Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 2 Review – The Agonizing Pursuit Of Princess Leia
After an agonizingly boring and slow-paced first episode filled with contradictory character characterizations, shockingly bizarre moments, and massive continuity problems, the second episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi can’t be worse can it?
The Story
Obi-Wan Kenobi Part II sees the Master Jedi depart Tatooine and head to the planet Daiyu in search of the kidnapped Princess Leia at the behest of her father Bail Organa, who not only had a direct communication device to Kenobi, but also instantly located and arrived in his cave on Tatooine to persuade him to undertake the rescue mission.
After arriving on the planet, Kenobi sets out to find Princess Leia, and then evade the Imperial forces led by the Inquisitors who attempt to trap him on the planet.
The Good
The atmosphere of Daiyu definitely has a Star Wars feel about it. The planet is extremely active and there is all sorts of activity happening with an open street market and dice games.
But there is also a darkness to the planet with spice dealers promising to free users of all their problems and an underground railroad network working to get people off the planet and protect them from the Empire.
There is also some interesting character designs albeit they are background characters, but their inclusion makes it abundantly clear this is a Star Wars planet.
The Bad
Like the first episode, the bad heavily outweighs the good. First off, the writing is absolutely atrocious and the plot is moved forward through obvious contrivances.
As an example, towards the beginning of the episode Kenobi is contacted by a local girl who informs him about a Jedi operating on the planet that aids a number of people and offers to take him there so that this Jedi might assist in locating Leia.
Kenobi takes her up on the offer, but instead of being introduced to this Jedi by the young girl, Kenobi is next shown infiltrating the building where this supposed Jedi is, and eavesdropping on him as he works to get a mother and her son off the planet. The local girl is nowhere to be seen.
Kenobi spying on the operation leads him to feel indignant about it, given the Jedi, played by Kumail Nanjiani, is not a Jedi and is only playing the part of one. The whole thing is a set up in order to have Kenobi show his anger, but the anger Kenobi shows doesn’t even make any sense because while Nanjiani’s character might have been pretending to be a Jedi, he seemingly did indeed help the family get off the planet albeit at the cost of some credits.
After being threatened by Kenobi, Nanjiani’s character promises to help him find Leia and he informs him there happens to be only one place where a kidnapped girl might be taken on the planet. There is no tracking of possible kidnappers, meeting with contacts, or anything. He just tells Kenobi where Leia could be and voila that’s the place she is. Completely, and utterly contrived.
Aside from that, the whole scene is a disgrace to Kenobi’s characters. Gone is the Jedi who tracked the changeling on Coruscant, hunted Jango Fett to Kamino and on to Geonosis. He doesn’t use any of his abilities to conduct an investigation. He’s just strung along by different characters on the planet. He’s just led along a string of contrivances.
It’s so in your face, after describing Nanjiani’s character as a rat and bottom feeder, he immediately asks if he can trust him and seemingly does given his actions. Why would Kenobi trust this guy he just made clear shouldn’t be trusted.
Once Kenobi actually arrives at the location, a spice den, it’s clear he seemingly didn’t receive any information about the location whatsoever. If it reminds you of another Disney Star Wars character, it should, it’s exactly like Din Djarin charging into the space rhino’s pit during the first season of The Mandalorian.
Kenobi does the same thing. He just charges in and makes things up as he goes. There’s no reason to do so, he should have gotten a brief plan from Nanjiani’s character. And that’s if you actually buy into the contrivance that this location is the only one that Leia would be at.
Like the first episode, the show insults Star Wars fans audiences. Reva reveals to the Grand Inquisitor that she discovered a link between Organa and Kenobi in the archives. If she discovered a link, who else would have discovered link?
Later on in the episode this reveal is even more galling as Reva has an even more powerful mind drain ability similar to Kylo Ren’s, where she can literally read people’s minds using the Force. Why wouldn’t she just read Bail Organa’s mind to find Kenobi, after all, he knows the exact cave on Tatooine where Kenobi lives.
Once Kenobi does indeed rescue Leia, the show’s quality plummets of a cliff. Leia’s character is insufferable. She does not listen to anything Kenobi says, and is constantly giving away their location with how loud she talks and the the things she says like, “You’re a Jedi?”
I think the writers forgot that Leia was captured by mercenaries who have probably done all sorts of evil and heinous acts and had been with them for a not insignificant amount of time. She wouldn’t be so brazen and so willingly to defy Kenobi’s orders especially given she’s supposed to be only 10 years old.
The dialogue between Leia and Kenobi is horrendous too. At one point, Kenobi asks, “How old are you?” Clearly, he knows how old she is given she’s Luke’s twin. It’s mind-boggling stupid.
The show hits its lowest point when Leia goes on a tirade against Kenobi about how she doesn’t believe him and even accuses him of being the real kidnapper. It’s really, really bad. But then Leia flees from Kenobi through the city and he fails to catch her.
At one point, she literally runs right next to him and Kenobi doesn’t stick his hand out of his cloak to stop her.
As Leia continues to flee from Kenobi, bounty hunters who were commissioned to track down Kenobi at Reva’s behest locate him and begin shooting him. This alerts Reva to the blaster fire and we see her leaping through roofs of the buildings. It looks horrendous and completely drops you out of the mystique as Star Wars because it looks like you are on a film set.
At one point she uses the Force to lower some kind of tower to create a bridge and you can see the hydraulics working as she dashes over and randomly performs a flip for whatever reason. You can tell there is nothing to jump up to and the makeshift bridge allows her to just run across. However, in a cut there is somehow a platform above her.
As the action scene continues, Leia eventually jumps off a building and Kenobi has to rescue her via the Force. Like in the opening moments of the first episode where all the Padawans get a respite from the battle, Kenobi and Leia have a nice long chat with each other before they leave the scene. Reva never even shows up.
The entire point of her scouting the rooftops to locate the battle is made moot because Kenobi and Leia literally leave the location before she gets there despite the battle and subsequent rescue of Leia giving her plenty of time to get there especially given the fact that she’s an Inquisitor.
While Reva doesn’t show up, Nanjiani’s character does and he reveals that a cargo ship is unguarded while the Inquisitors lock down the rest of the port. This is another insult to the audience. The Empire is not incompetent. They are efficient and ruthless. If you remember when Luke, Leia, and Han escape the Death Star in the first film it’s because the Empire allowed it to happen in order to track them. There is no respect for the actual characters here, and it shows by this shoddy writing.
The episode finally comes to an end with Reva doing her best Darth Vader impression from Return of the Jedi when he’s taunting Luke and discovers that Leia is his sister. It’s a cheap gimmick that doesn’t resonate at all.
After her speech, the Grand Inquisitor randomly shows up in the hangar. Reva then shoves her lightsaber through his chest. Who knows how they will explain this as the character was defeated by Kanan Jarrus in Rebels and fell to his doom in the season 1 finale of that show. Again, it’s a poor man’s version of the Sith eating their own. The cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic tells a better story of ambition and greed than this one.
The Verdict
The second episode for Obi-Wan Kenobi is even worse than the first one. The plot is moved along with blatant contrivances, many of the character interactions and dialogue are nonsensical, and the action scenes take you out of the actual story with how utterly ridiculous they are or how obvious that they are on a set are.
The only redeeming qualities are some of the non-action set work and creature designs.
NEXT: Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 1 Review: The Degradation Continues
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