As you would expect on Star Wars Day, Disney made sure that the Force is indeed strong by releasing a new trailer for Obi-Wan Kenobi, giving new looks at Ewan McGregor’s Kenobi, the Grand Inquisitor, and a teasing look at the return of Darth Vader. The six-part event arrives on May 27, and the hype-building is very much in progress. Having earlier released a new poster for the series, the trailer dropped soon afterward and began racking up views on YouTube.
Obi-Wan Kenobi has been in development for some time and having originally been planned as a movie, the concept was then transitioned to a TV series for the Disney+ platform and will sit alongside The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. Picking up the story of Kenobi ten years on from the events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the series will not only see McGregor’s on-the-run Jedi back in the Star Wars Saga, but also brings back Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader. Check out the brand new trailer below.
Many Star Wars fans have been waiting to see Kenobi and Vader come together again, and this series is certainly going to pay off that wait with their meeting being described by Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy as the “rematch of the century.” Kennedy previously spoke about how the series came to shift from its original movie format to a Disney+ series. She said:
"When Bob Iger very specifically said, 'We are going to start to shift our priority to making series for Disney+, and we're launching the streaming service,' that really was what shifted our strategy. We started to look at the opportunity in the streaming space where we could do long-form storytelling, and we realized there was an opportunity to experiment in that space without the level of scrutiny that happens when you release a feature."
Ewan McGregor Was Terrified by Darth Vader On Set
While Ewan McGregor has faced Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, his final battle with Vader in the original Star Wars movie is still some time in his future. For that reason, as an actor, McGregor has not had the pleasure of facing down Vader before, and he found the experience more than a little unnerving. He told Total Film:
"I’ve never met Darth Vader. I had rehearsed the scene with Vader, but not with the helmet on or anything like that. When we came to do the scene, when they shouted 'action', he had to come from behind me. I turned around, and f---ing Darth Vader was coming at me. It was like I was six again. I’d never acted into Vader’s helmet. I’d never looked him in the eye. It scared the sh-t out of me. I’m not joking. It gave me a proper jolt of absolute fear. I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s not acting. That’s real. I’m really, truly frightened right now.’ And the same thing would happen with the Stormtroopers. I’d worked with Clone troopers before, but so many of them were CGI. I never worked with Stormtroopers, and, again, I was like seven years old again. Because when you’re actually faced with a Stormtrooper, with a blaster, it’s like: ‘F---ing hell.’”
Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres with a double episode on Disney+ on May 27.