Supposed to, in the same way that they are supposed to follow the Jedi way, no matter how dangerous the opponent is.

One of the things I really enjoy about the new canon is that it remembers that no matter how wise a Jedi Master is, they're still just a person, capable of falling short of the Jedi ideals.


I really have to disagree on Tala being the reason for Leia being captured. Third Sister figured out where the safe room was, discovered a tunnel in the safe room and then managed to discover where the tunnel would let out and kill the pilot. Tala still being there with Leia would have delayed Leia's capture by about 13 seconds. If you mean: Tala not being at the rendezvous on time is the reason Obi-Wan was scanned by the probe droid, that is a far more fair argument. Still falls short of the entire blame, since Obi-Wan bears responsibility for being discovered as well.

 

That's... not really how it's supposed to work. You still have to learn to deal with your emotions and trauma yourself, and you have to learn to break their hold on your psyche before the Force can do anything about it. If it was as easy as just snapping your mental finger and handing your negative emotions over to the Force, then nobody would ever Fall for any reason but cold blooded desire for easy power.

Also, while the idea hasn't appeared yet anywhere in Disney Canon, in Legends your connection to the Force could atrophy with disuse. 10 years of zero practice and actively avoiding Force-use, while simultaneously nurturing fear, guilt, self-recrimination and self-doubt would easily have been enough to put Obi-wan where he's at skill-wise in the show. There are a lot of problems with the show and its writing, but I don't think that is necessarily one of them.

 

@Othalan Thsts why I specified Jedi Masters vs simply Jedi. By the time you reach master level. You should be able release your emotions to the force without much trouble.

 

Plus, even among Masters, Obi-Wan was no ordinary Master. He was absolutely elite, and the more mental/diplomatic side of the force was his particular specialism ("the Negotiator"). Anakin was the action guy, Obi-Wan was the zen one.

The only person worse to pick for a "mental breakdown" character arc would have been Yoda.

 

ill just say, watching the whole infiltration scene just made me feel like the show was directly calling me an idiot.

Just that whole scene with the rebel lady in the control room, was so asinine, so stupid, so unbelievable. It felt like either I was being insulated or I had completely missed the memo that this was a children's show.(which even then doesn't excuse how extremely and utterly poor that entire scene was).

Also, how in the fuck did those 2 ships even get close to the base? Its supposed to be impenetrable.

Seriously though. What in the actual hell is this?

They should never have made this show in my opinion. It serves nothing and adds nothing.

 

They should have just given him Cere's storyline from Fallen Order.

She was a jedi master, who came dangerously close to embracing the dark side. So she cut herself off from the force.

I think it would have been interesting to see how Obi Wan would have been tempted to the dark side. Make it more nuanced than to save a loved one.
Then he learns about vader being anakin, and he has to find a way to reconnect to the force.

 

Or just have him be Obi-Wan Kenobi.

A man meditating in the desert. Watching over his charge. Grieved, but wise and powerful. Gets message that Leia is in trouble and goes off to help.

While Ewan McGregor can act, and is pulling off the tortured character wonderfully, once again he's carrying bad writing and PIS.

I don't get how Disney can manage and maintain something like the Marvel Verse fairly consistently but completely fail in regards to Star Wars.

 

He already knew. He and Yoda overheard Palpatine referring to Anakin as "Lord Vader" in the Jedi Temple security room during Episode III.

Part of the problem with this series is that it just doesn't make sense that he's only finding out about Anakin's survival now, 10 years later. Vader was not subtle, nor was his existence in any way secret. The dude was openly advertised in Imperial media as Palpatine's right-hand man. Tatooine's pretty out of the way and behind the times, but not by that much.

It probably should have been something more like what happened near the end of the Kenobi novel, where a couple months after arriving on Tatooine, Kenobi wanders into a cantina for a drink and catches a news broadcast from a few weeks before Introducing Darth Vader as the Emperor's new enforcer. He'd spent the novel up to that point coming to terms with his grief and guilt and self-doubt, and figuring out what being a Jedi still meant when there were no more Jedi. The report shocks and horrifies him, but in the end it just fills him with a sort of grim resolve to see his task through. Oh, and he gets over his inner turmoil well enough to be able to speak to Qui-gon before the book ends.

 

It's rather telling, that the writer of the show apparently hadn't bothered to watch the previous part of the franchise.

 

To be fair, the entire SW saga, including the original trilogy, is full of improbable acts of infiltration.

 

Maybe it's just time to accept that, though there are certainly excellent stories and the world building is great, most of Star Wars is trash tier?

 

As shitty as things have been so far I liked this particular moment from a fanfic-reader's point of view.



Leia easily resisting the Third Sister's attempt to get information using the Force.

It was stated that Vader was on his ship nearby, which honestly sounded like a stupid and contrived way just to get him out of the picture so the plot could actually go ahead, but whatever....

Let's pretend he was in that fortress, fucking done with these wanna-be siths after all the fuck-ups, and he senses the above-mentioned moment and decides to investigate.

Some Force-shenanigans and he realizes the connection.

The thought gave me some fond memories of that old but gold Empire's Son fic by blank101 from way back.

