Disney+ Announces Obi-Wan Kenobi Series Starring Ewan McGregor

Star Wars fans everywhere just felt a disturbance in the Force—but a good kind of disturbance! That’s because Disney just confirmed that Obi-Wan Kenobi is coming back for more adventures, and he’s bringing Ewan McGregor along for the ride.

After lots of rumors and literally years of starts and stops, McGregor is once again returning to a galaxy far, far away. Long rumored for a spinoff feature film, McGregor will instead play Obi-Wan in a new Disney+ TV series. The announcement came as part of the Disney+ Showcase presentation at D23 in Anaheim.

McGregor previously played General/Jedi Master Kenobi from 1999 to 2005 in the Prequel Trilogy. While Disney has revisited the original trilogy a few times already, as in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the prequel era has not been as heavily referenced. This changes that, and you gotta imagine it’s a move that will delight fans of every Star Wars era.

This will be the fourth Star Wars show for the upcoming streaming service. The Mandalorian will launch when Disney+ does on November 12 and will be followed by a new season of the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Diego Luna will also reprise his Rogue One character Cassian Andor for a series.

The series will presumably be set between Episode III–Revenge of the Sith, when we last saw McGregor’s take on Kenobi, and Episode IV–A New Hope (where he was played by Alec Guinness).

Just to editorialize for a sec as a Star Wars fan–as controversial and possibly divisive as the prequels were, pretty much everyone could agree then and now that McGregor’s game-for-anything gusto was the best thing about those films. This is a thrilling move.