Obi-Wan Kenobi Resurfaces for Maul Rematch in Synergistic 'Star Wars Rebels' Trailer
While we Kenobi-philes wait for that Obi-Wan standalone movie — or to see if the old Jedi still has a role to play in Episode VIII (perhaps in relation to a certain budding Force aficionado?) — the folks at Lucasfilm have thrown us a bone. Our hero-in-hiding bookends the latest trailer for Star Wars Rebels, a fan-servicing clip jam-packed with familiar faces from the Star Wars films, including Rogue One.
Clocking in at three minutes, 15 seconds, the trailer (watch it above) teases events for the second half of the show’s current third season. It begins with a hologram warning from an Obi-Wan circa Revenge of the Sith seen by the show’s young hero, wannabe Jedi Ezra Bridger. We then get glimpses of other key players in the nascent Galactic Civil War: Mon Mothma, Wilhuff Tarkin, and Saw Gerrera, with Forest Whitaker reprising his role from Rogue One.
The clip closes with an older Tatooine-dwelling Obi-Wan firing up his lightsaber at the approach of a shadowy figure who appears to be his old Phantom Menace nemesis, Darth Maul, still stewing over that bisection.
Rebels, the Disney XD animated series, is set in roughly the same time frame as Rogue One, when disparate freedom fighters opposed to the growing tyranny of the Galactic Empire begin to form the Alliance. It has woven together characters and plot points from various pieces of the Star Wars galaxy, with callbacks to George Lucas’s original saga, the prequel films, and the old Expanded Universe of books and video games. The design of the main crew is taken from Ralph McQuarrie’s unused early concept art from A New Hope. The second season closed with a memorable confrontation between Ahsoka Tano, the fan-favorite character from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and her former master, Darth Vader. Such core Star Wars movie characters as Princess Leia, Bail Organa, Wedge Antilles, and Maul, have appeared on the show (a Season 2 episode featuring the Organas, “A Princess on Lothal,” was just nominated for a Writers Guild Award), and the current third season has seen the addition of Thrawn, a major villain from the EU. The new trailer also features both Rogue One‘s Death Troopers and the Dark Troopers from the old Dark Forces video-game series.
The Rebels team finally crossed over into the cinematic universe in Rogue One. During the early scenes set on Yavin 4, their ship, the Ghost, can be seen parked outside the hangar, while Cranky astromech droid Chopper briefly appears on screen and the intercom namechecks the ship’s pilot, Hera Syndulla (she’s paged as “General Syndulla”).
The Ghost is also part of the climactic battle over Scarif, and the Hammerhead Corvette, the vessel which knocks a Star Destroyer into the space gate protecting the planet, was first seen in Rebels.
Rebels returns on Saturday, Jan. 7, with the two-part episode “Ghosts of Geonosis.”
