Canceled Star Wars Movie Explained The Franchise’s Biggest Plot Hole

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 9 seconds ago

What do you think the biggest plot hole in Star Wars is? You might think it’s the Emperor inexplicably surviving Return of the Jedithus making all that “chosen one” stuff from the prequels pretty meaningless. Or maybe Tatooine simultaneously being a crappy little backwater planet and yet a featured location in five franchise films and three television shows. For many of us, though, the biggest plot hole goes all the way back to the beginning, when Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker that Darth Vader murdered the young man’s father. In reality, Luke’s dad was Vader, and his new mentor simply lied.

Or, as Obi-Wan lamely explains later, he told the truth…from a certain point of view. The real-world reason for this plot development is that George Lucas was still trying to figure everything out. In-universe, it’s still a crazy lie, one that Luke was quite literally fated to discover. However, a canceled Star Wars project would have explained this plot hole while adding depth to one of the franchise’s favorite characters. That project was Obi-Wan Kenobithe film that was shuttered in favor of creating the Obi-Wan Kenobi television show. In the canceled movie, Obi-Wan would have discovered the dangers of passing his own guilt onto young Luke Skywalker, potentially explaining his later omission of the truth.

The Movie That Never Was

The Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show proved to be good, not great. It was fun seeing Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen square off again, but the entire main story (a weird Princess Leia side quest) was completely superfluous. In retrospect, the canceled Obi-Wan Kenobi movie was much, much more interesting. Writer Stuart Beattie had a story where a guilt-ridden Commander Cody, aging twice as fast as other humans, has dedicated his life to protecting Obi-Wan Kenobi. In turn, Kenobi has dedicated his life to protecting young Luke Skywalker, the Force-sensitive child of Anakin Skywalker.

However, things go unpredictably sideways. In his zeal to protect Skywalker, Obi-Wan has projected his will onto the kid, which has an unexpected side effect. He loses much of his connection to the Force, leaving him vulnerable, a la the Man of Steel in Superman II. Eventually, he goes to the shrine of a goddess and ends up back on Mustafar, fighting a de-aged version of Mark Hamill as an evil Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan nearly loses the fight before snapping awake with a revelation: that putting his guilt for failing Anakin and the rest of the Jedi would doom Luke to the Dark Side. He learns to mellow out, restoring his connection to the Force.

Trauma, Drama, And Lightsabers

So, what does this have to do with Obi-Wan lying to Luke about who his father really was in A New Hope? Simple: by this point, the Jedi Master would have spent nearly a decade trying to keep his own guilt from affecting Luke from afar. But actually sitting down with the kid, dishing about the most traumatic days of your life, plus explaining his legacy and pitching a rescue mission? That is a lot for the emotionally stunted hermit to take on in one day. Actually explaining the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader would have been too much, so Kenobi took the easy path and lied.

It’s not a perfect explanation, of course, and nothing changes the fact that Luke was always going to discover the truth. But this canceled Obi-Wan Kenobi movie does provide a simple, emotionally satisfying reason for the old Jedi Master lying. Basically, he was trying to push past his own trauma and be the mentor Luke needed him to be. Sadly, this Obi-Wan Kenobi movie was canceled, so we’ll never have any adventures between the titular Jedi and Commander Cody. But we do now have some easy head canon that explains the truth of Kenobi’s actions. Truth told in the purest Star Wars fashion: from a certain point of view.