Summary
Obi-Wan gets back into the swing of things in “Part IV”, as a daring rescue effort gets underway.
This recap of Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1, episode 4, “Part IV”, contains spoilers.
Blimey, there has been a lot of fuss about this show, hasn’t there? Increasingly, Star Wars fandom is beginning to cannibalize itself, with frenzied screams about canon and Kathleen Kennedy and various lives and iconic characters being ruined. It probably isn’t worth going into. But I raise it simply because I laughed to myself in the opening of “Part IV” for including two of my favorite, quintessentially Star Wars things in tandem — one, the Bacta tank, which is a magical hot tub that allows your favorite characters to survive otherwise egregious injury, and the Force, which is just an in-universe name for sheer narrative convenience and always has been. Honestly, it’s a wonder why anyone takes any of this stuff remotely seriously, and I say that as someone who would happily list the franchise as my favorite of all time.
Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1, episode 4 recap
So, according to his new friend Tala, Obi-Wan is on Jabiim, being nursed back to health in a Bacta tank after Darth Vader cooked him alive last week. Vader himself, meanwhile, is in a Bacta tank to treat the various injuries Obi-Wan gave him when he took the high ground way back in Revenge of the Sith. And of course, they can feel and catch glimpses of each other through the power of the Force. Classic Star Wars stuff. You’ll recall, though, that the previous episode ended with Leia running right into Reva, and we learn quickly, thanks to the help of a new character named Roken who is played by O’Shea Jackson Jr. with the exact same no-nonsense demeanor as the basketball coach he played in Apple TV+’s great sports drama Swagger, that she’s being held on the water moon of Nur, within the Mustafar system, which Vader is currently calling home. This is the Fortress Inquisitorius. And Obi-Wan plans to break Leia out of there.
It won’t be that easy, obviously. Obi-Wan isn’t healed physically, his connection to the Force is weak, and he remains haunted by a past that he’s flying right into. And the plan rests on Tala’s Imperial credentials since she’s still technically an officer, but she isn’t supposed to be stationed at the Fortress and her leading Obi-Wan through the facility draws additional suspicion toward her. Meanwhile, Reva continues to interrogate Leia about the Path, the proper name for the Jedi underground railroad of which both Tala and Roken claim membership. But Leia, predictably, isn’t exactly chatty, even after Reva pretends that Obi-Wan is dead because the Path left him behind.
This is all a fairly standard setup, but it’s obviously intended to flesh out the characters as they go about their various roles. We get to see Tala being capable and authoritative, we see Obi-Wan beginning to use the Force again, we see Reva open up a little to Leia to try and relate to her on the level of a lost child having everything taken from them, and we see the will in little Leia that defined her character as an adult. We also get some worldbuilding, as Obi-Wan discovers that the secure sector of the Fortress is being used to house Jedi entombed in what looks like amber, like a trophy vault or, as Obi-Wan puts it, an actual tomb.
As Reva sets about torturing Leia, Obi-Wan hears her screams for help through the Force, so asks Tala to provide a distraction. The best she can come up with on short notice is summoning Reva herself, claiming she has vital intelligence on the Path. Reva doesn’t believe it, but it buys Obi-Wan time to free Leia in a very nice-looking sequence. There’s a pleasing sense of progression that follows, with Obi-Wan getting more and more into the swing of things, swatting blaster bolts left and right, slicing up Stormtroopers, and holding back floods of water when one of the undersea windows gets cracked. The entire escape is really only undermined by the laughable Imperial disguise Obi-Wan puts on right at the end, which is a pointy hat and a long overcoat that he bundles Leia under, even though you can clearly see her feet marching in step with his own. And he keeps it on even after they’re discovered, taking some of the coolness out of the subsequent action sequence, when Wade and Sully arrive in their Y-Wings to facilitate an escape and Reva manages to lob a crate of ordnance at Wade’s ship, taking him down in a fireball.
When Vader arrives, he’s absolutely fuming with Reva for her failure, but she reveals that she intentionally let Obi-Wan and Leia escape since she has planted a tracker on the ship, which we see in the next scene is in Leia’s droid, Lola. Not sure I’m buying that, frankly, since there was zero indication that Reva expected Obi-Wan, or suspected Tala, prior to the escape attempt. But here we are. As Vader says, perhaps she has been underestimated.
You can stream Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1, episode 4, “Part IV”, exclusively on Disney+.
