Ewan McGregor has spoken about the upcoming Obi-wan TV series and has revealed the plot will be a Rocky-style sporting underdog drama set in space.
Set after the period when he and Darth Vader had dreadful haircuts, but before he bought a big brown dress, it will tell the story of a young space-gymnast.
“Obi-wan is hiding out on Tatooine,” explained McGregor.
“And he’s a bit down in the mouth after his part in events that have created the evillest man in the universe and ushered in thirty or so years of brutal Empire repression
“One day, he’s popped to the space-corner shop for some cigarettes and sweets and he sees a young girl, Luanna, just doing gymnastics in those public outdoors gymnastics arenas that they have on Tatooine.
“He’s impressed. She is clearly self-taught, but because Obi-wan has the Force he is able to see a raw talent in the girl, so he shouts some encouragement and a friendship develops from there.”
Throughout the series, Obi-wan coaches the young Luanna as she overcomes a lack of funding, a father who wants to marry her off to a local droid-merchant and a disastrous injury during a local final.
The series will lead up to the intergalactic finals of space-gymnastics and will see a climax in which Obi-wan is forced to choose between using the Force to help Luanna but give himself away to Darth Vader or see Luanna fall after a tricky dismount from the parallel bars.
If the series is successful, it is rumoured that a potential season 2 could see Obi-wan discover a young tennis player on the courts of Alderaan and train him to space-Wimbledon glory.
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This sounds plausible, given his first outing was discovering the native pod racing talent of young Skywalker. I am looking forward to him discovering the galaxy’s greatest Dejarik (holochess) player… who uses the force to read the minds of his opponents but is discovered to be a human-alien hybrid that must be hidden from dark forces in the government by secret agents Fuxem Ulder and Dania Sca-hottie.