At first glance, it seems like Star Wars has filled in so much backstory that we might even be going so far as to say that George Lucas has told us too much (did we really need to hear young Anakin say “yippie?”).
However, despite six movie prequels, three prequel animated TV shows, an expanded literary universe (that is now now defunct), a new movie sequel trilogy, and countless new canon stories told in comic books, most fans still have no idea what happened to the beloved Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi between the movies.
When we say “between the movies,” we’re mostly talking about between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope.
Though some fans may have lingering questions of what happened to Obi-Wan after Episode II, Attack of the Clones, they will discover that over 120 episodes of The Clone Wars animated series can more than satisfy their curiosity.
What we’d really like to know is what the heck old Ben Kenobi was doing in his self-exile out there in the Tatooine desert for 19 years while he was waiting for Luke to grow up.
Until we get the long-rumored Kenobi prequel in the theatre (which has still neither been confirmed nor denied), various writers have filled in some of the gaps.
Between permanently disfiguring his best friend, losing the Jedi Order, and the Fall of the Republic, old Obi-Wan had a lot of sorting out to do. However, it’s hard to keep a good man down, even when he’s in a self-imposed exile.
With that said, here are the 20 Things Only True Fans Know Obi-Wan Did Between The Star Wars Movies.
He Fought Darth Maul Again And Won
Last time most fans saw Darth Maul was in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. During an epic lightsaber battle, he takes on both Obi-Wan Kenobi and his master, Qui-Gon Jinn.
Though Qui-Gon perishes in the fight, Obi-Wan succeeds in liberating Darth Maul from his lower half.
However, The Clone Wars reveal that Darth Maul not only survived, but that he also went temporarily mad. Found by his brother, he obtains new robotic legs and regains his sanity.
He then attempts vengeance on Obi-Wan before being ruthlessly crushed by Darth Sidious.
He resurfaces in Solo: A Star Wars Story, appearing to Qi’ra in a transmission.
Darth Maul later tracks Obi-Wan to Tatooine to finally take his revenge.
Obi-Wan wins the battle quickly, and Darth Maul, in his last breaths, says that the chosen one (Luke) will “avenge us.”
He Communed With Qui-Gon’s Spirit To Learn How To Be A Force Ghost
Near the end of Revenge of the Sith, Yoda reveals to Obi-Wan that he has been in contact with the deceased Qui-Gon Jinn from “the netherworld of the force" to teach him how to project his form long after he has passed away.
Though it happens off-screen, it is implied that Obi-Wan learns this new training while he is in exile on Tatooine, and Yoda similarly learns it as he isolates himself on Dagobah.
Of course, this training later becomes pivotal, as it is Obi-Wan’s disembodied voice from beyond the grave that advises Luke first to "run" (duh) and then to turn off the targeting computer in his X-wing to "trust his feelings" to blow up the Death Star.
Luke listens to Obi-Wan’s spirit, and thus hands a major victory to the rebel alliance.
He Protected Luke And The Lars Family From Jabba’s Gangsters
Organized crime is everywhere, and nowhere is that more true than in the wild deserts of Tatooine. Obi-Wan probably already knew that it wouldn’t be long before he ran into local trouble with Jabba the Hutt’s gangs, and he was right.
About 11 years before A New Hope, Jabba’s operatives executed a fake tax-scheme to try and steal all the water from the local moisture farmers.
Kenobi knew that he had to take action.
After all, Luke, Uncle Lars, and Aunt Owen were all moisture farmers, and Obi-Wan had to protect them. Though Obi-Wan intervened and saved Luke from harm, he was able to do it from the shadows so that Luke didn’t even know he was involved.
He Fought Against A Giant Wookie Mercenary
Did you know there are actually bad Wookies? It’s true-- and if you think Wookies are scary now, just think about an evil Wookie bent on taking you down.
This Wookie came in the form of Black Krrsantan, a bounty hunter hired by Jabba as a direct result of Kenobi interfering with his water-theft scheme.
It seems like Krrsantan had quite the reputation, being considered one of the top bounty hunters in the galaxy and had even been hired by Darth Vader.
