Blog 40: Is Disney Becoming the Empire?

*WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS FROM EPISODE 1&2 OF KENOBI*

It’s been three days since the Kenobi premiere on Disney+, and the whole Star Wars fandom is in disarray calling this show a bust already. I know everyone in the Star Wars fandom isn’t a total nutcase when it comes to new SW content, but the ones who are, you’re giving the rest of us a bad rep. Can we all just chill the fuck out and give this show a chance to become interesting, that’s what we did with Moon Knight and it turned out great. I feel like I’m one of the few people who honestly enjoyed the first two episodes, and while some of the complaints are valid, this is NOT the worst Star Wars show to exist. Let’s just talk about the show for a bit, yeah?

My Thoughts

I will admit that the first episode was a little boring with showing a depressed Obi-Wan working a crappy job and living in a cave to watch over Luke, but I did enjoy seeing Alderaan before it was blown up by the Death Star in the original Star Wars, and seeing Bail and Breha Organa raising a young Leia was wholesome. This episode also first introduces live-action Inquisitors; Grand Inquisitor (their Leader), Fifth Brother (played by Han from those angry car movies), and the Third Sister (Reva, she’s the second Inquisitor to have her original name be revealed). They arrived at Mos Eisley because there were rumors of a jedi hiding there, which were true since they found a jedi hiding in a bar, but he was able to escape due to the Grand Inquisitor arguing with Reva about her being too reckless with her intimidation tactics.

The jedi who escaped found Obi-Wan outside the city, and he wanted to know where their next move was to stop the Empire, but this Obi-Wan has lost all hope. He told him to just hide and abandon his lightsaber, the Jedi are dead. A lot of fans rolled their eyes because they’re getting sick of jedi legends like Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker in Last Jedi saying the jedi are dead, and they act as if Disney has a bone to pick with the Jedi Order. I don’t share these views, all I saw in Obi-Wan was a broken veteran who has lost everything to a war he should never have been a part of.

The man lost his master, his friends, the love of his life, and a padawan who he saw as a brother to the Clone Wars, I think he deserves to wallow in his grief for a little longer!

Later in the episode, Owen Lars (Luke’s uncle) confronts Obi-Wan saying that he should stop watching over Luke, where Obi-Wan says that when Luke starts showing that he’s force sensitive he must be trained, where Owen counters with “Like you trained his father?” A few moments later, Owen comes face-to-face with Reva where she and the Fifth Brother try to weasel out any information on the jedi who escaped from them. Reva goes a little too far when she cuts off a civilian’s hand and threatens Owen and his family, and this just pisses off the Fifth Brother. He pulls her away from the scene to tell her to stay in line. He states that her irrational obsession with her thinking that a jedi can lead her to Obi-Wan just to gain favor with Darth Vader is ill-advised, and I can understand where he’s coming from. Even though the Empire is monstrous military force, they still have to uphold a sense of professionalism when it comes to dealing with “diplomatic disputes”.

The jedi is eventually found and killed, and his body is placed on display in the center of Mos Eisley to serve as a warning to anyone who is collaborating with any jedi. Hit with another wave of guilt, Obi-Wan returns home to find Bail Organa in his cave asking for his help. A few scenes before this on Alderaan, Leia was kidnapped by some bounty hunters in what was the lamest chase scene in history, and Bail pleads with Obi-Wan to go to the planet Daiyu to save her. Obi-Wan refuses at first because he has to protect Luke, but Bail says Leia is just as important as Luke. Obi-Wan agrees, digs up his lightsaber, and boards a ship to Daiyu.

The second episode was more action packed with Obi-Wan getting into fights with bounty hunters and drug dealers while trying to naviagate the corrupt city of Daiyu. They city itself was pretty cool, it gave me a lot of Coruscant slums vibes, and we got the coolest surprise cameo ever:

Temuera Morrison as a homeless clone trooper! This is a big deal for me because this is the first time we’re seeing Temuera in real trooper armor as opposed to all the troopers from the Prequel Trilogy being CGI. Hopefully we’ll get to see more clone troopers in this show, maybe even Obi-Wan’s old pal Commander Cody.

