Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 3 Review: Part III Explained

Obi-Wan Kenobi episode 3, explained

Part III is the point where the series changes gears. The first two episodes, released together on May 27, 2022, were about a hermit on Tatooine who is pulled back into the fight by a kidnapped girl, and they ended with Obi-Wan learning from Reva that Darth Vader is still alive. Episode 3 takes that news and turns it into a chase. The Jedi has a child to deliver, an Empire that has noticed him and a former apprentice who has been waiting a decade for this.

Deborah Chow directed all six episodes of the series, and Part III carries a writing credit for Joby Harold and Hannah Friedman, with Hossein Amini and Stuart Beattie credited as well. Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen are the faces of the story, Vivien Lyra Blair plays the young Leia Organa, Moses Ingram plays the Inquisitor Reva, and Indira Varma arrives as a new character, Tala Durith. James Earl Jones returns as the voice of Vader. The end credits also list voice conversion by Respeecher.

The mood of the hour is best described as constant motion. Nearly every scene is a flight from Imperial troops, a hiding place or a short pause before the next escape. That works as tension for the first half and starts to feel repetitive in the second because Parts I and II had already used the same escape-and-hide structure. The new ideas in Part III are the Path, the Mustafar fortress and the idea that Reva will do anything to be promoted.

Anyone searching for Obi-Wan Kenobi episode 3 and wondering whether it is a weak entry or a pivotal one will find that it is both. It moves the plot further than either of the first two hours, and it also contains the most visible cracks in the series. Those cracks are the subject of the second half of this review.

What happens in Part III

The episode opens in Vader's fortress on Mustafar. He speaks to Reva by hologram and promises her the rank of Grand Inquisitor if she brings him Kenobi. The first thing that stands out is the hardware: the sequence in which his armor is fitted piece by piece and the green lights on the chest panel come on shows a costume that looks both classic and new. The same scene also shows a Vader who is still living beside the volcano that burned him ten years earlier, which suggests a man who has not moved on from the worst day of his life.

On the mining world of Mapuzo, Obi-Wan and Leia look for a rendezvous point that is empty. They hitch a ride on an Imperial transport, and the driver, a voice performance by Zach Braff as an alien named Freck, informs on them. Stormtroopers close in. An Imperial officer named Tala steps in, helps the pair escape and turns out to be a member of the Path, a network that smuggles people fleeing the Empire.

The escape through the Path's passage is cut short when Vader and the Inquisitors arrive and hurt bystanders to flush Kenobi out. Obi-Wan sends Leia and Tala ahead and faces Vader himself. The duel ends badly for him: Vader overpowers and burns him, and only a diversion by Tala lets him get away. Reva, meanwhile, takes Leia, which gives her the prize she needs to impress her master.

Tala Durith and the Path

Indira Varma, who played Ellaria Sand opposite Pedro Pascal's Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones, makes Tala a believable person instead of a plot device. She is an Imperial officer who has decided that the Empire is wrong, and the series gives her a quiet competence that the rest of the episode lacks. Her description of the Path as a way for Jedi and Force-sensitive children to reach safety also gives the story a clear shape: an underground railroad that ends on Jabiim, where Parts IV and V later place a Path facility.

The idea also adds weight to the Empire's side of the story. Children with the Force are being taken and vanish, and the Inquisitors are the tool that does it. It is good worldbuilding, and it is the part of Part III that most deserves to be remembered.

Quinlan Vos and the other name drops

Inside the Path's hideout, Obi-Wan finds evidence of another Jedi who passed through. Tala identifies the writing as the work of Quinlan Vos and says he still helps now and then by smuggling younglings. Vos is a long-standing favorite of Star Wars comic readers, from the Dark Horse series Star Wars: Republic, and he also appeared in the animated series The Clone Wars, where he was sent to help hunt the crime lord Ziro the Hutt. For readers of the comics and watchers of the cartoon, the mention suggests that Vos survived Order 66, a question fans had asked for years.

Other touches reward attention. Reva uses the Jedi Order symbol to track the young Leia, which recalls Cal Kestis studying the same emblem in the game Jedi: Fallen Order. The Mustafar throne room draws on Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, as first seen in Rogue One. And the drive to be made Grand Inquisitor links Reva's story to Star Wars Rebels, which brings up the largest continuity question of the hour.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Part III at a glance

• Air date: June 1, 2022, on Disney+, the third of six episodes.
• Director: Deborah Chow, who directed the whole series.
• Writers: Joby Harold and Hannah Friedman, with Hossein Amini and Stuart Beattie credited.
• Locations: Vader's fortress on Mustafar, the mining planet Mapuzo and the Path's passage beneath it.
• New faces: Indira Varma as Tala Durith and Zach Braff as the transport driver Freck.
• Cliffhanger: Reva captures Leia and takes her to Vader, while Obi-Wan lives only because of Tala's diversion.

Obi-Wan Kenobi episode 3 review: the verdict

Part III is the weakest of the first three hours, and the reason is not the action but the rules. A story set in a famous universe has to follow the logic that universe established, and this episode keeps bending it. Start with the Jedi mind trick. Obi-Wan struggles to pass himself and Leia off as farmers from Tawl, while Leia lies with ease. This is the man who waves a hand in A New Hope and sends stormtroopers on their way. A rusty Jedi, an aging one and a convenient script all explain it, and none of them is satisfying.

The fighting raises a similar question. Obi-Wan handles a blaster and a brawl at the checkpoint with oddly good skill for an older man who famously disliked blasters, yet his lightsaber work against Vader is stiff, and the duel on Mapuzo ends with a fire that Vader clears with a Force push and then cannot clear again. The flames in that scene burn from a crystal-based source, so a push should move them. Between those inconsistencies, Vader's lines in the duel sound closer to Anakin's complaints in the prequels than to the cold, short phrases of the original trilogy. Jones's voice carries weight, but the writing does not match it.

The Grand Inquisitor storyline carries the biggest risk. Rupert Friend's character, introduced in Dave Filoni's animated series Star Wars Rebels, is stabbed by Reva at the end of Part II, and the idea that she takes his title appeared to rewrite Rebels. Viewers who stayed through the series learned that the Grand Inquisitor survives, which answers the worry, but Part III raised it without an answer and left the question open for several weeks.

The case for the episode is shorter and just as real. Varma's performance gives the Path life. The Mustafar sequences show a Vader who is as imposing as the series needs. The scene in which Obi-Wan speaks about his family before he became a Jedi is one of the few moments of real character work in the first half of the season. If the choice is between skipping Part III and watching it, watch it, because Parts IV and V rely on what it sets up. Just do not expect the logic to hold together under pressure.

Zach Braff's appearance is an odd footnote. His Freck is hard to recognize under the makeup and the voice, and the episode never draws attention to the casting. Whether that counts as a clever cameo or a wasted one depends on how much you value a joke that nobody notices.

Sources

• Obi-Wan Kenobi (miniseries), Wikipedia — cast, crew, episode list and release dates