In the Season 4 premiere of How I Met Your Mother, Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) tells his friend Marshall (Jason Segel) that he met a girl who had never seen Star Wars. “The only people in the universe who have never seen Star Wars are the characters in Star Wars and that's cause they lived them, Ted,” Marshall replies. “That's cause they lived the Star Wars.”
Marshall may be more correct than he thinks. Now that the Star Wars universe has expanded much further than just the live-action movies, even the actors who brought it to life can take some time to get completely caught up. Thankfully, one of the most iconic living Star Wars actors is finally watching the longest chapter in his character’s life.
While speaking at Fan Expo Canada (via Star Wars Underworld), Obi-Wan Kenobi actor Ewan McGregor revealed he has big Star Wars plans ahead of him: “I’m going to watch all of Clone Wars,” he said. “That’s my homework.”
It may be surprising that he hasn’t seen the prequel animated series, but it’s more common than you think. Pedro Pascal just got around to watching Andor this weekend. Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker, watched The Clone Wars in preparation for his re-appearance on Obi-Wan Kenobi, but apparently, the series’ title character was going in relatively blind.
It’s understandable, really: Christensen would soon return to Star Wars in Ahsoka, which relied heavily on the stories from The Clone Wars and Rebels. McGregor, on the other hand, didn’t really need to know anything about what happened to Obi-Wan Kenobi before he arrived on Tatooine to live in exile and watch over Luke.
The real question here may be not the content of the homework itself, but the reason behind it. Christensen said he watched The Clone Wars to “reimmerse myself in all things Star Wars” before coming back to the universe. Could McGregor be doing something similar? He has constantly been hoping for a possible Obi-Wan Kenobi Season 2, but there’s another, more exciting prospect that would definitely require that homework: Ahsoka Season 2. McGregor caused a fervor earlier this summer when quotes circulated saying he was filming on the series, but they were later clarified as just referring to his wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who played Hera Syndulla in Season 1.
Perhaps this is just McGregor getting fully educated in the lore so he can understand his wife’s performance in Ahsoka Season 2. But that glimmer of possibility that this could be a sign of McGregor’s re-entry into Star Wars is too tempting to ignore. At the very least, he’ll have a great — if heartbreaking — time watching the show, and who knows? Maybe he’ll be a believer in that Korkie theory, too.
