One of the weirder things about the upcoming Disney+ “Star Wars” TV show “Obi-Wan Kenobi” is that it will feature the return of Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader. We don’t know how the hell that will even work (more on that in a moment), but we do have a better idea of how the hell it will look, thanks to a new image from “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Spoiler alert, however; It’s not much to go on. Our boy Darth (shut up, Obi-Wan called him that) in some kind of Star Warsy looking room, with steam fogging the place up.
See for yourself below in the image, an Entertainment Weekly exclusive published earlier Thursday:
We have no idea where this is, but our educated guess is that this is somewhere inside Fortress Vader, the spooky castle Vader lives in on Planet Mustafar (first seen in “Rogue One”). The castle has a weird and convoluted backstory fleshed out in the comics, but the main thing you need to know is that it’s built on the ruins of an old Sith temple and is a place of concentrated Dark Side power. Also, it’s the birthplace of one of the worst puns in human history, seriously whoever came up with it ought to apologize to the world.
Anyway, earlier we mentioned that we can’t figure out how the hell this is even gonna work. Here’s why: In “Star Wars: A New Hope,” when Obi-Wan and Darth Vader have their lightsaber duel, here’s the dialogue:
Darth Vader: We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now, *I* am the master.
Obi-Wan: Only a master of evil, Darth.
Now, when Obi-Wan was still lying to Luke about the Darth-Anakin connection/when George Lucas hadn’t yet changed his mind about it, it seemed pretty clear that this dialogue referred back to Obi-Wan’s earlier description of “a pupil of mine until he turned to evil.” Obi-Wan, by implication, hadn’t encountered Vader since that betrayal.
And subsequent “Star Wars” media has made it seem pretty obvious that Vader was referring to the final battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker before Obi-Wan went into exile, eventually depicted in “Revenge of the Sith.”
In fact, when Vader was announced for “Obi-Wan,” our assumption was that Vader’s gonna be tooling around on his own journey, possibly setting up stuff for potential future “Star Wars” TV shows, and only tangentially connect back to whatever it is Obi-Wan’s up to. We might see Oni-Wan sense a disturbance in the force, or Vader sense “a presence…” or what have you, but never actually see them fight it out again/before.
Then concept art made public last year sure made us doubt that. Now we’re basically trying to keep our brain from melting over the continuity problems a never-before-discussed third Obi-Wan/Vader duel would create. Thanks Lucasfilm.
Anyway, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” stars Ewan McGregor in the title role, along with a lot of other people, and premieres on Disney+ May 25.