 

I had no problems with this episode beyond the occasional "baddies don their stupidity caps for plot convenience" moments. As a Fallen Order player, I've enjoyed how exacting they've been in their replication of the game's depiction of Fortress Inquisitorius.

This episode actually felt a lot like a video game plot. Not superlative writing, but I was entertained.

 

God I loved that one. Fairly solid technically though with some problems (he was fond of switching POVs multiple times within scenes so you knew what everyone was thinking, for example), but he definitely nailed making it feel like a fleshed-out Star Wars world and had an excellent arc.

Edit: I apologize, I was thinking of his Son of Suns trilogy. Empire's Son was also good, but not quite as good for me.

 

(I never got passed like the first three chapters of spice taking spicy Luke in Empire's son should I read it)

 

At the time I had eagerly awaited every new chapter, but I got to second the opinion that Son of Suns had been more enjoyable.

Still, I like the thought of murder machine Vader interacting with this Leia. You have new characters (e.g. Ahsoka) and world building that has been introduced since then to play with.

Spoiler

 

You have to wonder if Vader got an earful from Palpatine over the fact that Fortress Inquisitorius was invaded twice in exactly the same manner at their weekly performance review meeting.

“Lord Vader, if I had a credit for every time your supposedly impenetrable fortress got successfully infiltrated by a ragtag band of rebels in the last five years, I would have two credits. Which isn‘t a lot, but it‘s still weird that it happened twice.“

Other than that, would it have been *that* hard to find a secluded spot for Tela to communicate with Obi-Wan that wasn‘t in earshot of at least five imperial officers? That bit of writing was so incompetent it‘s hard to imagine anyone actually got paid for that. I don‘t mind the occasional bit of camp or silliness (I chuckled at the trenchcoat bit), but that was a bit too far.

Final note on the fighter assault: there was a line early in the episode about how the fortress doesn‘t have any shields because no-one would be stupid enough to attack it. Maybe that extends to air defense in general. Still, super convenient timing.

 

Actually, iirc all those improbable infiltrations in the Original Trilogy were traps set up by the Empire. On the first Death Star, Tarkin and Vader wanted the heroes to escape, so they could lead them to the Rebel base. In ESB, Luke infiltrating Bespin was explicitly allowed by the Imperials so he could be corralled into a confrontation with Vader. And in RotJ, their infiltration mission on the Forest moon also turned out to be a trap, with Vader and the Emperor knowingly letting them land, and with a whole stormtrooper legion lying in wait.

As for the Prequels, I don't recall any improbable infiltrations from Episode I, unless maybe you count Obi-wan and Qui-gon escaping the Trade Federation ship in the beginning. Episode II had Geonosis infiltrated first by Obi-wan, then by Anakin and Padme. While it's not clear whether Obi-wan was allowed to sneak in by Dooku or not, Anakin and Padme were definitely caught up in a trap Dooku had set by letting Obi-wan get a distress transmission out before taking him into custody (though that trap was probably not intended for them specifically). And in Episode III I don't recall any infiltrations that were at all improbable in the way the Fortress Inquisitorius one was in this last episode.

The more I think about it, the more it looks like this idea that Star Wars characters were constantly pulling off infiltrations that shouldn't have worked is a bit of fanon that's taken on a life of its own, and is now being canonized by writers too lazy or talentless to do something better.

 

"I don't get how Disney.... completely fail in regards to Star Wars."

"Bad writing."

You said it yourself: bad writing.

Because the writers that Disney hires have a completely by-the-numbers approach to writing these things, and view things like the Force or magic as an arbitrary system with rules, like a video game or table-top RPG. Star Wars is at its best when it's hitting us with shit like "the Clone Wars" as some huge historical event we only hear the name of, but everyone knows what "the" Clone Wars are, and the Force is a mystical force binding all life that allows Kenobi to feel the death of an entire world from across the stars. They've gone so hard into explaining things it's stripped the mystery and magic and watered-down the best parts of it. (this is not a new complaint don't @me)

Even while hiring shit writers gives us laughably bad chase scenes and an actress trying her best to be menacing in the same school as David Prowse and James Earl Jones as Vader, but it just comes off as laughably cringe, like the kid at school Naruto running.

Which is frustrating, because I want to like Kenobi. I want to like Book of Boba. I want to watch high adventure in the galaxy far, far away. I want to give Disney my money for this stuff by paying for it legally, but they just...

Hire shit writers that haven't even seen fundamental parts of the franchise, write everything by committee, and then go "this shit slaps, send it."

Obi-Wan's not bad at the Force in this series because of underlying character issues he needs to work through, or deep-seated trauama, he's bad at the Force because they had a paint-by-the-numbers plot that demands it and they only got approved for six episodes.

 

I was the same, when I tried to read it the first time. Then I read Son of Suns, realized he was a good writer and gave Empire's Son another chance. Now it's probably my favorite piece of fanfiction and I like it better than Son of Suns.

The sequel is also great, but I'm still waiting for that Empire's Son 3, that was supposedly in writing... Anyone who likes Star Wars should give Blank's writing a chance, me thinks.