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Hello There: The Obi-Wan Kenobi Show Is Officially Happening

Your move!
Your move!
Image: Lucasfilm

Last week we heard murmurs that, after what has been years of umming and aahing, Ewan McGregor had finally signed a deal to return to the Star Wars galaxy as the legendary Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now, Disney’s just made it official.

Announced by the company today during its ongoing D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, the new series will launch on the media megacorporation’s upcoming Disney+ streaming service, set to launch in the U.S. on November 12 (with the debut of another TV series set in the Star Wars universe, Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian). We will see McGregor reprise his turn as the younger Obi-Wan Kenobi, the role he played throughout the three Star Wars prequel movies. Disney said it would start filming next year.

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The currently-untitled series—which joins the aforementioned Mandalorian and yet another series that follows Diego Luna’s Rogue One character, Rebel spy Cassian Andor, as part of Lucasfilm’s slate of programming for Disney+—will follow Kenobi eight years after the events of Revenge of the Sith saw the Jedi purged by the fallen Anakin Skywalker and Sheev Palpatine. Set approximately around the time Solo: A Star Wars Story is set, the show will follow Obi-Wan in exile on the planet Tatooine to watch over the hidden son of Anakin and his wife Padmé, Luke.

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It’s been a long road for what has been floating around as a rumor since early 2014. McGregor himself has danced around a Star Wars return repeatedly, as rumors grew from a standalone movie in the vein of Rogue One or Solo, to a trilogy of movies, to even getting a director, Billy Elliot’s Stephen Daldry, allegedly on board—and at one point, murmurs of its cancellation all together alongside other potential movie spinoffs. Now the movie might be no more, but at least the idea lives on: perhaps more powerfully than we could possibly imagine.

We’ll bring you more details on the Obi-Wan series as we learn them.

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