“Contemplation of death brought only one slight sting of regret, and more than a bit of puzzlement. Until this very moment, he had never realized he’d always expected, for no discernible reason, that when he died, Anakin would be with him.” ― Matthew Stover, Revenge of the Sith
I never got out of my mind that Anakins chip, that prevented him from fleeing as a slave, had to be removed when he became Obi-Wans Padawan.
Because Obi-Wan maybe didn’t even know about it, and Anakin was one day just like “Master, what about my chip?”
And Obi-Wan would have been like: “Your what?”
“My slave-chip, master! I tried to find it, but never did. Can we remove it?”
So they go to the medics, find the chip, and Anakin gets a bit nervous. “Master can I hold your hand?”
Of course, he can. Anakin tries to be brave, and soon, the chip is out. His wound gets bandaged, and he smiles at his master. “Master, I am free now!”
And Obi-Wan just can’t, because oh, what has this boy been through? He hides his fright and smiles back at Anakin. “Yes, Anakin, you are. You are free.”
And you never will be unfree again, Obi-Wan swears to himself, while his Padawan is already happiliy chattering again.
HEY THANKS FOR THE TAGS. NOW I NEED TO CRY ON YOU. You really stop and think about the sheer scope of their journey together, that they started out so understated, that it was just this simple, really cute moment!
“Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi.” “Pleased to meet you. Wow! You’re a Jedi too?”
LOOK AT THIS MEETING. Anakin is so excited to meet ANOTHER JEDI and he’s so polite and yet just beaming with all of this and Obi-Wan totally smiles at how adorable this moppet is. I love that this is such an understated, almost unnoteworthy first meeting, who would ever realize just what these two are going to mean to each other?
Who would ever realize that the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin is going to shape the entire galaxy for decades?
It’s so hard to imagine going from this
TO THIS
and that it’s not going to be anything but absolutely great!
Yes, they tragically lose Qui-Gon and that’s hard for them to deal with, but already Obi-Wan is reaching out to Anakin, he’s putting a hand around his shoulder. Within a few years, we see the absolutely adoring look on Anakin’s face when Obi-Wan does pretty much A NORMAL JEDI MISSION. “There is no one better,” Anakin says.
And, sure, they have some sniping, Anakin has a lot of problems with letting go and he doesn’t really want to change and Obi-Wan doesn’t realize the depths of those problems, but they still smile and laugh with each other. AOTC and TCW are full of them bantering together.
THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF HOUR OF REVENGE OF THE SITH IS ONE LONG “HOLY CRAP THEY ARE SUCH AN OLD MARRIED COUPLE” EPISODE. Just look at the way Obi-Wan grins at Anakin!
They’re having fun together, they’re bickering and they move in synch (that scene where their fighters glide and spin together in the same exact, matching movement) and Anakin absolutely will not leave Obi-Wan behind.
How can two people who clearly enjoy being around each other, who have come so far go wrong? They’re The Team, they’ve shaped so much of the galaxy together!
And yet we see exactly how it all goes down in flames. We can watch it happen, we can remember those two people who had only just met each other, who had no idea of the road that was ahead of them, and just be baffled at how they get to here.
“I HATE YOU!” “You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.”
It hurts because we know Anakin loved him, we saw it. And we saw that Obi-Wan loved him, it was in every gesture and look and the way he would pour his entire life into Anakin, even after he was Knighted, Obi-Wan still stayed with him.
We can see it all happen, we can watch their journey and yet HOW do those two people, smiling and shaking hands and being quietly amused or awe-struck by each other, end up HERE?
It hurts so much because we still remember the boy with the stars in his eyes who looked at Obi-Wan with awe, we still remember the young man who ran to Obi-Wan every time he needed help, we still remember the young Knight who loved Obi-Wan but fell apart and turned against him because of his desperation and terrible choices.
