Obi-Wan Kenobi

• 1. Introduction

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  Obi-Wan Kenobi entered the Star Wars franchise in 1976, a year before the first film's 1977 release. He first appeared in that year's novelization, published ahead of the movie itself. Alec Guinness, who originated the role onscreen, later said he begged George Lucas to kill the character off. He explained that he simply despised Obi-Wan's dialogue. Lucas agreed, writing a fatal lightsaber duel against Darth Vader partway through that first film. The performance still won Guinness a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. It also earned him a nomination for the Academy Award in the same category. Ewan McGregor later carried the role through the prequel trilogy and into a 2022 television series. Other performers have voiced Obi-Wan without ever appearing onscreen at all.

  What convinced Lucas that killing a mentor figure partway through his own story would make it stronger, not weaker? And who did Lucas consider for the role before Guinness, in a decision that also shaped the casting of Vader?

• 2. A Death Lucas Fought For

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  George Lucas wrote and directed the 1977 film that introduced Obi-Wan, building him from the start as Luke Skywalker's mentor. He originally planned for Obi-Wan to keep training Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, the sequel released in 1980. Obi-Wan's death was not part of the final Star Wars script. Lucas decided to kill the character only once filming was already underway. He later claimed he added the death because Obi-Wan served no further purpose after his duel with Vader. Lucas explained his thinking years afterward: 'It would be much more powerful, satisfying and interesting if Darth Vader were to kill him and he were to go on to a different form.'

  When Lucas began outlining The Empire Strikes Back, he decided Obi-Wan should return as a spirit to keep guiding Luke. Guinness's declining health also factored into his planning. Lucas realized the story needed a second, living mentor as well. That new character would eventually take shape as Yoda.

  A younger version of Obi-Wan reappeared in The Phantom Menace, the 1999 film that opened the prequel trilogy. Lucas described the arc he wrote for the character in that film: 'In the beginning, Obi-Wan is at odds with, who rebels against the Jedi rules. But by the end of the film, he has become by taking on his rebellious personality and his responsibilities.' In his book on the franchise, the writer Chris Taylor argues that Obi-Wan draws on J.R.R. Tolkien's Gandalf.

  Casting that mentor would prove just as dramatic, including a rejected choice that quietly reshaped who played the villain instead.

• 3. Finding The Right Jedi

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  Lucas sought an established star for Obi-Wan when he began casting Star Wars, and Peter Cushing was one of his first considerations. He ultimately decided Cushing's lean features suited the villainous Grand Moff Tarkin better, and cast him there instead. The film's producer, Gary Kurtz, said Obi-Wan needed a strong character actor who could convey 'stability and gravitas.' Before Guinness was cast, Lucas also considered the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune for the role.

  Mifune's daughter, Mika Kitagawa, said her father 'had a lot of samurai pride' and turned down both Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. She explained that Mifune worried Star Wars would rely on cheap special effects and would 'cheapen the image of samurai.'

  Once production began with Guinness cast, Lucas credited him with inspiring the rest of the cast and crew to work harder. That influence, Lucas said, contributed significantly to finishing a difficult shoot. Harrison Ford, who played Han Solo, said he admired Guinness's preparation, professionalism and kindness toward the other actors.

  The Phantom Menace itself earned Ewan McGregor a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actor. James Arnold Taylor gave Obi-Wan his voice in the 2008 animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Taylor continued in the television series of the same name, which ran from 2008 to 2020, along with other animated projects.

  That range of voices and faces would carry Obi-Wan into a very different kind of story next, the fall of the Jedi Order itself.

• 4. Master And Apprentice

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  The Phantom Menace opens thirty-two years before Star Wars, with Obi-Wan serving as apprentice to the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. The pair travel to negotiate with the Trade Federation, which is blockading the planet Naboo. With help from the Gungan Jar Jar Binks, they rescue Naboo's fourteen-year-old queen, Padmé Amidala. They then set off for Coruscant, the Republic's capital, before a stop for repairs strands them on Tatooine. There they meet a nine-year-old slave named Anakin Skywalker. Qui-Gon believes the boy is the 'Chosen One' of Jedi prophecy, destined to bring balance to the Force. After Anakin's freedom is secured, he joins their journey off the planet.

  The Sith Lord Darth Maul attacks the group as they leave Tatooine, then confronts them again on Naboo. In the lightsaber duel that follows, Maul mortally wounds Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan defeats Maul in turn. As he dies, Qui-Gon asks his apprentice to train Anakin as a Jedi, with or without the Council's approval. Yoda then names Obi-Wan a Jedi Knight and reluctantly allows Anakin to become his Padawan.

  Ten years later, in Attack of the Clones, Anakin has grown powerful but arrogant. He believes Obi-Wan is holding him back. After the pair save Padmé from an assassination attempt, Obi-Wan traces the attackers to the planet Kamino. There he uncovers a massive clone army being built for the Republic. He deduces that the bounty hunter Jango Fett, the army's genetic template, was behind the assassination attempt. Obi-Wan follows Fett to the planet Geonosis, where he discovers a confederacy of star systems preparing to revolt. The confederacy is led by the Sith Lord Count Dooku, a former Jedi Master. Dooku captures Obi-Wan and sentences him to death. Only the arrival of Yoda and Mace Windu with an army prevents the execution. Dooku then overpowers Obi-Wan and Anakin together, and Yoda saves both their lives, though Dooku still escapes.

