Season 1

It's okay-ish. It's not great. It's certainly better than The Book of Boba Fett (which was really bad) but less interesting than The Mandalorian. But there's some potential here to tell a meaningful story in season 2. Let's assume season one is a warm-up. But given that this show could tell a crucial story just before the original movie, it's a disappointment.

McGregor is great, Leila is cute. There's perhaps too much nostalgia and fan-service (but since I'm not a Star Wars fan I'm not really annoyed since most cameo and references escape me). It's too much innocuous (Disney) family entertainment to be really memorable. Nobody is bleeding, nobody is sweating, (almost) nobody is mutiled (despite laser guns and light sabers). The story is underwhelmingly simple. They had 6 hours: They should have spent some of that on more complex stuff. I mean there's more to the Jedi Order than what they showed in this season. There's more interesting stuff to the alien worlds. The score - although it's an homage to the OST - is plainly boring 80's orchestral movie music (I like Göransson'S Morricone-ish western score for The Mandalorian so much better). Costumes and stage design are sometimes nice; often this LED-wall technology seems to limit scenes to very confined settings though: even scenes in wide-open landscapes always seem to be held back by this technology. Plus, I wonder why all planets look so similar in the Star Wars universe? Can't they invent strange and never seen before places? Some of the action and fight scenes are enjoyable. But too often it's like watching a shoot-out between blind soldiers employing tactics concocted by "Howlin' Mad" Murdock instead of Hannibal.

I started watching this show when it initially came out and then simply forgot to catch up about half way through. That says probably much about it as a whole.

It is not that the show is bad. It isn't. However, it's not really good either. It borders in a strange territory of "it's fine." Also, pointless.

At this point we can probably all agree that Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan is probably the best thing to come out of the prequels and it is great to watch him play that role again. It's also nice to see Hayden Christensen return and this time without monologues about sand. He does most of the physical heavy lifting as Vader, while James Earl Jones provides the iconic voice, sans a few exceptions and flashbacks. It's well done and if the press tours indicates one thing, than that Christensen deserved a much loved return. The chemistry between him and McGregor is also still excellent and feels like they never stopped playing these parts side by side. The moments between Obi-Wan and Vader also provide most of the emotional and interesting parts about the story.

Unfortunately they also bring most of the baggage and issues. Well, granted the biggest issues come from this being a prequel as well and one that has no true justification to exist apart from nostalgia and Disney loving the Star Wars money. The problem is that no matter how hard Obi-Wan and Anakin clash, we know where this ends. Their characters are also pretty stagnant. There's no need to develop them or give them much of an arc (they try with Obi-Wan but it's really half-baked) because in the end of the day, one stays on Tattooine and the other run continues to terrorize the galaxy. There are also a lot of dumb decisions made by characters to keep within the original trilogy's continuation. On the bright side, Uncle Owen gets a personality in this one.

Another issue comes in the shape of Star Wars Rebels of all things. I make it no secret that I prefer Star Wars animated contend of the recent years to live action continuations and in this particular case it hurt the Obi-Wan show that they tried to recreate certain scenes Rebels already did between Vader and Ahsoka a couple of years ago and due to being better paced, they did it better.

Vivien Lyra Blair shines as young Leia and really nails her as a believable counterpart to Carrie Fisher's iconic performance. Her relationship with Obi-Wan is probably the most endearing aspect of the whole show. I even overlook the fact that this is basically a six episode justification to why Leia would name her son Ben (it also makes Rise of Skywalker even more terrible in retrospective, just when I thought that wasn't possible.)

I also like the bait-and-switch that the show actually showed the relationship between Obi-Wan and Leia instead of focusing on him protecting Luke from the shadows.

The show also introduced some new characters and most of the were just forgettable and barely felt important. I enjoyed Kumail Nanjiani's charming con man though and hope they use him for future projects.

Rupert Friend didn't do it for me as the Grand Inquisitor. Jason Isaacs performance in Rebels (again) was way more menacing.

Then there is Reva. First of all, parts of this fandom are so gross for how they treated Moses Ingram, the actress that portrays her. It was disgusting and she didn't deserve this. We already saw how nasty this fandom gets with Kelly Marie Tran and they were at it again.

That being said, and that makes it weird to admit to that, I could not stand this character. I like the idea of Reva, but I thought the writing for her character was terrible and didn't gave the actress much to do but being irritating and shouty. It's unfortunate, because I think she could have been a good character, had the writing supported it. She almost felt like an annoying afterthought because they suddenly realized the show needs an antagonist besides Vader.

Like I said, I have complicated feelings here. I enjoyed parts of it a lot. Most of it however felt like an oddly paced fan service event that just didn't need to exist. The Star Wars universe is huge and I wish they would finally dare to explore completely new aspects of it, free of boundaries to other films or shows.