The following contains spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi Season 1, Part VI, now streaming on Disney+.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is an excellent show, with stunning visuals, sharp writing and a great anchoring performance by Ewan McGregor. Unfortunately, it's also a Star Wars prequel. It is, by the nature of the show's premise, a story about characters with endings firmly set in stone. Obi-Wan will always end up as an old hermit on Tatooine, teaching Luke how to master the Force. Vader will always end up on the Death Star, and the two will meet there for their final duel. Up until that moment both characters are effectively immortal, able to endure the greatest perils without any hint of real danger.
This isn't an issue on its own -- shows about characters whose endings are already written can be particularly poignant. Take for example Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which follows the adventures of Christopher Pike, a captain who's doomed to die saving several children in a disaster. He's similarly invincible, but the difference is that he knows it. Pike has seen his own future, and a good chunk of the show's thrill is about seeing how he reacts to knowing his own destiny. There's also an entire crew that the audience has time to grow deeply attached to, none of whom have the same protection.
But Obi-Wan Kenobi relies too heavily on characters who can't be hurt in any meaningful way. Ben sets off on his harrowing adventure to save Princess Leia, who also can't be harmed. He encounters Reva, the show's only real unknown, but her final moments of the show are spent menacing Luke and the Lars family. This is a particularly toothless scene, since the only characters in danger are ones who show up in Episode IV. There's no way Reva could harm Luke, or Owen, or Beru. Her choice to spare them could have been meaningful and poignant, but it's one fans know she's going to make from the very beginning of the scene.
The same goes for Obi-Wan's final conflict with Vader, which isolates the pair for the third time to let them battle it out. Lightsaber duels are a hallmark of Star Wars, but even they're robbed of all tension when it's clear neither character is going to be meaningfully injured. Darth Vader can't get any more disfigured, and Obi-Wan doesn't have any major injuries in A New Hope. Their choreography is breathtaking, but it feels more like a carefully rehearsed dance than an actual duel to the death.
Not all of these problems plague every prequel made for a series. They don't even plague the Star Wars prequels, which while known for their many follies, are often filled with suspense and danger. That's because Obi-Wan and Anakin are only two characters in that series. Qui-Gon Jinn met his demise at the end of The Phantom Menace, having gotten plenty of screentime throughout the rest of the film to establish him as a legitimate character. Obi-Wan's closest parallel is Imperial officer Tala Durith, who seems to come and go as nothing more than a drop in an ocean of Star Wars canon.
The greatest strength of a prequel is its ability to tell the beginning of a story, to show where characters came from and what shaped them into the figures fans have already come to know and love. But Kenobi isn't the beginning of a story -- it's the middle. It can't change anything meaningful, and it doesn't get a blank slate to start off with. It's the straight line between two fixed points. Future Star Wars prequels should start from the beginning, but it would be better still to not have any more prequels. Star Wars is already a name fans know and love. It should be able to tell fresh stories without relying on the same characters fans have already seen time and time again.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is available to stream on Disney+.