Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer holds connection to Star Wars The Phantom Menace

The Star Wars franchise is based around the Skywalker lineage, and the Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney Plus series is going to fill in the gaps between Return of the Jedi and A New Hope. At this point in the timeline, Obi-Wan is overlooking Luke Skywalker’s safety from a distance at Tatooine, long before he recruits him to become the next Jedi.

Luke does not know his father is Anakin Skywalker – Darth Vader – but the parallels have already started rolling in.

The trailer flashed through some scenes of Obi-Wan looking at Luke from afar. It was inter-spliced with scenes of the Grand Inquisitor and a new unknown assailant hunting straggler Jedi in Tatooine’s Mos Eisley.

But one moment at Uncle Owen’s farm showed Luke Skywalker straddling one of the huts. Obi-Wan looked on in admiration at his best friend’s child, who wore goggles and pretended to fly something. And the keen-eyed Star Wars fans may have noted a key similarity here.

The shot showed the young Luke acting like he was using a podracer with two ignition arms. When he pushed the two imaginary arms forward, he looked exactly like his father did at that age. Of course, Anakin’s love for podracing was shown off in the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

The younger Anakin – played by Jake Lloyd – spent the first half of the film attempting to free both himself and his mother, Shmi Skywalker, by betting on the race.

READ MORE: Obi-Wan trailer: Major Star Wars Rebels and Prequel Trilogy characters

Hayden gave the first hint at how his story will continue in an interview in 2020. He said at the time: “It was such an incredible journey playing Anakin Skywalker. Of course, Anakin and Obi-Wan weren’t on the greatest of terms when we last saw them… It will be interesting to see what an amazing director like Deborah Chow has in store for us all. I’m excited to work with Ewan again. It feels good to be back.”

Obi-Wan actor Ewan McGregor echoed these sentiments in a recent interview with Forbes. He said: “It was a great experience. Deborah Chow directed all the episodes and she’s really good. She directed a couple [episodes] of The Mandalorian and she’s a really great director. She really knows the Star Wars world, inside out, far more than I do. We just had a great time.”

He added: “I think it’s no secret that Hayden Christensen comes back and we got to play scenes together again as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and it was just fantastic to work with him again.”

Ewan added that he was not going to “give anything away” for the show’s plot. But he was happy to add: “I think it’s really going to satisfy Star Wars fans. I always felt there was a story between Episode III where I finished playing Obi-Wan in the movies and Episode IV where Alec Guinness is Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

He called the series a “very fine” storyline.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series hits Disney Plus on May 25.

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