We still remember that little kid who went, “WOW, you’re a Jedi, too!?”, we remember Obi-Wan putting an arm around that kid’s shoulders to reassure him, we remember every laughing grin Obi-Wan gave him that Anakin loved in return.
DAVE FILONI: “You see Mace Windu’s the guy that tells little Anakin, no, he will not be trained. You cut to Anakin and he’s like, ‘What??’ There’s this look on Anakin’s face like, ‘I’m gonna remember that, you’re a negative, why are you doing that?’ “So you have to look at it, the Jedi are–though they mean really well for Anakin–they’re always telling him ‘no’. They’re always saying ‘no, you’ll be expelled, you’ll have to leave the Jedi Order’. And then Palpatine is always playing off that saying ‘they need you far more than you know, I think you’re the most powerful Jedi ever’. “So you have this one group that’s trying to train you to be this balanced person that has considerable skill, but they’re always limiting you, [Anakin] saying, ‘It’s all Obi-Wan’s fault, he’s holding me back’. We have to assume that Obi-Wan’s doing these things for Anakin that are making him frustrated. “And then you’ve got Palpatine saying ‘no, you’re the best! you’re beyond the best! they need you, they don’t know it, I know it’.”
RFR INTERVIEWER: “So, it’s the guy telling you the truth and the guy telling you what you want to hear.”
DAVE FILONI: “Right. So when you get to that point, all these things I’m talking about get you to that point where Palpatine’s on the ground and Mace Windu has a lightsaber at his throat and he’s saying ’he’s the traitor’. “So Anakin’s there and he’s choosing the guy that’s always told him ‘no’–that, while he respects him and [Mace’s] not a mentor, but he’s a fellow Jedi–and the father figure [of Palpatine] who holds the key possibly to immortality and you saving this person you love in Padme.”
I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH. It’s an older Legends journal that you can use on your own (though, of course I can’t bring myself to dare write in mine, because IT IS TOO PRECIOUS) where Anakin has doodled down some drawings and thoughts on the pages and I love how cute and funny and sweet it is.
I love the idea of Anakin journaling and sketching, using art to work through his feelings, both the good ones and the bad ones, I love that of course he has a safe space to express the frustration he feels with Obi-Wan–THE OGRE DRAWING IS THE MOST HILARIOUS THING–or how he feels like he’s not going fast enough to learn everything as a Jedi, how he is still thinking of Padme even years later, but also how there’s all this wonder of the Jedi Temple.
Seeing other Jedi meditating, the drawings of the fountains, the doodles of the other Padawans he’s met or other Masters he’s met, the sense of detail given to these drawings lets us know that a real impression was made on them, like some of those drawings of Obi-Wan or Padme are BEAUTIFUL, you know that Anakin keeps coming back to them because they’re such important figures for him, I love that not only do we get to see Anakin Skywalker: ARTISTE, but that each piece conveys a feeling.
IT’S SUCH A FUN BOOK AND I’M REALLY IN LOVE WITH THE IDEA OF ANAKIN AS AN ARTIST, THAT HE HAD A BUNCH OF ART NOTEBOOKS SCATTERED ALL ACROSS HIS ROOM AT THE JEDI TEMPLE.
Apparently, this is something that’s going on on twitter? I’ve seen references to it, but I haven’t read any of the discussion myself, so if I hit on something or am off on a completely separate track, I have no way of knowing, this is just based on my own discussions of this topic!
I think there’s value in the words “Anakin and Vader are separate” in the sense that it’s shorthand (admittedly very clunky wording for shorthand, but this is how I tend to see it) for how Anakin and Vader are very separate mindsets. That what you can expect from one, you cannot expect from the other. I can see the value in stating it along these lines, because I think (for example, when Dave talked about this) crew and creators have to sidestep confirming anything too specific about mental states, like I don’t think they want to state that Anakin and Vader are literally separate personas, because they’re not trying to state that Anakin has DID.