Kenobi successfully defended Luke and Lars but was barely able to defeat Black Krrsantan in battle. He even had to resort to his pet peeve: using blasters.
Though it was a formidable fight, Kenobi scarred Krrsantan’s face, leaving him with a permanent reminder of his failure.
He Saved Luke And His Friend From A Krayt Dragon
The added wrinkle of being Luke's de facto "guardian angel" out in the desert is that he had to help him in an anonymous fashion, or at least as anonymous and unseen as possible. If people knew Luke had a Jedi protector, it may attract elements that Kenobi and Yoda were trying to prevent in the first place.
When young Luke and his friend Windy went for a joyride in his T-16, they ended up having trouble and crash landing in Beggar’s canyon. Fending off Jawas and Tusken Raiders, they eventually make camp for the night but attract a dangerous Krayt Dragon. Luckily, Kenobi had been watching from the shadows and wards off the Krayt Dragon and uses the force to tame a Dewback to give Luke and Windy a ride back home. Obi-Wan didn’t reveal his identity.
He Kept A Secret Journal That Luke Read After He Passed Away
Obi-Wan Kenobi had much to reflect upon, with enough tragedy in his life to fill several volumes.
When he wasn’t meditating, training, or scrapping to survive, Kenobi passed the time by writing some of his Jedi wisdom and instruction into a journal.
After Obi-Wan passed away, Luke later retrieved the journal at his abandoned homestead and used it as a tool to advance his training.
Though it's not confirmed, some fans think that at least one of the books that Rey rescues from the Jedi Tree in The Last Jedi is Obi-Wan’s journal.
If true, it would be a touching way to further tie the different generations together and preserve Kenobi’s formidable wisdom.
He Fought Another Jedi On Tatooine
The name A’Sharad Hett is not a common one known among casual fans of Star Wars, but it is an interesting one.
A’Sharad Hett was a Jedi in the Republic who served as a general during the Clone Wars. He believed he was a Tusken Raider hybrid and felt an allegiance to the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine.
Surviving both the Clone Wars and Order 66, A’Sharad Hett returned to Tatooine to ally himself with the Tusken Raiders and take on the human settlers.
It was here that he crossed Obi-Wan Kenobi, who came to defend against raids that were threatening Luke’s home. Kenobi attempted to reason with him, and when that failed, he bested him in a duel in which A’Sharad Hett lost his arm.
Kenobi made him promise to never return to Tatooine.
He Took Odd Jobs To Get Spare Parts For Luke’s T-16 Skyhopper
Remember that line from A New Hope where Luke said he could “bullseye womp rats” with his T-16? That’s actually canon— he was a pilot and he often tooled around with his T-16 Skyhopper through Beggar’s Canyon.
However, sometimes his T-16 would break down, and being on a meager moisture farmer's living, it was difficult to replace parts. That's where old Ben Kenobi comes in.
He actually took some odd jobs including protecting a Jawa Sandcrawler from Tusken Raiders, which earned him enough money to anonymously buy the parts for him.
Luke had no idea that it was his long-time protector bankrolling his sweet ride.
Uncle Owen found out about it, of course, and demanded that Obi-Wan stay away.
He Teamed Up With A Former Padawan On An Epic Adventure
Old habits die hard, and for Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi Knight and General of the Republic, it was very difficult to turn his back on the people of his past.
Soon after the events of Order 66 and Kenobi’s exile on Tatooine, Kenobi discovers that one of his lost apprentices, Padawan Ferus Olin, was still alive.
Torn between his duty to protect Luke Skywalker and also his loyalty to his former Padawan, Kenobi communes with Qui-Gon’s force ghost and comes up with a compromise: Qui-Gon’s spirit will look after Luke for the short time that Kenobi must be away.
Kenobi, after a long journey, finds Olin and defends him against bounty hunters and criminals.
Kenobi later convinces Ferus Olin to look after Leia on Alderaan, but he eventually perishes when Alderaan is destroyed by the Empire.