  Revenge of the Sith is set three years later, with Obi-Wan now a Jedi Master, a Council member and a general. He and Anakin rescue the kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine from the cyborg Separatist commander General Grievous. Obi-Wan later hunts Grievous down alone on the planet Utapau and kills him. The Sith Lord Darth Sidious, revealed as Palpatine, then issues Order 66, turning the clone troopers against the Jedi. Obi-Wan and Yoda find every Jedi in the Jedi Temple slaughtered, including the children. Obi-Wan then discovers that Anakin himself led the massacre, now serving Sidious as Darth Vader.

  Obi-Wan stows away on Padmé's ship when she travels to the volcanic planet Mustafar to confront her husband. Vader accuses them both of conspiring against him and uses the Force to choke Padmé unconscious. Obi-Wan then engages him in a ferocious duel that ends with several of Vader's limbs cut away. He leaves Vader burning, unaware that Sidious will soon rescue him and rebuild him as a cyborg. Obi-Wan carries Padmé to the asteroid Polis Massa, where she dies after giving birth to twins, Luke and Leia. Leia is adopted by Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan, while Obi-Wan delivers Luke to Anakin's stepbrother, Owen Lars, and his wife, Beru, on Tatooine.

  Obi-Wan then goes into exile on Tatooine himself, close enough to keep watching over Luke.

• 5. The Hermit Of Tatooine

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  Star Wars introduces Obi-Wan in 1977 as an elderly hermit living alone in the Tatooine desert. When Luke and C-3PO search the desert for the runaway droid R2-D2, Obi-Wan rescues them from an attack by Tusken Raiders. Back at his home, R2-D2 plays a recorded message from Princess Leia. The message reveals that the droid carries architectural plans for the Empire's planet-destroying Death Star. Leia asks Obi-Wan to deliver the plans to Alderaan to aid the Rebel Alliance. Obi-Wan tells Luke for the first time that he is a Jedi, a peacekeeper from the days of the Republic. He also reveals that Luke's father was a Jedi too, killed by Darth Vader. He hands Luke his father's old lightsaber and invites him to Alderaan to begin Jedi training.

  Luke initially declines, but changes his mind once Imperial stormtroopers kill his aunt and uncle. On the approach to Mos Eisley, Obi-Wan uses a Jedi mind trick to talk their way past an Imperial checkpoint. The pair hire the smugglers Han Solo and Chewbacca and their ship, the Millennium Falcon, to reach Alderaan. Obi-Wan spends the journey teaching Luke lightsaber combat. He suddenly senses 'a great disturbance in the Force.' Soon after, the group discovers the Empire has obliterated Alderaan entirely. The Falcon is caught in the Death Star's tractor beam, but the crew slips aboard undetected. Obi-Wan disables the beam and confronts Vader in a lightsaber duel while the others escape. He allows Vader to strike him down, then vanishes, later reaching Luke through the Force to help him destroy the Death Star.

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Obi-Wan returns several times as a Force spirit. On the ice planet Hoth, he sends Luke to Dagobah in search of the exiled Jedi Master Yoda. Yoda is reluctant to take on a new student, but Obi-Wan persuades him to train Luke anyway. When Luke later wants to leave Dagobah early to rescue his friends in Cloud City, Obi-Wan urges him to stay. Luke goes regardless.

  In Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan reappears to Luke after Yoda's death on Dagobah. He confirms that Vader truly is Luke's father. He also reveals that Princess Leia is Luke's twin sister and urges Luke to confront Vader directly. After the Rebels destroy a second Death Star and defeat the Empire, Obi-Wan joins the celebration on the forest moon of Endor. He appears there as a Force spirit, standing alongside Yoda and Anakin Skywalker.

  That same performance would return once more, in an unexpected animated corner of the franchise, years after Guinness himself had died.

• 6. War And Exile In Animation And Live Action

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  During the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan earns the nickname 'The Negotiator,' a reputation built on ending battles without firing a shot. As a general in that war, he fights the Separatists alongside a headstrong Anakin Skywalker. The series follows his repeated clashes with General Grievous and his adversarial relationship with the Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress. It also follows a romance with Duchess Satine Kryze and the return of his old enemy Darth Maul.

  Star Wars Rebels, set five years before the original film, finds Obi-Wan still hiding on Tatooine. In the season 3 episode 'Visions and Voices,' the rebel Ezra Bridger stumbles onto him there. Maul tracks Obi-Wan down too, and in the episode 'Twin Suns,' he attacks Obi-Wan and the young Ezra in the desert. Obi-Wan sends Ezra to safety and mortally wounds Maul in the duel that follows. With his dying breath, Maul asks whether Obi-Wan is still protecting the 'Chosen One,' and Obi-Wan says yes. Stephen Stanton voiced Obi-Wan throughout Rebels, taking over from James Arnold Taylor. A 2018 episode used an archival voice recording of the late Alec Guinness instead. Rebels creator Dave Filoni said he considered asking Ewan McGregor to reprise the role before choosing that recording.