Aside from that, we find out that Reva hired the bounty hunters to kidnap Leia to lure Kenobi into a trap, and she knew to kidnap Leia because she read in the old Republic records that Obi-Wan and Bail were close allies (a little bit of lazy writing). Obi-Wan manages to find Leia, tries to lead her to safety while dealing with her curiosity of the city, but she then runs away in fear after seeing that the Empire put a bounty on Obi-Wan. Some fans said that young Leia was annoying in this episode, but I think she was purposely written that way because; 1) She’s 10 and has never left Alderaan, so yeah she’s going to be a little curious about Daiyu. 2) She has every right to be not trust Obi-Wan, THEY JUST MET! I don’t think Bail has even told Leia about his good pal Obi-Wan/Ben Kenobi.

A few more fight scenes and running scenes later, and with the help of a smuggler, Obi-Wan and Leia make their way to a cargo ship that is set to launch. When they arrive at the docking bay, Obi-Wan senses that Reva is near and tell Leia to hide on the ship. Obi-Wan sticks to the shadows as he listens to Reva taunt him. She reveals that she wants to bring him in to gain favor with Darth Vader, and Obi-Wan almost has a nervous breakdown after finding out his former padawan is alive, then she says that Anakin Skywalker lives. When she is about to find Obi-Wan, the Grand Inquisitor shows to repremend her for going awol and he taunts that she is benethe him and the rest of the Empire. She ends up “killing” the Grand Inquisitor, Obi-Wan escapes to the crago ship with Leia, and Reva proceeds to do her best Kylo Ren impression and has a tantrum because Obi-Wan escaped.

These two episodes left me wanting more, so I guess we’ll see what happens this week on episode 3, but let’s talk about some messy shit that these two episodes left for the fandom.

Disney bullying fans

So the other day I found a post talking about how Moses Ingram (aka Reva) was warned by the executives about some “racist fans” who will find every chance to insult her performance. I still have yet to find any racist or even sexist tweets, and the only insults I’m finding are towards Reva, not Moses Ingram. People find her to be an annoying and arrogant character, myself included, and I don’t think it’s a big issue since most of the Inquisitors are annoying as hell. The only Inquisitor I found interesting was the Second Sister from the game Jedi: Fallen Order, but maybe my opinion will change when more episodes are released. Hopefully the show will explain how the hell Reva knows that Anakin is Vader since it’s meant to be a secret, with Emperor Palpatine being the only person who knows. There was even an issue from the Vader comics where he killed two clone troopers when they found out his identity, which means that Vader might kill Reva if she admits to knowing his secret. Hell, Darth Vader might just kill her for being an insubordinate soldier. She did impale her boss, but I don’t think the Grand Inquisitor is dead since he dies in the future during the show Star Wars: Rebels.

There were a few comments about Moses Ingram, but they were just saying she’s a bad actress. One person even said her acting was so bad that it makes Amber Heard look like a good actress, that was a funny one. If Reva was written to be an annoying character, then Moses is doing a great job. Also to backtrack to the “racism” warning that Disney made, I found out they made that statement the day after the Kenobi scripts were leaked. My best guess is that Disney knew they were writing a character that most of fanbase wouldn’t like, so they got ahead by making it look like all the fan criticism is just taunts from racists. It’s a clever PR move, but Disney forgot that their fans aren’t total morons. They tweeted this earlier today regarding how Moses Ingram is welcomed into the Star Wars family, and that they’ll ignore these “racist” insults:

Ok ok, so they tell us to not be racist. Well if they are so anti-racist, then what’s this?!

The left is a chinese promo poster for Force Awakens and the right is the american version. Notice how you can barely see Finn in the chinese poster and how that poster erased Poe Dameron entirely! Finn was a main character in Force Awakens, and he gets bumped down to blend in with the background?! I don’t think so Disney, you corpo hypocrites! You’re out there preaching about love/acceptance for everyone just to hide the fact you allowed this racist photoshop to happen so you can make a quick buck on the chinese box office! It makes me wonder if any of the Reva posters are going to be used in China, and I would be impressed if they do use her posters.

I could say that Disney should step off its moral high ground just to expose them for being the corpo scum they are, but I know they’re not going to do that. They can keep up this facade, us common sense folk will keep calling them out on their bullshit ploy to bully their fans by calling them racist for not liking a new character. Also the Star Wars Fandom needs to calm the hell down about Kenobi being a terrible show! Let’s just wait until the season is done before making that decision. Can’t we just be happy to see Ewan as Obi-Wan again, and that this show will create new prequel memes that will just make the meme community flourish for years to come? Let’s focus on the nice little things this show has to offer.

That’s all I have for you today, be sure to leave a like and comment, also consider subscribing to HallofMercs to stay up to date on the latest blog postings. This is your friendly neighborhood cosplayer saying goodbye, and see you next time.