Indira Varma’s Tala is the Real Hero of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ on Disney+

Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+ is a show happily giving Star Wars fans the hits. We get to watch the brilliant Ewan McGregor revisit Obi-Wan Kenobi in the middle-aged, kicked-puppy era of the Jedi’s life. There has already been an incendiary rematch between Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen) and his estranged master and the show gives young Princess Leia (Vivien Lyra Blair) the attention she so richly deserves. We’ve even gotten a Quinlan Vos shoutout and a Valin Halcyon Easter egg. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a show written for the long-time, hard core Star Wars fans like yours truly. So it’s weird that my favorite part of the show is actually Indira Varma‘s new character Tala.

Tala might not seem like a special character in the Star Wars universe, but to me, she is the kind of hero the saga is built upon. Tala isn’t a Princess or a Jedi, but an ordinary person willing to put everything on the line — including her life — to do the right thing. In Indira Varma’s hands, Tala is also a layered figure. We’ve seen her repeatedly throw herself into danger, but she hardly ever seems cool about it. Sure, she’s learned how to affect a steely exterior, but Varma lets us see the fear coursing through her veins. Tala represents the heart of Star Wars’s Rebellion. She represents ordinary humans called to heroism in spite of themselves. And that’s why I love her.

Obi-Wan Kenobi takes place smack between Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. It’s been ten years since Darth Vader helped destroy the Jedi Order, murdering everyone from esteemed Jedi Masters to little Younglings in the Jedi Temple. Obi-Wan Kenobi has been hiding out on Tatooine, watching over Vader’s son, Luke (Grant Feely). However, when an ambitious Inquisitor named Reva (Moses Ingram) kidnaps Luke’s twin sister, Leia, Obi-Wan is called out of his retirement to save her. He tracks the girl to Daiyu where they narrowly escape Reva’s wrath. The two wind up on the mining planet of Mapuzzo where they immediately run afoul of local stormtroopers…only to be saved by a stern-looking Imperial officer named Tala.

As it turns out, Tala is a Rebel in disguise. She uses her Imperial credentials to hide and spirit Jedi along “The Path,” an interstellar network of safe houses similar to our own historic Underground Railroad. She gets Obi-Wan and Leia to a safe house and when the Inquisitors bring none other than Vader to Mapuzzo, she actually helps fight back. It is Tala who, at Leia’s behest, goes back to save Obi-Wan Kenobi’s life. (Yeah, he would have been totally dead were it not for her and her silent, but sweet, cargo droid.) Later it is also Tala who volunteers to go on a suicide mission with Obi-Wan to infiltrate Fortress Inquisitorius to save Leia. And, what do you know? It’s consistently Tala who puts herself on the line to sneak through security, smack down officers, and distract Reva.

Tala honestly rules.

The thing that makes Tala pop for me, again, is Indira Varma’s performance. While most folks probably know her best from her role as Ellaria Sand in HBO’s Game of Thrones, I’ve been following her career since another HBO joint, Rome. Varma has this rare ability to show the audience her characters’ conflicting emotions within the space of a scene. In Rome, she was a wife with a secret, unsure if she wanted to reconcile with her newly returned, long-thought-dead husband, or cast him as the villain of her life. In Game of Thrones, she was consistently torn between her love of her daughter and her need for vengeance. Here, she is someone who always needs to put on the facade of cool strength, whether that’s as a fake Imperial or impassioned Rebel. Varma, however, always lets us see that Tala is actually sweating through these killer heroic moments. Because of that, her courage seems all the greater.

Star Wars has become a massive global franchise about super-powered warriors and a family with the last name Skywalker. But the charm of the first film was that it showed us some scrappy, flawed people trying their best to survive in a cruel, fascist galaxy. The stakes were high and the sacrifices huge. While we know that Obi-Wan, Leia, and Vader will survive this new Disney+ series to square off again in A New Hope, we can’t say the same for Tala. She is at risk and she knows it. Nevertheless she persists in the good fight against the great big evil that is the Empire.

That’s why I love Tala.