Star Wars’ Biggest Missed Opportunity is Still Obi-Wan & Anakin in Episode 1.5

On Thursday, to the surprise and delight of Star Wars fans (or at least those with Audible subscriptions),  Disney–Lucasfilm Press released the new audiobook Star Wars: Padawan’s Pride, which is the inaugural entry in the Star Wars Adventures: Audible Originals line of stories. That Star Wars: Padawan’s Pride debuted without fanfare or prior promotion was surprising. The story is set 29 years before the Battle of Yavin, meaning it occurs between Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, during the time of young Padawan Anakin Skywalker’s apprenticeship under Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Another surprise may be that Padawan’s Pride is one of only a relatively few stories set during this time. Despite a decade passing between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, and those years being vital to the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan, the only other significant story focusing on that relationship during those years is the 2016 Marvel Comics series Obi-Wan and Anakin. That story occurs later in the same year as Padawan’s Pride, leaving a surprisingly significant gap in the Star Wars timeline.

That’s not to say that every year in a franchise’s calendar needs to be accounted for. However, that is how Star Wars usually operates. Over the years, the franchise has earned a reputation for leaving no minor plot detail unexplained and forcing as many ancillary stories into the gaps between movies as possible: There’s a one-shot comic to explain C-3P0’s red arm in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Marvel just finished cramming five years worth of comics into the single year that passed between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and one could argue that Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series’ primary purpose was to explain why Obi-Wan calls Darth Vader “Darth” instead of “Anakin” or “Vader” in A New Hope.

It’s also odd that so little time has been spent giving fans a glimpse into Anakin’s pre-Clone Wars training, spending comparatively more time on Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn’s relationship with novels like Master & Apprentice and The Living Force. That doesn’t account for all the attention Obi-Wan and Anakin receives in the stories told from Attack of the Clones onward. Even so, the formative early years of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s partnership feel oddly underdeveloped. 

All that considered, it’s odd that Star Wars has left this crucial decade in young Skywalker’s life as narratively barren as it has. Sure, there are some young reader materials one-shots, and short stories set in that era. Yet, they’re generally not considered of much import the larger canon and, crucially, most of those tales don’t feature the most important master-apprentice relationship being developed at that time. 

Consider this: Only three years pass between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and Lucasfilm Animation created an entire seven-season series in that interval with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Sure, the nature of the Clone Wars created plenty of wartime stories to tell in that era. However, those stories would perhaps have an even greater impact if fans had a greater understanding of what peacetime in the Republic looked like before the war and the Jedi’s role during that era. 

This makes it even more odd that Lucasfilm has been seemingly reluctant to tell the story of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s early years. The influence of Japanese samurai films on Star Wars has been long chronicled and made even more explicit in some of the streaming series produced under Dave Filoni. Tales of samurai training and stories about samurai transitioning from the war-torn Sengoku period of Japanese history into the era of the “Shogun’s peace” that followed could inspire and form the basis for a series (I’d suggest an ongoing comic or anime-style animated series) following Obi-Wan and Anakin. Such a series — which could be more or less episodic, structurally — would allow readers to get to know who these characters were before they became fully swept up in the tides of history and destiny, as seen in the Skywalker saga films.

Regardless of how others may feel about my particular ideas for what a Obi-Wan and Anakin-focused tale might shape up to be in this era, it remains weird that the decade between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones remains relatively untouched. Is it being reserved for some plan that hasn’t yet come to fruition? Is the lack of stories in that era tied to Kathleen Kennedy’s belief that fans would reject other actors in the roles of Obi-Wan and Anakin besides Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen (digitally de-aging can only go so far, after all)? Is it a combination of the two that has prevented Marvel and Lucasfilm Publishing from filling that period with comic book and prose stories? Regardless, it is strangely out of character for the stewards of the Star Wars franchise.