By then, the longtime rumors had finally ended and Christensen had heard McGregor was officially reprising his role as Kenobi. “We talked about it a little bit,” McGregor says. “Not a lot, but we talked about it. I was able to tell him that I was going to do it. We hadn’t approached him yet. We weren’t quite there yet. It wasn’t like he was hemming and hawing about it or anything like that.”

And then they said goodbye again.

It wasn’t just the good times of being young and adventurous in Australia that bonded them. McGregor and Christensen had experienced troubled times together as well. Star Wars has a vast and vocal fanbase, and some of those admirers can be merciless—even cruel at times. (Ahmed Best, who played the comical alien Jar Jar Binks has been heartbreakingly open about the trauma he endured.) Box office was strong, but film critics were unforgiving toward the prequels—although some reviewers have now started to reappraise the trilogy, especially as kids who grew up with the movies have gotten older and weighed into the discourse.

“It wasn’t easy when they came out because they weren’t very well received,” McGregor admits. “At the time they were horribly [reviewed.] I don’t read reviews, but I was told about some of them and I could just tell they were critically un-acclaimed, the three that I made. It was hard because it was such a huge decision to do them, such a big event. It was quite difficult for all of us to deal with that, also knowing you’ve got a couple more to do.”

Those stepping into Vader’s shoes got it especially bad—even child actor Jake Lloyd, who played a much younger Anakin in The Phantom Menace. Then Christensen took the brunt of that judgment when he came aboard for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. There is no way to put your shields up in the real world.

It’s not that the prequels were flawless. (For what it’s worth, the original trilogy has its share of groaner moments too, and every Star Wars film in recent years has a contingent of haters and admirers fighting endlessly on the social media battlefield.) But with the new Kenobi series, both McGregor and Christensen had more license to weigh in on what they though should happen to Kenobi and Vader. Whenever they detected a false note, they spoke up—both of them now highly attuned to how fans might inevitably react.

“They lived with these characters in the public perception for so long,” Chow says. “Having those guys was very helpful as sort of a litmus test because they know when something’s wrong with their character. They just feel it. So, they were very, very helpful in terms of guiding it.”

When she took over Kenobi as showrunner, Chow personally met with Christensen at his home in Canada to talk about the possibility of him returning as Vader. “Immediately I was very excited about the prospect,” Christensen says. “Deborah, also being from Toronto, made the trip up to my farm.” He laughs. “It wasn’t too much of a journey for her.”

So, a couple of Canadians sat around the fire in his farmhouse living room, sipping homemade ginger tea and talking about a man whose suffering was eternal. Until then, Christensen had thought his time in the galaxy was over. “While I enjoyed going back to being a fan again, getting to watch all the new Star Wars content that was coming out and just enjoying it like everyone else, I also kind of missed it too,” Christensen says. “This is a character that, of course, I cared a great deal about and has come to define my life in so many ways. It seemed like a really exciting opportunity to come back and do more with it and flesh the character out just a little bit more.”

There was still some development to go through. The Kenobi series continued taking shape, Lucasfilm carefully weighed the decision to bring Vader back, and last-minute rewrites at one point pushed back the start of production.

But the next time Christensen saw McGregor after their fleeting autograph encounter, they both knew they’d be venturing back to the galaxy together.

One day, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker took a walk together. And no one noticed but them. 

“We had our COVID masks on and baseball caps,” Christensen says.