Obi-Wan Kenobi 2: McGregor Pushes Again, Disney Stays Silent

Four years have passed since Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Ewan McGregor does not consider the story finished.

During an interview with Anne Hathaway to promote The End of Oak Street, the actor once again discussed the possibility of a second season, pointing to the territory he would like to explore: what happens between the ending of the 2022 Disney+ series and the older Obi-Wan played by Alec Guinness in Star Wars: A New Hope. There are still roughly ten years of the character’s life left to explore.

There is, however, one crucial detail. When Hathaway joked about the possibility of joining him in a future Star Wars adventure, McGregor admitted that, as far as a second season is concerned, “nothing is really happening”. So there has been no announcement and no secretly launched production: just a leading actor who continues publicly knocking on Lucasfilm’s door.

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Lost Decade

The series finale, after all, leaves Obi-Wan in a perfect position to continue. After rescuing Leia, protecting Luke and once again confronting Darth Vader, the Jedi can finally move beyond the broken version of himself introduced at the beginning of the miniseries. McGregor also remembers the scene in which he rides off into the desert on his eopie: on set, the creature was played by a real camel, which the actor says he even fell from. For a while, he actually considered buying one in preparation for future rides.

The Obi-Wan of 2022 is not yet Alec Guinness’s hermit from 1977: what is still missing is the final transformation from survivor of the fall of the Jedi into Luke’s elderly mentor. That period is not entirely unexplored: Marvel’s 2015 Star Wars series included several pages from Obi-Wan’s journals on Tatooine, while the 2022 Obi-Wan comic miniseries moved through different moments in his life through memories.

In October 2024, McGregor said that Disney and Lucasfilm were “exploring some ideas” for continuing the story. He also said he wanted to return to the Clone Wars era and finally wear, in live action, the Obi-Wan armor seen in animation. Nearly two years later, however, those ideas do not appear to have become a concrete project.

From the Big Screen to Disney+: Obi-Wan’s Long Journey

The production history of Obi-Wan Kenobi is almost as complicated as the character’s own story. Before Disney+, McGregor’s return had been conceived for theaters: screenwriter Stuart Beattie revealed that he had worked on a film originally intended to become the first chapter of a trilogy.

The plans changed after the commercial performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story, when Lucasfilm scaled back its strategy for theatrical spin-offs, with some of that material eventually finding its way into the series.

The result was a six-episode miniseries directed by Deborah Chow, with McGregor once again appearing alongside Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader.

And audiences showed up: Disney said its debut had become the most-watched premiere of a Disney+ original series globally up to that point, while Nielsen estimated around 11.2 million average U.S. viewers for the first episode during its opening weekend.

Between the Desert and the Stars, Obi-Wan Is Still Waiting

And perhaps the real paradox is that Star Wars may need Obi-Wan today more than Obi-Wan needs another series.

In recent years, the galaxy’s expansion has not always produced the desired results: The Acolyte was cancelled after a single season, Skeleton Crew, despite being well received by critics, debuted with lower viewership than the franchise’s other live-action series, and even The Mandalorian and Grogu, tasked with bringing Star Wars back to theaters after seven years, stalled at around $345 million worldwide, a result Disney itself acknowledged as falling short of expectations.

That does not mean the Force has abandoned the franchise: the second season of Andor proved exactly the opposite. What it may mean is that multiplying characters, eras and spin-offs is no longer enough. For once, Lucasfilm might do well to follow the implicit wisdom of its old Jedi: fewer galaxies to conquer, more stories audiences genuinely want to follow.

And those ten still-empty years in Obi-Wan’s life might be a very good place to start again.