It’s a lot harder to explain that of course Anakin and Vader are the same person, that Vader’s issues are literally Anakin’s issues taken to a new extreme, but that how they think and feel are significantly different, because the dark side warps your mindset the more you seize onto it, and Vader has absolutely soaked the dark side into himself.
But they’re still the same person. Vader’s refusal to look at the responsibility for his own actions–not even his actions pre-fall to the dark side, but just as Vader, when he helped enact the genocide against the Jedi, when he murdered the culture that adopted him, when he murdered their children–as an inability to face what he’s done and how he knows it’s wrong, that’s straight from Anakin Skywalker.
George Lucas’ directions to Hayden wouldn’t make sense if they were literally separate people:
If they’re literally separate people, then Darth Vader is brand new and literally just born in Palpatine’s office, and why would he care about Padme?
Darth Vader doesn’t start when the mask comes down (though, even if it had, his first action is still to ask about Padme and then wreck the room in a fury of a temper when Sidious says she’s dead), he starts when he kneels to Palpatine and says he’ll do whatever he asks, just help him save Padme’s life. That’s Darth Vader right there.
^ THAT’S DARTH VADER RIGHT THERE.
It’s “Darth Vader” who marches on the Jedi Temple and kills the children. It’s “Darth Vader” who murders the Separatists leaders. It’s “Darth Vader” who fights Obi-Wan on Mustafar. It’s “Darth Vader” who cries on Mustafar as well, because he knows this is wrong. It’s “Darth Vader” who rushes to see Padme but then chokes her when she backs away from him. It’s “Darth Vader” who screams, “I HATE YOU!” at Obi-Wan because he loved Obi-Wan so much.
If they were separate people, even separate personalities, Vader wouldn’t be doing any of these things or having these reactions.
It’s the same in the comics–literally every comic that has Darth Vader as a central character for any significant amount of time has him talking to Obi-Wan’s memory, has him trying to resurrect Padme, has him having bitchy revenge fantasies about dunking Obi-Wan in lava instead, has him screaming, “If you really loved me, you’d have killed me!” at Obi-Wan’s memory, has him obsessing over Luke specifically because he’s Anakin Skywalker’s son, has him losing his shit because someone looks very much like Padme, has him pausing because he knows Ahsoka Tano.
Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker every step of the way. The dark side has twisted him so that he’s unreachable by these people–but so much of that is precisely because they knew him as Anakin Skywalker and he cannot stand them knowing who he was (is) and what he did, that the reason Padme can’t stop him, the reason Obi-Wan can’t stop him, the reason Ahsoka can’t stop him, is because Vader knows they know exactly who he is. He’s so afraid of facing himself that he can’t tolerate them precisely because he’s very aware of who he is in a way that he doesn’t want to acknowledge.
He tries very hard to smother that part of himself, but if he were at all successful, he wouldn’t be so damn afraid of it. And Darth Vader is terrified of that part of himself.
Hi! As with literally any relationship in Star Wars, there are complications and things that are difficult, you could make a case that there’s unhealthy aspects to every single relationship in the franchise! You can take any two characters that have any kind of significant relationship, especially with Anakin, and point out aspects that are Not Great about it, because that’s how SW is and that’s how Anakin is! Literally every relationship he has, from Obi-Wan to Padme to his mother to Ahsoka to Rex, all have aspects that we can deem to be unhealthy.