  The 2022 series Obi-Wan Kenobi picks up ten years after Revenge of the Sith. It was cancelled as a standalone film following the box office disappointment of 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story. Obi-Wan is living in hiding on Tatooine, watching over the ten-year-old Luke, cut off from the Force. He cannot reach the spirit of Qui-Gon and suffers nightmares from his past. Unknown to him, Anakin now hunts Jedi across the galaxy as Darth Vader. The Inquisitor Reva Sevander grows obsessed with finding the man everyone believes dead.

  When Reva kidnaps Princess Leia to draw him out, Obi-Wan agrees to rescue her at Bail Organa's request. He tracks her to the planet Daiyu with help from the con artist Haja Estree. He later relies on Tala, a secret member of an underground network called the Path, to escape Imperial troops on the planet Mapuzo. Vader eventually corners Obi-Wan in a duel and overpowers him, and Reva captures Leia again. Obi-Wan and Tala manage to rescue her a second time. Facing Reva during a siege on the Path's hideout, Obi-Wan deduces that she survived Vader's massacre at the Jedi Temple as a young trainee. He realizes she now wants him dead for revenge. Reva later finds a message on Obi-Wan's own transmitter revealing Luke's location. That discovery prompts Obi-Wan to lure Vader into a final duel on a separate planet. In that fight, Obi-Wan regains his connection to the Force and recognizes that Anakin has fully become Vader. He wounds Vader and leaves him incapacitated. On Tatooine, Reva finds Luke in the desert but cannot bring herself to kill him. She returns him safely to his family instead, and Obi-Wan tells her she has overcome her trauma. In the series' final moments, he is at last able to speak with Qui-Gon's spirit again.

  That reunion with the Force closes out the series, though Obi-Wan's story kept expanding in printed pages that never reached a screen.

• 7. Beyond The Screen

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  The 2015 novel Dark Disciple, built from unfinished Clone Wars episodes, gives Obi-Wan a documented friendship with the rogue Jedi Quinlan Vos. A 2015 Star Wars comic has Luke discover Obi-Wan's diary inside his abandoned Tatooine house, filled with stories from his past. The 2016 Marvel Comics mini-series Obi-Wan and Anakin focuses on the two Jedi in the years between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. The 2019 novel Master and Apprentice explores his relationship with Qui-Gon before the events of The Phantom Menace. Two 2022 novels, Brotherhood and Star Wars Padawan, cover the start of the Clone Wars and his earliest years as an apprentice.

  After The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, most Star Wars novels and comics published between 1977 and 2014 were rebranded Star Wars Legends. Those Legends stories were declared non-canon and now form a separate narrative universe.

  Jude Watson's Jedi Apprentice series covers Obi-Wan's years training under Qui-Gon before The Phantom Menace. It includes a battle with the Dark Jedi Xanatos and his first solo mission. Her follow-up Jedi Quest series follows his partnership with Anakin in the run-up to Attack of the Clones. The Last of the Jedi series picks up about a year after the Republic's fall. It follows Obi-Wan as he searches for survivors of the Jedi Purge, including Anakin's old rival Ferus Olin. In Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, Obi-Wan learns with alarm that Vader survived Mustafar. Qui-Gon assures him Vader will avoid Tatooine for fear of reawakening Anakin. In the Legends novel Heir to the Empire, Obi-Wan finally bids Luke farewell. Luke calls him a father figure, and Obi-Wan replies that he loved Luke like a son, before departing to a higher plane of consciousness. The 2013 novel Kenobi covers his first days of exile on Tatooine in detail.

  Issue 24 of Marvel's original 1977 Star Wars comic follows Obi-Wan during the Republic era. Various Dark Horse Comics series, including Star Wars: Republic from 1998 to 2006, cover his fights against the Separatists. That series also shows him tortured by Asajj Ventress before Anakin rescues him. In the 2005 Visionaries story 'Old Wounds,' Obi-Wan confronts Darth Maul again on Tatooine during Luke's childhood. Owen Lars shoots and kills Maul himself, then warns Obi-Wan to stay away from Luke. Obi-Wan still reassures the boy through the Force that he will be there when needed.

  Obi-Wan had appeared in animated form even earlier, in a micro-series called Clone Wars that ran on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005. That was years before any of the honors that followed.

• 8. A Character Honored

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  In 2003, the American Film Institute ranked Obi-Wan the 37th-greatest movie hero of all time. IGN separately listed him as the third-greatest character in the entire Star Wars franchise. UGO Networks also named him among its favorite heroes of all time.

  In 2005, the Polish village of Grabowiec named a street Ulica Obi-Wana Kenobiego. The name translates to 'Obi-Wan Kenobi Street.'

  That street still stands in Grabowiec today, a small Polish village whose name now shares a map with a fictional Jedi.