Holy Kenobi! According to the official Star Wars website, Deborah Chow has been hired to direct the upcoming Disney+ Star Wars TV series centered on Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. It is unclear at this time if she will direct the entire series–which is said to be either six or eight episodes–or just part of it. Either way, this is a huge deal for Lucasfilm, as Chow is one of the first women to step behind the camera for a Star Wars project, and certainly the first one to do it in such a large way. She will be joined by Hossein Amini (Drive), who is writing the series.
Kenobi won’t be the first time Chow has made her way to the galaxy far, far away; the Canadian-Chinese director previously helmed episodes of the streaming service’s other upcoming Star Wars series The Mandalorian, which is set to debut this November. Her other TV credits include episodes of American Gods, Better Call Saul, Lost In Space, Jessica Jones, Reign, Mr. Robot and Iron Fist. She also directed the TV movie Flowers in the Attic for Lifetime.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series has been a much-talked-about project for a long time now, and has already gone through several iterations. McGregor has expressed interest in returning to the role–which was originated by Alec Guinness in the original 1977 Star Wars, and which McGregor portrayed in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith–for quite some time. But the series was finally confirmed at this year’s D23 Convention in Anaheim. There, McGregor joined Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy on stage to announce that he would, indeed, play Kenobi again.
It’s hard to guess exactly what will happen in the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series. It will clearly take place after the events of Revenge of the Sith and before the events of A New Hope, where an elderly Kenobi becomes a mentor for Luke Skywalker and is killed by Darth Vader. We’ve seen a bit of Kenobi’s life in that timeline on the animated series Star Wars Rebels, where he duels the believed-to-be-dead Darth Maul on Tatooine, but other than that, his life on the desert planet is largely mysterious. Will the new series incorporate familiar characters, or send Kenobi off on a new adventure, in locations we haven’t seen before?
Anything is possible in the galaxy far, far away. We know with a talent like Deborah Chow behind-the-scenes, we have nothing to worry about. In the meantime, as we wait patiently for more Kenobi news, we have The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to look forward to. It’s never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan.
Header Image Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm
