Well, here is my Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 3 review and again I am a very happy Star Wars fan this week. I really HAVE to get into SPOILERS this week. However I will be covering my thoughts SPOILER FREE initially and then I’ll give a warning before I go further. It’s kinda hard to get into what I liked about Episode 3 without spoilers, so here are my initial thoughts before I go further.

Having loved Episodes 1-2, I have to say Episode 3 of Obi-Wan Kenobi was emotional once more, but with a tinge of brutality to boot. More and more as this series progresses, I start to wish this was the team who made the prequel movies. The prequels were all idea an be damned with the execution. So far Obi-Wan Kenobi takes a rather simple idea and executes it brilliantly. The acting remains impressive from all those involved and the stakes get turned up to eleven this week. Again, and I know not all Star Wars fans agree with this, I felt there was a subtlety to how this was played out. Care was taken to avoid too many liberties. Yet, still the episode was a thrilling experience for me.

As for criticisms I had a few gripes with editing and pacing, and one scratch my head moment. However I’ll discuss those in more detail below.

Overall, I remain a happy fan of Obi-Wan Kenobi so far.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 3 SPOILERS Below!!

If you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to go a little further? Either you’ve watched Episode 3 yourself, or you don’t care about spoilers. Either way, it’s your call.

Episode 3 is all about the threat of Vader and the beginnings of a change in Obi-Wan’s character. Teased at the end of Episode 2, Vader arrives in this show big time. Just getting into Vader himself he was absolutely brutal in bringing Obi-Wan to him. Just grabbing random bystanders with the Force and dragging them, choking them, or even just snapping one adolescent’s neck. As for the voice there is definitely a bit of AI trickery going on here to make James Earl Jones sound more like he did back in the day. Not every fan loved it, I thought it was fine, no complaints.

RELATED: I KNEW IT!!! Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 1 & 2 Review | The Cantina Reviews

Of course while we see quite a bit of Vader, the episode remains more focused on the characters of Kenobi and Leia. I really enjoyed their hitchhiking ride together. There was a really cool moment between the pair. When Leia guesses Obi-Wan knew her mother and asked him if he was her father. Then Obi-Wan opening up about his own family and how he made a new family in the Jedi. I just found that very well written and instinctive to the moment.

RELATED: Obi-Wan Kenobi Episodes 1&2 Review – Thankfuly Subtle And Powerful | NO SPOILERS

Once Vader and Kenobi are together, it’s all about Vader’s brutality and McGregor’s acting. There was more emotion shown by McGregor in this short battle than in the entire fight between the pair in Revenge of the Sith. What we see here is a Kenobi bereft of any hope. However this lack of hope has given way to fear. Obi-Wan is scared of Vader, scared of his old apprentice, and that’s not something you could have said about the Alec Guinness version in A New Hope. That’s why Obi-Wan fares so badly against Vader here. He’s not mentally prepared for this fight and he’s scared of Vader and of dying. Not quite as sacred of dying as he is of Leia being caught, but it’s there.

The duel between the pair was, I thought excellent, if extremely one sided. However if you remember an old report by LRM, we did say the pair will square off twice, and this is just round 1. There was no flashy saber rattling, it was a brutal fighter against his old trainer who has gone rusty.

Criticisms

The only issue I had with the fight, and the first of my criticisms is why Vader did not simply crunch the Loader droid with the Force and then slowly walk around and retrieve Kenobi? I know it would not have worked for the rest of the story, but I’d rather a better explanation than Vader just watching the Loader drag Kenobi away.

As for other criticisms I mentioned above in the non-spoilers review? The entire tunnel situation had me slightly confused. So Leia and Tia head up the Tunnel which has one entrance and one exit. The  Tia sends Leia on her own and heads back for Obi-Wan. Meanwhile Reva discovers the hiding spot and somehow Tai is already back. We know this because the Loader droid leaves to go do what it’s been told to by Tia before Reva enters.

Ok, if it was just that alone, I’m not going to go crazy. However when Leia arrives at her destination, which she must have been quite close to by the time Reva even finds it, Reva is already there waiting for her? I mean, dafuq? I think we have a bit of a continuity issue there which instead of resolving they just messed with the editing a little to make it even more ambiguous. It’s not a deal breaker, but it was fairly noticeable in my opinion.

However, as said above, overall the good far outweighed the bad for me. This feels like the prequel we all dreamed up in our heads long before The Phantom Menace came calling in ’99. Could the show still mess up and fail to tick the landing,? For sure, however so far, I am happy and as long as the same care is taken for the rest of the show, well, I can’t wait to sit down and check out next week’s installment.

GRADE: A-

Why don’t you leave your own Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 3 review down below and let us know what you think? Or hop over to our Discord server, linked below, where you can join in with Kyle Malone and I arguing about the show. We will also be recording The Cantina reviews today and thankfully Shockey is joining us for Episode 3. He might keep Kyle and I from falling out over this, maybe not?

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