Leia actually get to know each other, he must set his sense of duty to this little girl alongside his unresolved feelings over the loss of her biological father. Like with Anakin, navigating through unresolved grief over one person eventually blossoms into genuine care for another person. His time with Leia is also one of the few times we see the kind of care he gives to others reflected immediately back at him. As the pair fly away from the Inquisitor’s fortress, Obi-Wan is reeling in his own pain and shock and is shut out by the needs and feelings of others around him. It’s then that Leia takes a seat next to him and holds his hand, a small gesture of kindness that reflects his own right back at him.
As one of the first characters to appear in the Star Wars saga, and as one who takes such a prominent role in the prequel trilogy era — which is seeing a surge in popularity right now — there’s no shortage of canonical explorations of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Books chronicling his early days in the Jedi Order — like Kiersten White’s excellent Padawan — really go a long way to painting a complex portrait of a character who has only ever done his best, even when the return of that well-meaning energy inconsistently varies from reciprocated to disregarded.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Lucasfilm