Our Kenobi Ep. 6 forecast: Sandy with a chance of Ewoks
This post is all about Star Wars, not so much about negotiation and conflict resolution. While we’ve been into conflict resolution for over twenty years now, we were Star Wars fans long before that and sometimes that’s all we are.
Like today, when all we want to be is Star Wars fans offering up our Star Wars Fan Forecast for Kenobi’s Episode 6:
There will be Ewoks.
Ok, maybe not Ewoks per se, although we’re not ruling them out. But here’s what we expect: Episode 6 will be full of winks, nods, references, and mirrors to Return of the Jedi.
Why?
Because that’s how the series has unfolded all along. Each of Kenobi’s first five episodes has contained multiple allusions to its corresponding movie episode. This was particularly -blindingly, even - obvious in the incessant references to A New Hope in Kenobi Episode 4, and it holds for each of the previous episodes as well.
Somehow, everything returned
To ground this theory, here is a quick list of some of the parallelisms, allusions, references, and nods between each episode and its corresponding movie:
Kenobi Episode 1 / Episode I The Phantom Menace
In an aesthetically pleasing kingdom/planet, peaceful existence is interrupted when outworlders, playing a part in a much broader scheme that is really focused elsewhere, seize a young royal lady in order to force others to act as they wish. The repercussions of these events ripple out to Tatooine, where small boys, strong with the Force, just want to think about podracing.
[Yup. What was little Luke doing up there on the roof, when he played hooky from his tasks? Pretending he was a fighter pilot, right? Nope, watch closely: he was podracing.]
Kenobi Episode 2 / Episode II Attack of the Clones
In this episode, the senator/royalty is pursued by bounty hunters out to kill her. The Jedi operate to protect them by diving into the nitty gritty of the city (Coruscant and Daiyu), depicted in detail. In the end, everybody is rescued by unexpected saviors showing up. Let’s not forget the Jedi confronting drug dealers, and the senator/royalty surviving a life-threatening fall.
Kenobi Episode 3 / Episode III Revenge of the Sith
This one hardly needs thematic storytelling, as the connections are deep in the plotline itself. Kenobi Episode 3 is less a parallelism than a direct continuation of ROTS: Darth Vader finally gets the rematch he’s been waiting for. Of course, nods and reflections abound, but even they are in plain sight, such as Darth Vader raking Obi-Wan through the coals in a reverse replay of Mustafar.
Kenobi Episode 4 / Episode IV A New Hope
Leia is trapped, claiming immunity as a Senator and princess of Alderaan, while a black-clad Force-using torturer tells her they don’t care about her status. She is finally freed after resisting psychological, Force, and machine –based torture, by a rescue mission involving Obi-Wan and an intriguing pilot. She is allowed to leave, in order to carry a tracking device leading Darth Vader back to the attackers’ base. She kisses her brother (ok, that doesn’t happen, we just wanted to see if you were awake! Keep on)
Those are just the similarities in the general plotline. Let’s not ignore the Imperial facility being broken into (Fortress Inquisitorius / Death Star #1) having no shield. Obi-Wan's use of a Force-noise to distract stormtroopers. The beeping noises made by the torture droid. The extreme close-up on the live comlink left on the desk by the “helper in the chair,” Tala and Threepio. And many, many more.
Kenobi Episode 5 / Episode V The Empire Strikes Back
The Empire is hard at work, driven by Darth Vader, searching for the hidden base of its adversaries. They finally find it. Darth Vader argues with underlings about the best way to launch the assault. After the assault has breached the enemy base, Darth Vader shows up and strides through its rough-hewn tunnels in pursuit of his prey, but they manage to escape on a spaceship at the last moment. Leia and the Jedi lose the intriguing pilot they had become attached to. The failure of the spaceship’s hyperdrive at a critical moment was almost over the top, as was enlisting the help of a smooth-talking but basically good-hearted swindler to help protect the princess. Throughout, Darth Vader deals with HR issues: promoting staff members, killing staff members, just a regular day at the office.
(Re)search our feelings, we must
After coming to our conclusion that each Kenobi episode parallels its corresponding movie episode, we took a step back. Perhaps, we wondered, there are just so many references, Easter eggs, hints, winks, nods, and suchlike all over the series, such that you could relate any episode of Kenobi to any movie you like? So, we watched it all again (research life is much more demanding than some of y’all may think). And our conclusion stands: While there are many scattershot winks and nods to Star Wars in each episode, the narratives clearly intentionally parallel each other and are reinforced by extra doses of winks.
Upon this second review, we found yet another support level for this theory: Watch Kenobi episodes 4 and 5 once again, and you’ll now notice they each include an extra allusions to The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, respectively – each of which are, of course, themselves reflections of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. The scene outside the besieged door on Jabiim is nothing if not a replay of the besieged door on Crait being assaulted by the battering ram cannon in The Last Jedi; the Jedi going forth to engage in a one-on-one interaction with the Dark Side counterpart during the siege is another pair of mirror scenes.
The Ewoks are coming!
Hence, our forecast of a shower of Ewoks this Wednesday when Kenobi episode 6 drops.
Well, we really mean to say that we expect Kenobi episode 6 to reflect Return of the Jedi in many ways. There may be Ewoks, but reflection can take many forms: We will certainly return to Tatooine, where we last saw Luke sleeping peacefully. We might visit Jabba’s palace, see a droid shoot a rescue implement into the air, stand by a funeral pyre, or experience the destruction of a really big piece of machinery. The episode might involve a visit to a more surprising locale from ROTJ, such as a sarlacc pit, a wooded planet, or a Death Star. C-3P0 might become a deity or tell a story. Someone might need to take down a shield or two. Everybody might suddenly be promoted to the rank of General. And that’s without going into flights of fancy. It wouldn’t be completely off the wall if the long-awaited duel supreme between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan takes place on a visit to a Death Star, very much under construction, lending new meaning to Darth Vader’s “You should not have come back.” (yes, we know that’s in ANH, but a Death Star duel harkens to ROTJ too).
You should not have come back (but you can’t help it!)
Ok, as long as you’re here: here’s a bit of conflict understanding that tipped us off, in addition to just riding the references. Conflict practitioners know the following truism that any psychoanalyst would vigorously nod at: people tend to play out the same conflict again and again in their lives, unless it is finally laid to rest. So they (conflict pracittioners and psychoanalysts) keep an eye out for patterns that emerge, whether between the two parties themselves or between one of them and other parties.
We keep on fighting our old wars, whether with our original counterpart or with others, hoping to finally succeed in achieving victory or in reaching resolution on the emotional, behavioral and cognitive levels. While the images of Darth Vader raking Obi-Wan over the coals are visually shocking, they come as no surprise from a conflict perspective. Ditto for Reva’s clashes with Darth Vader.
Look for the patterns in your own conflicts and in those of others you are close with, and you’ll find them.
But for now, just look out for Ewoks.
— Noam and Jen