Take how George Lucas describes his relationship with Padme and Shmi: “But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he’s been prepping for this, but that’s the one where he’s sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate.“ –Attack of the Clones commentary
“And of course that’s the problem with Anakin ultimately. You’re allowed to love people, but you’re not allowed to possess them. And what he did is he fell in love and married her and then became jealous. Then he saw in his visions that she was going to die, and he couldn’t stand losing her. So in order to not lose her, he made a pact with the devil to be able to become all-powerful. When he did that, she didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, so he lost her.” –The Clone Wars writers meeting
It’s not exactly hard to see the unhealthy aspects of those relationships, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t real or that they weren’t good, too! Now here’s how George Lucas describes Obi-Wan and Anakin’s introduction in Attack of the Clones, which is arguably where the movies give us the foundation of what we know about these characters:
“[The] scene was needed in the elevator leading up to the Senate apartment, to more firmly establish the friendly, affectionate relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin. ‘In that first cut,’ Lucas explained, ‘the student-mentor relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin was pretty rough right away, which got everything off to a bad start. Then, throughout the rest of the film, Obi-Wan is tough on Anakin, and Anakin is upset with how Obi-Wan treats him. After seeing the movie, I realized that we needed to soften their relationship a little bit, so the audience would see that they are actually friends. So I added this new scene in the elevator to establish that they actually like each other. All the way through the movie, I had to find a delicate balance between their affection for each other and the tension that is always between them.’“ –Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Star Wars: Episode 2: Attack of the Clones [x]
It’s not that Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship isn’t difficult, of course it is. But that’s because that’s how relationships work, especially when you’re in the middle of difficult circumstances, as all the characters in Star Wars are. But that’s not the same as not being good for each other!
On a fundamental storytelling level, if Obi-Wan and Anakin weren’t friends, if they didn’t care, like, and even love each other, then why would the final prequels movie center the big climax around them? It wouldn’t tug at our hearts, it wouldn’t hurt us, if we weren’t watched a tragedy, that these characters were falling apart, that in George Lucas’ words, is Anakin forcing his friends to act against him because of what he’s done.
This is a moment that breaks our heart because they loved each other.
Even the writing by the choreographer of Revenge of the Sith was specifically designed around the idea that they were important to each other, loved each other, and that Obi-Wan was giving Anakin every possible chance:
The fight is literally written to show us that Obi-Wan is still trying to get Anakin back, because he loves Anakin so much.
Their meeting again on the Death Star wouldn’t be this big, epic thing if we weren’t witnessing two people who loved each other and were once upon a time good together, now turned dark and twisted.
Their final ending, seeing them together again in the Force, hearing George Lucas be heard saying that Anakin “had help from the other side”, wouldn’t be nearly as powerful if it weren’t a return to when they were good together, seeing Anakin standing by Obi-Wan and Yoda is powerful because it’s a return to the good person, the good friend he was, once upon a time. The man that Obi-Wan remembers, when he’s talking to Luke about him in A New Hope.
And it’s not hard to find evidence of that in the rest of the movies and the TV series:
Anakin loses his shit because he thinks Obi-Wan is dead, he doesn’t speak for days and is wrestling very hard with the dark side, would have killed Rako Hardeen if not for Obi-Wan’s memory, that Obi-Wan wouldn’t have wanted him to kill someone, and that’s the only reason he doesn’t.
Palpatine wouldn’t be having such a field day with manipulating Anakin with this–telling him that Hardeen was last seen on Nal Hutta, specifically to go get Anakin riled up and stirring up those intense feelings inside of him, because Palpatine had to drive a wedge in between Obi-Wan and Anakin–if Anakin’s feelings about Obi-Wan weren’t important, just like how Palpatine used Anakin’s feelings for Padme to twist him around, used Anakin’s feelings for Ahsoka to twist him around.
We also see that Obi-Wan cares very much about Anakin in turn, too, that he absolutely loves him. Reserved people don’t always have to vomit their feelings everywhere to express themselves in the “right” way, but we very clearly see Obi-Wan express these things anyway:
When he’s worried about how Anakin’s sleeping, he takes time out of their duty to ask how he’s doing, and the expression he wears is very genuinely concerned, that is the face of someone who very much cares and is asking because they’re there for support.
Obi-Wan’s advice, from what Anakin tells him (there’s no mention of these dreams being dangerous, we’re not given any indication that Anakin has visions/that this is a vision) is reasonable. (And if we’re going to give Obi-Wan shit about this, we have to give double shit to Padme for saying, “It’s just a dream.” in ROTS despite that she knows exactly what Anakin did because of his dreams in AOTC.)