He Secretly Tried To Track Down A Lost Legion Of Jedi
Early into Obi-Wan’s self-imposed exile on Tatooine, he had still harbored hope for finding any of the Jedi who may have survived Order 66.
Before the beginning of the Clone Wars, the Jedi launched a massive colony ship known as Outbound Flight. Outbound Flight had multiple missions, but the most public one was to establish a base of operations in unknown or uncolonized territories and t bring a mixture of Jedi and civilians to thrive in that colony.
The massive ship was launched long before Order 66 was executed, so somewhere across the galaxy that ship along with whatever Jedi were aboard may still survive.
Unfortunately, Kenobi’s hopes would be eventually dashed, as word finally found its way to him that nearly all of the thousands aboard were lost.
This was because the ship had been destroyed by Thrawn’s forces.
He Was One Of The Eight Most Wanted Criminals From The Empire
It must have been infuriating for the Emperor and Darth Vader to lose track of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Though Yoda pulled off the impressive illusion that he didn’t survive the fight in the Senate, Kenobi was the last person who Darth Vader saw with his human eyes, and the one he still blamed for his physical agony.
It’s kind of hysterical that Vader never figured out that the one place he would never want to go back to is the one that Kenobi picked to shack up. After all, Vader hates sand, right? He’s never going back there. That’s where his mom didn’t make it.
Vader did what he could and placed wanted posters and images for Kenobi all over the galaxy, announcing him as one of the eight most wanted.
However, nobody’s in Vader employ ever found him.
He Greeted Anakin Skywalker In The Afterlife & Taught Him How To Be A Force Ghost
So Qui-Gon is the first one to figure out how to keep and project consciousness from the afterlife. From the afterlife, he passes on the knowledge to Yoda and Kenobi.
However, if Qui-Gon was the first to learn this skill, how on earth did Anakin learn the same trick in Return of the Jedi?
The answer, according to The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi, is that Kenobi actually greeted Anakin when he first arrived in the afterlife and gave him the training necessary to appear in the world of the living.
Annakin’s spirit, having been redeemed by Luke, appears as the young adult Anakin's force ghost in the special editions of the movie, driving home the point that his mental image of himself was before he transformed into Darth Vader.
He Perfected His Krayt Dragon Call
Like that long-lost uncle who perfected his duck call when out hunting, Obi-Wan similarly mastered the call of the Krayt Dragon, an aggressive and powerful natural predator that stalked the desert wastes.
Formidable in a fight, even the Tusken Raiders preferred to avoid confrontations with the beast rather than get in a direct skirmish.
Obi-Wan often used their fear to his advantage and perfected the call to intimidate or scare bands of Tusken Raiders.
There is some argument about whether this was a Jedi mind trick or just a vocal skill or both. Regardless, Obi-Wan used the call to scare away a marauding tribe of Tusken Raiders and rescue an unconscious Luke Skywalker in A New Hope.
He Had A Pact With Jawas Against The Tusken Raiders
Even a man who lives as a hermit sometimes needs allies. Old Obi-Wan discovered that even out in the middle of nowhere on a planet that's largely considered the furthest from the bright center of the galaxy, there are still people engaged in territorial disputes over what looks like a worthless desert.
In order to survive, Obi-Wan had to trade for basic goods, and that often meant doing business with the diminutive Jawas, a race of resourceful and cunning scrappers and scavengers.
However, the Jawas often ran into disputes with the larger and more vicious Tusken Raiders, also known to locals as “The Sand People.”
Obi-Wan made an alliance with the Jawas and protected them from Tusken Raiders when he could, though he did not hunt them down like Anakin had done as a teenager.
He traded mechanical items with the Jawas and other locals
Obi-Wan’s home was humble, to be sure. Resembling the old adobe houses out on the New Mexico pueblo, Obi-Wan’s home was made of mostly dried mud: humble and cozy.
That being said, it was a touch cluttered with mechanical knick-knacks and other equipment that he kept around.
However, Kenobi was a minimalist. He wouldn’t keep something around without a reason.
