During the beginning of the year Lucasfilm released an explosive and heart-pounding trailer for the mid-season premiere of Star Wars Rebels season 3. The video featured the appearance of some of the Star Wars franchise's most notable characters, one of which includes Obi Wan Kenobi. In the beginning of the clip we get to see Ezra waking up to a hologram of Obi-Wan sending a warning message and in the final moments of the clip we get to see the older version of Obi-Wan bracing to battle with Maul.
Now as the series moves on from its dramatic Mandalorian arc, showrunner Dave Filoni gives us the reason why Rebels is bringing Obi-Wan back to the small screen. After all, it's terribly dangerous to have Darth Maul on Tatooine confronting Obi-Wan – the situation skitters close to the original Star Wars trilogy's main storyline.
In an interview with Comicbook, Filoni explains that he has good reasons for Obi-Wan's inclusion in season 3.
"Everything has to make sense from a story standpoint, and if it makes sense and it's valuable to the character's past, then I don't think you hesitate to do it," the showrunner explained. "I think you have to have a lot of good reasons when you do things and work it out, and you hope things work out as you imagined them and designed them."
"There are a lot of things that I could do in Star Wars, and I try to do things that work with the story group to be true to the characters and where they need to go. It's surprising sometimes where they go. I would say it's surprising at the end of the day, and I don't want to give anything away, if we wind up in the presence of an old wizard, that would be a surprising thing to pull off," he said, at first dancing around actually saying Kenobi's name despite his presence in the trailer. "It's not the most surprising thing to attempt to include Obi-Wan, and we've been, I think, pretty good. The way we included him in the pilot of Rebels, I really liked because it was a way to have him without really interfering, and it spoke to a moment in time for the characters. So, obviously I've been very fortunate over the years when we do do these Legacy characters. James Arnold Taylor was playing him in Clone Wars brilliantly and did a fantastic job, and then brought that back in Rebels when he's playing the Clone Wars era Obi-Wan. I have Stephen Stanton now, who's portraying this particular, if that's Obi-Wan (laughs), whoever it is."
Filoni hasn't been one to add cameos for the mere sake of fan service. Most of the time, notable characters like Thrawn, Saw Gerrera, Maul and others from Star Wars franchise have been allowed to appear in Star Wars Rebels to enrich the series' story. So fans can be reassured that Obi-Wan's definitely going to play a part in moving the Star Wars Rebels story forward.
Star Wars Rebels season 3 airs every Saturday on Disney XD at 8:30 pm ET/PT.
Read: Dave Filoni Teases The Return of A Major Mandalorian in Star Wars Rebels
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