Also in this scene, in addition to the moments in the elevator (where Obi-Wan deliberately is teasing Anakin because Anakin was spiraling emotionally, showing that he’s actually really good at jolting Anakin out of a panicked state), Obi-Wan sees Anakin start to spiral again when he says Padme didn’t seem to care that he was back, so Obi-Wan says to mind his feelings (GOOD ADVICE) but also cheers him up with, “But she was pleased to see us.” because he’s very much watching out for Anakin’s mood.
The entire point of this conversation in the Clovis arc of s5 is that Obi-Wan senses there’s a lot going on with Anakin and he makes himself available to talk, to tell Anakin that he needs to get a grip on himself, which is what a good friend does. They don’t just blindly support you, they instead look out for you, and when you need to hear something difficult, they tell you, in a kind and supportive way, you need to get your shit together. Because blindly enabling Anakin is a really bad idea, given what we know he’s capable of.
This is why, yes, they’re at odds in AOTC, because Anakin is overstepping his bounds and promising things the Jedi can’t reasonably be expected to deliver on, he’s being bratty and so of course Obi-Wan’s reaction is going to be, “We will TALK ABOUT THIS in the CAR.” at him.
In contrast, just a few minutes later in the movie, Obi-Wan’s cheering him up again, then later that night asking after him in concern, then they go on the speeder chase together and we get a visual demonstration of how well they actually do work together, that they both clearly enjoy the bickering and bantering.
And there’s more good moments, too!
Obi-Wan easily and warmly smiles at Anakin in ROTS, praises him and tells him how proud he is of him, the whole point of including this scene is like the elevator one, to show us that they care about each other, they get along, they work well together, they’re good for each other when they’re around.
It’s when Obi-Wan’s not there that Anakin does his worst things–when Obi-Wan is on Geonosis and Anakin on Tatooine, he murders the Sand People and their children. When Obi-Wan is on Utapau and Anakin on Coruscant, that’s when Anakin goes off the deep end.
Obi-Wan is an incredibly valuable counterweight to Anakin’s teetering towards disaster and, without him there, that’s when Anakin really starts to fall apart.
Also, by the rules of how the psychic powers of Star Wars seem to work, you have to know someone really well to really feel their presence in the Force, that’s why (as Dave Filoni explained in an interview) Kanan can’t really be sure that it’s Luminara at Stygion Prime, because he never really knew her. In contrast, he said, when Anakin felt Obi-Wan’s presence on the Death Star, it was like a battering ram, because they had been so familiar to each other.
We see that reflected in small ways with how they pick up on each other’s psychic moods:
Or moments when they’re physically affectionate with each other in small, but very telling ways!
These are all the more significant for the casual ease with how they touch each other:
And we see that Obi-Wan is actually really good with Anakin, as a teacher:
When a young Anakin thinks that Obi-Wan doesn’t want him around (a pretty normal thing in a story like this), he explodes about it and Obi-Wan talks very openly and genuinely with him, about subjects that are pretty sensitive.
He explains that he felt like he couldn’t help even a full grown adult, when Qui-Gon was killed by Maul, so how could he protect a Padawan that was entrusted to him? He felt like Anakin would have preferred having Qui-Gon, which he explains without ever accusing Anakin of behaving badly, he never lays any of this on his student.
He’s not just being kind, he’s emotionally available to Anakin, balanced with showing that one doesn’t have to be perfect even as an adult and yet still have their shit together.
And this works beautifully, Anakin lights up and understands what was going on, they solved the problem and work well together. (This is the whole idea behind how they became The Team, you don’t get that level of complementing each other if you’re not good together!)
