Ewan McGregor picked up his first Primetime Emmy Award on Sunday for his lead role in Halston, and took the opportunity to mention that other little project he has coming up – Star Wars: Obi Wan Kenobi. McGregor’s performance of Ray Halston in the Netflix show was enough to see off some stiff competition from the likes of Paul Bettany, Hugh Grant and Lin-Manuel Miranda in the Best Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or TV Movie category, proving again that sometimes it is the stand-alone projects that gain the awards attention, however, McGregor will be hoping that next year Obi-Wan Kenobi sees itself in line for a few nods itself.
“We finished shooting our series, and it was really, really good fun. I really enjoyed working with [director-executive producer] Deborah Chow, and I think it will not disappoint,” Ewan McGregor told reporters backstage at the Awards show. “The new technology that we employed doing it is cool, and it was a different experience than making the original three films that I did.”
The new Star Wars series has been a long time coming for fans of the Star Wars franchise, who have been waiting to see McGregor reprise his role as the Jedi Master since he last portrayed him in 2005, and it had almost arrived at a point when many believed it would never happen. With the arrival of Disney+, the Obi-Wan Kenobi series became one of many new projects that finally found a home as the House of Mouse looked for new and exclusive content to pull in subscribers.
The series takes place almost slap bang in the middle of the time period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and as well as McGregor returning to the franchise, it will also mark Hayden Christensen’s return as Darth Vader, something that the action was happy to promote while appearing at Florida Supercon last week, where he posed for photos with fans wearing his Obi-Wan Kenobi crew cap.
At last year’s Disney Investor Day, director Chow said of the return of both characters, “We couldn’t tell the story of Obi-Wan Kenobi without addressing Anakin or Vader.” As fans are well aware, their climatic battle at the end of Revenge of the Sith saw Anakin Skywalker defeated by Obi-Wan in a fight that culminated with the former being transformed into Darth Vader. The next time these two icons of the saga are seen again together is in A New Hope when Vader kills Obi-Wan. While we already know that the rematch in Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi will have no lasting impact on the characters, it is one that no one with an interest in the franchise is going to say they are not looking forward to.
At the Investor Day event, McGregor teased that his character will go on a “rollicking adventure” across the galaxy and “he has this one task left, which is to keep Luke safe.” Obviously this is a quest that will lead him back to Vader for what Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy remarked on as “the rematch of the century.”
Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi joins the Disney+ line up of new Star Wars series, which will including the third season of The Mandalorian, in 2022. This news originated at ComicBook.com.