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Obi-Wan: This is the Hero’s Journey of the Mentor
The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi dropped Friday morning, and I am glad to say they deliver in every way — From an excellent foundation to fascinating new worlds and characters, to reintroducing us to beloved friends and locations that we get to know even better.
By expanding the myth of a “galaxy far, far, away,” showing us the daily terrors of living between the lawless and the fascist, and diving deeper into Obi Wan and princess Leia’s back stories, this show succeeds in every way a Star Wars story should.
In 1977 we were introduced to strange old hermit living out on a dessert planet called Tatooine named Obi-Wan Kenobi. We knew little about him as a person and truth is we did not need to know. Anyone who had ever been told a story knew the role he was there to play.
Like Merlin before him, Obi Wan was there to help turn our protagonist into a hero. The author and professor Joseph Campbell would describe Obi Wan as the Mentor. An archetypal category named by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The mentor is the guide who will help teach our hero how to face the unknown.
Read More: Obi-Wan Kenobi Ep. 1 & 2: The Star Wars Epic Brings All The Feels
As it would turn out we, due to his role as the mentor, we actually knew relatively little about the person who was Obi-Wan. All we knew about him was that he was the last (or one of the last) of a group of knights known as Jedi who used a mystical magic known as the Force. Then almost twenty years later we were given the prequels where we learned more and more about this mysterious wizard-hermit.
What we had no idea of was how deeply personal and truly tragic the trauma Obi-Wan’s psyche experienced due to Anakin turning to the dark side. There was no way, without showing us, that we could understand and comprehend the guilt, shame and doubt this teacher was carrying around with him when he said to Luke Skywalker, “You must learn the ways of the Force if you’re to come with me to Alderaan.”
When Obi-Wan remained committed to teaching Luke in a New Hope, we did not know at the time how much guilt he was carrying. This new show is clearly going to change the way we interpret every line and encounter in a New Hope.
But this new show on Disney+ is continuing the work of the prequels, the clone wars and the books, to take the person we barely knew at the beginning of this 40-plus year journey and elevate all the other media we have about him at the same time.
What struck me most after watching the first two episodes is that we often do not think about our teachers and mentors as having their own thoughts, dreams, ambitions, and fears separate from us or the role they are assigned in our lives.
The mentor is not the hero of the story. The mentor’s needs, by necessity, become secondary to that of the hero’s mission. However, the central question these episodes force us to contend with is, what happens when that mentor has given up? That simple line in a new hope where Obi-Wan eagerly pushes to Luke to train is now forced to be read with a different subtext due to this latest entry in the Star Wars mythology.
Something happens over the course of these six episodes to renew Obi-Wan’s faith in himself. Something happens to make him accept the guilt he feels over the loss of his brother Anakin. Something happens to make Obi-Wan recognize and control his fear. These are all powerful and fascinating questions that the show is tackling and exploring.
However, the central question these episodes force us to contend with is, what happens when that mentor has given up?
These first two episodes grow the universe of Star Wars while also doing what Star Wars does so well: reflect back to us our own struggles through fictional characters. Obi-Wan Kenobi is the Hero’s journey of the mentor. It is already shaping up to be a fascinating exploration of this often-mystical role in mythology. It is taking a character whose needs are always secondary to the mission and making us care even more deeply about what that sacrifice means.
The Obi-Wan we recognized but did not know in 1977 has become a character whose own compelling hero’s journey we finally get to complete. In doing so we will better understand this hermit-wizard Obi-Wan and, by virtue of that better understand, ourselves.
Episode three of Obi-Wan Kenobi is set to release Wednesday, June 1st, at 12 AM PST