Summary
Obi-Wan and Vader both get some respective moments of awesomeness in “Part V” as the finale draws near.
This recap of Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1, episode 5, “Part V”, contains spoilers.
“Part V” opens with what is supposed to be a brief flashback to a training session between Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker, both still Jedis, though the time that has elapsed since we last saw either of them in that form is given away by the aged faces of both actors, especially Hayden Christensen. Still, if you’re going to bring back the original actor in such an iconic role, you need an excuse to get him out of the suit, right? Vader, whose reverie this is, is interrupted by Reva, who tells him that the tracker she planted in Leia’s droid Lola has tracked them to Jabiim. Reva gets promoted to Grand Inquisitor for the intel.
Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1, episode 5 recap
Jabiim is packed with representatives of the Path, including Roken, Tala, and Haja, and a plethora of what are essentially displaced refugees. Everyone’s operating on a strict timeframe that has been pushed back to facilitate Obi-Wan’s rescue of Leia. Everyone there needs to dip, quickly, or the opportunity to do so will pass entirely. But Vader and Reva are right outside pretty much instantly, meaning that Obi-Wan has to cook up a plan to hold the Empire off for long enough that everyone can escape. It’s risky, and desperate, and requires a level of trust and teamwork that these strangers aren’t going to have in each other. But it’s the only option.
With the Empire set up outside, blasting the hanger door, and everyone else stuck inside sending Leia into the vents to try and diagnose why the roof doors won’t open, Obi-Wan has no choice but to try and buy time by negotiating with Reva. Something she revealed in their previous encounter, about knowing that Vader was Anakin, gives him an angle. He has figured out that she was a youngling during Order 66, and was inside the Jedi Temple on Coruscant when Anakin, rather famously, hacked all the kids to pieces. A flashback confirms it. She was there. She saw Anakin butcher her friends and played dead among their bodies until he left. Obi-Wan deduces the truth — she isn’t serving Vader, she’s hunting him.
It all kicks off when Reva melts her way through the door. In the frantic retreat, the loader bot gets banged up defending everyone, and Tala takes a blaster bolt to the gut. In an obligatory moment of heroic self-sacrifice, she seals Obi-Wan behind the next door and lets off a thermal detonator to delay the Empire’s advance. But it ends up being a bit pointless. Vader can sense that he already has Obi-Wan in his grasp since he knows Obi-Wan will do everything he can to protect people. And protecting these people means surrendering himself to Vader to buy them time. They both know it, so Obi-Wan does as expected, giving Haja his weapons and presenting himself to the Empire unarmed and alone.
What Obi-Wan is counting on is Reva’s help. He’s giving her an opportunity to try and turn on Vader, and he’s hoping Vader’s obsession with victory — which contributed to his fall to the Dark Side in the first place, and which we see in microcosm in the repeated flashbacks to that sparring session — will keep his focus on Obi-Wan to such an extent that Reva is given an opportunity to strike. When Vader arrives in person, Obi-Wan has already broken free and headed back to the members of the Path, where Leia, who has removed the tracking device from Lola, has managed to open the doors. But in a supreme moment of badassery, Vader snatches the retreating ship out of the air with the Force, drags it back to the ground, and rips chunks from it. But it was a trick! Another, smaller ship takes off from inside, much faster and more nimble. The Path have escaped, though a clumsy Haja did accidentally leave behind Obi-Wan’s communicator, which contains a message from Bail about “the children” and a specific mention of Tatooine and Ben.
Reva takes the opportunity to attack Vader, but it’s a complete embarrassment. He doesn’t even get his own lightsaber out. He just swats her around with the Force, takes her own saber off her, and runs her through with it, revealing that he knew who she was all along — and so did the original Grand Inquisitor, who arrives just in time to take his badge back. It’s a tremendous loss for Reva, who is left writhing in the dirt. Is there a redemption arc incoming?
It’s Reva who finds Obi-Wan’s communicator on the ground. She hears the words “boy” and “Tatooine”. Obi-Wan senses her discovery of it, and “Part V” closes with a shot of a sleeping young boy who I think we can all identify.
You can stream Obi-Wan Kenobi season 1, episode 5, “Part V”, exclusively on Disney+.
