Nobody does a flashback like Star Wars, whether it’s Rey reflecting on the loss of her parents or Luke reminiscing on the fall of his nephew Ben Solo. But the art of the flashback was really perfected in Star Wars TV, with scenes like Grogu remembering Order 66, Din Djarin revealing his rescue as a child, and Boba’s long bacta-tank sequences in The Book of Boba Fett.
So with Obi-Wan Kenobi on the horizon, it’s almost a given we’ll see some flashbacks. The only question is just what point in the timeline we’ll revisit. If it’s even further in the past than we’ve seen before, the series has an opportunity to make a huge original trilogy cameo.
We’ve seen Obi-Wan as a young man, a Jedi Master, a hermit, and an old man, but we haven’t seen him as a boy. But within Star Wars Legends continuity, we know quite a bit about his life in the years before Anakin Skywalker changed it forever. While he was merely a padawan under Qui-Gon Jinn, he assisted with many missions covered in now non-canon comics, books, and video games.
One of these missions, shown in the 2001 real-time strategy game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, used a conflict known as the Alaris Prime Colonial War as the setting for its tutorial campaign. The war was between the Trade Federation and a band of Wookiees, led by their Chieftain, Attichitcuk.
Lost Legends is an Inverse series about the forgotten lore of our favorite stories.
After Attichitcuk was almost killed by battle droids, his son rose up to succeed him: A young Wookiee by the name of Chewbacca. That’s right, Chewbacca and Obi-Wan have a history together, as they fought side by side in this conflict. In fact, with Obi-Wan’s help, Chewbacca successfully colonized Alaris Prime and turned it into an economically prosperous stronghold for the Wookiees beyond their home planet of Kashyyyk.
So how could this factor into Obi-Wan Kenobi? The series is already shedding light on a previously unknown part of the timeline, so we could also see flashbacks to a time we haven’t seen, before the prequel trilogy even happened. This franchise has never shied away from cameos, and this would be a tempting chance to show not only a young Obi-Wan but a young Chewbacca as well.
We’ve never really seen the Wookiee without Han Solo to provide translation and witty quips, and he deserves some time outside of his role as a sidekick. He was apparently a fearsome leader before Han was even born, so why wouldn’t he be a great addition to a series featuring Obi-Wan?
The Inverse Analysis — A little-known video game tutorial may seem like odd source material for a flashback in one of the most anticipated Star Wars series so far, but the opportunity to flesh out Obi-Wan by showing him before Anakin, and Chewbacca before Han Solo, is too good to pass up. Maybe we wouldn’t bet on this happening, but we’ll sure be hoping it will.
Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres May 27, 2022 on Disney+.