According to Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy, Obi-Wan would keep these odd and sundry items to trade for basic good and services with the Jawas or others who happened to be passing through.
Where he picked up materials for these mechanical items is not so clear. Being a resourceful Jedi, Kenobi always found a way.
He Kept And Maintained Supplies To Build Lightsabers
With all the disaster that had befallen the Jedi order, one might think that old Obi-Wan might call it quits.
However, somehow he knew that he needed to preserve the essential knowledge of the Jedi— and one of the most essential skills a Jedi must possess is building and maintaining his or her own lightsaber.
To that end, he kept supplies and instructions in his hut that could be used to build new lightsabers, should that day ever arrive.
Unfortunately, that day was just never meant to be.
Though perhaps Yoda may have envisioned a new Jedi Order with Kenobi as its headmaster and Luke as its first new student, Obi-Wan passed away before he could transfer the majority of his knowledge.
However, at least he was able to pass on at least a little training before he was gone.
He Taught Luke How To Build A Lightsaber
Because he had kept instructions and supplies on how to build a lightsaber from scratch, Obi-Wan had all things that Luke would need to build a replacement weapon after Luke lost both his hand and his lightsaber in the heartbreaking duel in Cloud City with Darth Vader.
Though Luke ended up being his last pupil, he was still able to offer this knowledge posthumously when Luke revisited Obi-Wan’s hut, sometime after the events of Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and before Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
It was with these schematics that Luke built his famous green lightsaber.
In a cut scene from Return of the Jedi, only recently revealed by Lucasfilm, we see Luke finishing the last few touches on his new lightsaber before arriving to rescue Han Solo from Jabba’s palace.
He Appeared To Luke For The Last Time In A Dream
It seemed like the Rebellion had won for good by the end of Return of the Jedi, but as we know with all great epics, there’s always trouble afoot somewhere.
Luke continued to receive visits from the afterlife from Obi-Wan Kenobi. However, even that at one point would come to an end.
In the Star Wars comic story “The Dream,” Luke suffers a series of nightmares that feature him confronting Darth Vader in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor and Vader’s demise.
The night before leaving on a dangerous mission to the planet Naldar, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s force ghost, in conjunction with Yoda and Anakin’s force ghost, notify Luke that the dreams of Darth Vader is his mind’s interpretation of a rising dark force.
This is the last known conversation between Luke and Obi-Wan, though Luke communes with Yoda’s spirit later in The Last Jedi.
He Was Berated By Owen Lars To Stay Away From Luke
It’s no secret that Owen Lars disliked Obi-Wan Kenobi and distrusted the entire Jedi order that had brought so much disaster upon their family. Referring to Ben Kenobi as just a “crazy old man,” uncle Owen tried to dissuade Luke from even meeting him.
The incident with Kenobi fighting off Jabba’s minions and anonymously helping Luke with spare T-16 parts incensed Uncle Owen even more.
Confronting Kenobi at his home, he says, “The boy’s only a boy, a foolhardy boy that’s too much like his father as it is… we both know what happens if he ever leaves Tatooine. He won’t be coming back. Not alive, at least.”
Kenobi explains he was just trying to help, but Uncle Owen isn’t having it.
Kenobi stays away, at least until Luke “finds” him years later, with a certain urgent message in tow.
He Tried to Give Luke Anakin’s Lightsaber, But Owen Lars Stopped Him
Ah, good old Owen Lars; always putting a stop to any possible adventure or excitement in Luke Skywalker’s life. Kenobi had hoped that over time Owen Lars would come around and let Luke have some training, but it just was not to be.
After all, Anakin Skywalker, his step-brother, had fallen from grace and perished as a result of his involvement with the Jedi Order on Coruscant.
With that mystical weapon, Lars was afraid that Ben Kenobi would drag Luke off on some foolish idealistic crusade and get him hurt-- or worse.
Obi-Wan tried to convince Lars to let Luke take Jedi training and accept the gift of his father’s lightsaber. For Owen Lars, this was simply a hard “no.”
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Can you think of any other things that Obi-Wan did between the Star Wars movies? Let us know in the comments!