“Obi-Wan Kenobi” is premiering on Disney+ a few hours earlier than planned, the “Star Wars” show announced Thursday night.
West Coast viewers will be able to stream the first two episodes of the show, starring Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, starting at 9 p.m. PT. Originally, they were set to become available at midnight.
The news was announced in a tweet from the official “Star Wars” account. “The time for @ObiWanKenobi has arrived… early,” the tweet reads. “Start streaming the first two episodes TONIGHT at 9 p.m. PT on @Disneyplus.”
The time for @ObiWanKenobi has arrived…early.
Start streaming the first two episodes TONIGHT at 9PM PT on @Disneyplus. pic.twitter.com/LgdRC51GW2— Star Wars (@starwars) May 27, 2022
Earlier today at the Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, Calif., “Star Wars” fans were surprised with a premiere screening of the show at 7 p.m. PT — and now viewers at home will be able to watch “Obi-Wan Kenobi” early as well.
The Disney+ series is the culmination of years of planning at Lucasfilm to revive McGregor’s performance as Obi-Wan from the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy. Initially, the actor was meant to star in a standalone feature film directed by Stephen Daldry (“The Hours”). After the box office failure of “Solo: A Star Wars Story” in 2018, however, Lucasfilm scrapped its standalone movies and refocused on creating shows for Disney+, and the runaway success of “The Mandalorian” rekindled hope that McGregor would don Obi-Wan’s robe once more for a streaming series.
The actor finally confirmed the news to great fanfare at the D23 Expo in August 2019, but a planned shoot in 2020 with “The Mandalorian” director Deborah Chow was delayed when the original head writer, Hossein Amini (“The Alienist”), left the production. After Joby Harold (“Army of the Dead”) was hired to take over, the six-episode series was delayed once more due to the pandemic. Disney finally announced in February that the show would debut on Disney+ on May 25, 2022, and then in late March, pushed the release two days to May 27.
Set roughly 10 years following the events of 2005’s “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi” picks up with Obi-Wan’s life in exile on Tatooine. After Order 66 decimated the Jed, Obi-Wan is a hunted man, especially by an Inquisitor named Reva Sevander (Moses Ingram). Christensen is also reprising his performance from the prequels as Anakin Skywalker, now transformed by his last encounter with Obi-Wan into Darth Vader; and Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse return as Luke Skywalker’s uncle Owen and aunt Beru Lars. The series co-stars Rupert Friend, Indira Varma, Sung Kang, Kumail Nanjiani, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Simone Kessell, Benny Safdie and Maya Erskine.