This is important, because Anakin really, really needs someone who is extra considerate of him, because he’s not great at getting outside of his own head sometimes. Oh, he has a wonderful heart and he cares very much about others, but sometimes it’s hard for him to parse what others actually mean versus what he thinks they mean, because his fears and anxiety tend to chew on the wires in his mind.
Obi-Wan is a great teacher for him in this because he’s doing as much as is possible to work around that, to balance that Anakin needs a little extra help with the consideration versus that Anakin needs to learn to start trusting others.
We see that this kind of dynamic continues into when Anakin has been Knighted and Obi-Wan still seeks him out to offer an ear to talk, to praise him when Anakin’s doing well:
There are no easy answers in this war, nobody has them, otherwise none of them would be where they are. But Anakin feels intensely about the events happening in this issue, he has these intensely held beliefs, and Obi-Wan smiles and him and praises him for it, supports him in it. Anakin becomes more focused and confident in himself because Obi-Wan helped nudge him in the right direction.
We see that Obi-Wan is a good teacher for Anakin and a good friend. I think there could be some debate about whether Obi-Wan should have been less his friend and more his mentor, but I often wind up circling back to how I don’t think that Anakin would have really listened to anything less than the careful line that Obi-Wan walked.
I keep thinking about: How would Anakin have reacted in a situation like this?
Where Qui-Gon seems to be shunting Obi-Wan to the side, despite just earlier in the movie he said Obi-Wan still had much to learn, but now he’s saying that Obi-Wan’s ready, because he wants to take Anakin as his Padawan?
Obi-Wan understands this and gets over the sting, he knows that Qui-Gon cared about him, he’s able to get out of his own head enough to recognize that even if this kind of hurt, that Qui-Gon didn’t do it because he didn’t care. Can you imagine if Anakin had been in this position? If his Master had been so willing to set him aside like this and felt that he should get out of his own head long enough to see that it wasn’t meant as a slight against him?
This is why I will always argue that Obi-Wan was the best choice for Anakin, because he stayed dedicated to Anakin even after his Knighting, because he was constantly asking after him and demonstrating care for him, while also working Anakin towards becoming more balanced. We see, in stories like the Age of the Republic comics or in the early episodes of The Clone Wars, where Palpatine has less direct influence/when Anakin goes to see him less, that they tend to work things out pretty well, that Anakin rises to the occasion, like Obi-Wan knows he can.
Maybe another Jedi would have been able to achieve that same balance, I certainly would have enjoyed seeing Yoda attempt it or maybe Mace Windu attempt it (their banter is delightful and clearly Anakin gets a charge out of it in TCW, he’s practically laughing as they “argue” in the Boba episodes), but certainly Obi-Wan was a great complement to Anakin and Anakin was a great complement to Obi-Wan.
And, ultimately, Anakin knows that Obi-Wan loved him, he knows that even after EVERYTHING, he could still have gone to Obi-Wan for help and Obi-Wan would have listened. Like when he has his vision in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith:
This is entirely Vader’s vision, he recognizes that this is true, that Obi-Wan would listen to him, would turn off his saber if Anakin asked him for help.
These are two people who were driven apart and it hurts because they were good for each other and they liked each other so much. Of course they had their issues, that’s true of every single relationship in Star Wars, it wouldn’t be an interesting story if they didn’t! Obi-Wan believes a little too much in Anakin, Anakin doesn’t trust Obi-Wan nearly enough, etc.
Mileages may vary, I’m not here to change your mind if you’ve seen all this, read all the comics and books and played the games, and still felt like they were never really friends, then that’s as valid an interpretation for you as all of the above is for me. But this is why I absolutely do think they were great together, that the story showed them as great friends, as two people who were monumentally important to each other, to the point that even when they’d spent 20 years apart, they still revolved around each other. That Vader wouldn’t shut up about Obi-Wan [x][x] and that even Obi-Wan’s death was still about Anakin, just as much as Luke [x].
And at the end of the day, man, these two clearly just liked the hell out of each other:
