Four years ago today, Obi-Wan Kenobi arrived on Disney+ carrying one of the heaviest backpacks in modern Star Wars.
The series premiered on May 27, 2022, with its first two episodes launching together, bringing Ewan McGregor back as the exiled Jedi Master and Hayden Christensen back into the shadow of Darth Vader.
That alone was enough to make it feel like an event.
But four years later, Obi-Wan Kenobi still sits in a strange place. It gave Star Wars some genuinely powerful moments, a few unexpected emotional punches, and one of the most anticipated rematches in the franchise.
It also remains one of the Disney+ shows people still argue about like the fate of the Republic depends on it.
Ewan McGregor Was Never the Problem
The easiest part to agree on is Ewan McGregor.
He understood exactly where Obi-Wan was supposed to be: broken, guilty, exhausted, and hiding from the legend everyone else remembers. This was not the confident Jedi General from The Clone Wars. This was a man who had watched everything collapse and then spent ten years trying to disappear into the sand.
That part worked.
McGregor made Obi-Wan feel wounded without turning him into a completely different character. The dry humor was still there. The warmth was still there. But it was buried under failure, grief, and the kind of silence only Tatooine could make worse.
The surprise Leia storyline also gave the show its smartest emotional hook. Instead of only circling Luke, the series used young Leia to reconnect Obi-Wan with hope, duty, and the future he had almost stopped believing in.
The Vader Material Still Hits Hard
The Vader material is where the show found its sharpest blade.
Seeing Obi-Wan forced to confront what Anakin had become gave the series the mythic weight it needed. The final confrontation, especially the cracked mask moment, remains one of the strongest Disney-era Star Wars scenes.
It did exactly what a legacy continuation should do: add emotional texture without breaking the original story.
That is not easy.
It made the old line from A New Hope feel heavier, not smaller.
But the Show Still Feels Uneven
The complicated part is everything around those highs.
For all its emotional ambition, Obi-Wan Kenobi often looked and felt smaller than its premise deserved. Some action staging was uneven. Some locations felt oddly thin. Some story choices worked better in theory than in execution.
That is why the series still divides people.
Not because it had nothing to say, but because it did not always look or move like the major Star Wars event it clearly wanted to be.
In that sense, it fits into the larger Disney+ Star Wars debate we touched on in Star Wars’ Streaming Detour May Not Have Hurt the Franchise After All. Streaming gave Lucasfilm room to revisit beloved characters, but it also made fans ask whether every story actually benefited from being stretched into television.
Four Years Later, It Still Matters
Obi-Wan Kenobi is not perfect.
It is messy, heartfelt, occasionally clumsy, and sometimes genuinely great. Very Star Wars, then.
Four years later, its best moments still endure because they gave Obi-Wan and Anakin one more emotional wound to share before the Death Star, before Luke, before that final quiet duel in the corridor.
The series may still feel complicated.
But so does Obi-Wan.
And that is probably why people are still talking about it.
