Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan and Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker dueling each other sounds like pure Star Wars fan fiction. “Obi-Wan Kenobi” author Stuart Beattie has now revealed that this was exactly his idea for the series once planned as a film.
Obi-Wan Kenobi has had a long and interesting history. Originally conceived as a film to follow other theatrical spin-offs like Rogue One, Lucasfilm and Disney changed plans after Solo flopped and instead made it into a series for the Disney+ streaming service. But ever since that’s over, the original writer of the “Obi-Wan” screenplay Stuart Beattie (“Collateral”), whose film script served as the basis for the series, has been bubbling out. Most recently, he revealed that he once created “Obi-Wan” as a trilogy and already had ideas for the following films – and now he dropped an even bigger “Star Wars” bombshell: In the original draft script for Obi-Wan, Ewan McGregor’s titular character fought a grown but young Luke Skywalker – played by Mark Hamill!
Obi Wan vs. Luke: This is how the duel would have gone
Now you’re probably wondering how that can even be. After all, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” takes place between episodes 3 and 4. But the answer is quite simple: It would have been a power vision. In an interview with The Direct Stuart Beattie explains in great detail how the scene would have gone. We have summarized his statements in the following paragraphs.
The initial situation: Obi-Wan has completely cut himself off from the Force. But then he meets a group of refugees who are hiding from the Empire. These have their own religion and speak of a goddess, although it quickly becomes clear that this is just another name for power. Tao, the leader of the refugees, drives Obi-Wan to a sacred shrine so he can contact the “goddess”. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, he finds himself on Mustafar, the planet where he once fought Anakin.
The duel: Obi-Wan sees a man in dark robes and wielding a red lightsaber. He yells “Anakin!” a few times. But as the man gets closer, we see that it is not Kenobi’s former student, but 19-year-old Luke. He attacks Obi-Wan and there’s a lightsaber fight inspired by The Empire Strikes Back. (By this, Beattie is probably referring to the fight Luke has with Darth Vader during his vision in the cave on Dagobah.) The duel ends with Luke nearly killing Obi-Wan, but then Kenobi wakes up from the vision with a terrifying realization .
The consequence: Obi-Wan realizes that the vision is a glimpse into the future. Should Obi-Wan train Luke and dump all his guilt on him in the process, Luke would inevitably turn to the dark side and one day kill him.
In the duel would be loud The Direct Incidentally, Luke’s original actor Mark Hamill was actually used, but artificially rejuvenated, as was done with “Mandalorian”.
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Not as crazy as it sounds at first
+++ Opinion +++
Obi-Wan versus Luke, that sounds pretty crazy at first and like fanfiction to the power of ten. But the idea that Stuart Beattie came up with here could have worked. Such a vision would have fitted Obi-Wan’s character arc well, and the appearance of Mark Hamill would certainly have taken Star Wars fans by surprise. However, after the Luke scenes that we already had in “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett”, it would probably have been too much of a good thing. Not every Star Wars series needs Luke Skywalker!
Our video editor Sebastian certainly sees it similarly. After all, he’s had enough of the Skywalker family and is much more looking forward to the upcoming “Star Wars” movie from “Thor 3+4” director Taika Waititi:
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