Obi-Wan Kenobi premiere trailer: Familiar faces meet deadly Inquisitors

Disney+ is about to fill its shortest-ever gap between live-action Star Wars TV series, thanks to a six-episode run of Obi-Wan Kenobi starting May 25. And with less than three months to go, Lucasfilm has finally dropped its first substantial look at the return of Ewan McGregor to the Star Wars universe.

The long-rumored series, which has been hovering in fans’ minds since it leaked in 2019, is finally emerging as a real thing after production slowdowns (which somehow hit before a worldwide pandemic). Tuesday’s 90-second trailer is much beefier than the tease we saw a few months ago, and the new footage includes sweeping images of the TV series’ environments while teasing us with plot developments to come. In terms of callbacks to familiar content, we get an intriguing look at Kenobi’s inevitable cave-exile future, which includes the character spying on what appears to be a childhood version of Luke Skywalker as flanked by Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru (played by the same actors from the series’ prequel film trilogy). “Stay hidden,” Kenobi suggests in the trailer’s narration.

Seconds later, a Palpatine-like voice makes clear that Jedi are to be hunted, as per the prequel-series mandate of Order 66. In the case of Kenobi, certain events may compel this Jedi to leave his hiding place. “Their compassion leaves a trail,” the voice says. “The Jedi code is like an itch. They cannot help it.” And at least one familiar hunter, Fifth Brother (a character who debuted in the CGI-animation series Star Wars Rebels), emerges in brand-new, live-action form with a wicked, superspinning red lightsaber to get on with such a hunt. (Though this character looks much like the Grand Inquisitor in the above saber-filled image, Disney’s press notes say this fella is indeed Fifth Brother, as portrayed by Sung Kang of The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift fame.)

Meanwhile, the trailer’s focus on Reva, the Third Sister in the Order of the Inquisitors, includes enough hero-shot coverage to suggest that her allegiances or priorities could shift to something other than hunting Kenobi by the series’ conclusion. But based on the trailer’s footage thus far, that won’t happen until she has at least taken orders from the Sith and interrogated average citizens on Tatooine (including Uncle Owen).

Thanks to this trailer’s loud ties to Inquisitor-led hunts for remaining Jedi, fans may very well want to do some homework by watching Rebels and maybe even catching up on Star Wars comics before the first Obi-Wan Kenobi episode debuts on May 25. (Additionally, my Ars colleague Jennifer Ouellette dove into what we know so far in a February explainer.)