Heading into Obi-Wan Kenobi, there was a lot of excitement among Star Wars fans about Liam Neeson's potential return as Qui-Gon Jinn. While the Jedi Master may have died in The Phantom Menace, telling this story without an appearance from his Force Ghost somehow felt...wrong.
Thankfully, Lucasfilm didn't disappoint and the show's final scene saw Obi-Wan reunited with his fallen Master.
Nesson has never shied away from his role in the Star Wars franchise, of course, lending his voice to The Clone Wars and The Rise of Skywalker. However, during a recent press conference at the San Sebastian Film Festival in northern Spain to promote Marlowe, the actor revealed why he felt compelled to don Qui-Gon's Jedi robes in the Disney+ series.
"I was in the last episode, I’m a bit of a TV snob, but I didn’t want anyone else to play that character," he explains. "Ewan is a friend. We were in Los Angeles on green screen and Ewan, as Obi-Wan, was on a real camel, and I only had three lines of dialogue, and when we rehearsed, people started crying, it was wonderful."
The actor would go on to say he also did it to pay tribute to Star Wars creator George Lucas for "that world he created in his day, a world in which each culture, each country in the world, has a mythological theme associated with each one of them [and] their nations. Lucas was very smart."
It's great to see this sort of love for the Star Wars franchise from a big-name actor who was in just one movie, but it shows that he has a real understanding and respect for how much Qui-Gon has come to mean to fans. Whether he'll reprise the role again is another matter, though we'd love to see it happen.
All six episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are now streaming on Disney+.