There’s a famous George Lucas quote from pre-production on the Star Wars prequels. “It’s like poetry, so that they rhyme,” he explained of his plan to repeat motifs and images from his original Star Wars movies with his second Star Wars trilogy. “Every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one.”
And so The Phantom Menace includes young Anakin Skywalker blowing up a bulbous Trade Federation ship, not unlike the way his son Luke blew up the Death Star in A New Hope. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin loses an arm in a lightsaber fight, in an echo of the way he cut off his own son’s hand in The Empire Strikes Back. The Empire rises in Revenge of the Sith and falls to ultimate defeat in Return of the Jedi. Even those titles rhyme with one another.
Lucas is long gone from Star Wars at this point, but the current Obi-Wan Kenobi show has clearly drawn inspiration from Lucas’ story and characters. The deeper the series goes, though, the more I’ve begun to wonder if Obi-Wan showrunner Joby Harold hasn’t borrowed Lucas’ poetic rhyming structure as well.
There are six chapters of Obi-Wan Kenobi, just like there are six Star Wars movies that Lucas personally directed or produced. And it seems as if each Obi-Wan episode — which are pointedly titled “Part I,” “Part II” and so on, with Roman numerals just like Lucas’ preferred Star Wars movie titles — connects to the corresponding “Episode” of Lucas’ Star Wars saga.
Here’s what I mean…
The Connections Between Each Obi-Wan Episode And the Corresponding Star Wars Movie
So far, every Obi-Wan Kenobi episode has taken inspiration from each movie from the original Star Wars saga that shares its chapter number.
That’s my theory, anyway. And I have seen others online interpret the echoes between the Star Wars movies and this Obi-Wan Kenobi show in different ways. The costuming of young Leia, for example, seems to be based on her clothing in Lucas’ first Star Wars trilogy.
There’s two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi left, so it still remains to be seen if and how this framework will apply to the entire series. If “Part V” involves someone getting frozen in carbonite, we’ll know I’m really on to something.
New episodes of Obi-Wan premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+. Sign up for Disney+ here.
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