Last night’s Disney Plus showcase at the D23 Expo brought a huge amount of exciting announcements regarding the upcoming streaming service’s roster of original content, but one of the biggest reactions of the evening was reserved for news that most fans were already aware of, as Ewan McGregor took the stage to officially confirm his return as Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Both fans and McGregor himself have been clamoring to see the actor reprise the part for over a decade now, and with Disney and Lucasfilm moving away from the Anthology movie concept after the disappointing critical and commercial reaction to Solo: A Star Wars Story, a limited series on the studio’s newest platform seemed like the next logical step.
Kathleen Kennedy appeared alongside McGregor at D23 and while she didn’t give away much in the way of specifics, the official timeline of the Star Wars franchise reveals that the Obi-Wan series takes place during the events of Solo. Already, this has led to plenty of speculation regarding the involvement of both Lando Calrissian and Darth Maul, two fan-favorite characters that both appeared in Solo and are also rumored to have their own Disney Plus shows in development.
The news of McGregor’s return may have only broken last week, but it seems as though Obi-Wan Kenobi is a lot further along in the development process than we thought. Kennedy confirmed that all of the scripts have already been written, with production looking to start next year, meaning Obi-Wan could make his long-awaited return to our screens as soon as 2021.
McGregor isn’t currently attached to any other projects apart from The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep and comic book movie Birds of Prey, both of which are already deep in post-production. Birds of Prey is scheduled to be released in February 2020, too, so it would be safe to assume that once the actor has finished the promotional circuit for the DCEU spinoff, he’ll move straight onto shooting Obi-Wan Kenobi.