Star Wars Rebels: Stephen Stanton Voicing Obi-Wan Kenobi

Star Wars Rebels was the first production under the new Disney ownership of both Star Wars and production company Lucasfilm, and it’s already proven itself to be quite the nexus point in the series’ overarching story. Set five years before Episode IV: A New Hope (that’s the original, 1977 film, for all those following along at home), the show follows the very beginnings of what will ultimately become the famed Rebel Alliance. Rebels also had a book prologue, titled A New Dawn, release back in 2014, which was the first of the now-canon novels that Lucasfilm has been steadily churning out ever sense.

Rebels has really started to interconnect with all the other pieces of the Star Wars mythos during its third season, beginning with the canon introduction of longtime fan-favorite Grand Admiral Thrawn in September and continuing with last month’s release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a so-called anthology film that is set immediately before A New Hope and which contains a treasure trove of Rebels references. And now we can add one more distinction to the list – and it’s a huge one.

In a new mid-season trailer released just today, it’s revealed that none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi, the most venerable Jedi Knight of them all, will be heading to Rebels in the second half of season 3. What’s more, Comic Book has gotten the scoop that the character is being voiced by Stephen Stanton, who should be no stranger to Star Wars fans: he previously voiced Mas Amedda in The Clone Wars, the first animated Star Wars TV series, and Admiral Wilhuff Tarkin on both Clone Wars and Rebels.

The Disney XD series has been steadily adding more and more familiar faces to its cast, such as Rex (Dee Bradley Baker), one of the lost clone troopers; Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), Anakin Skywalker’s (Matt Lanter) former Padawan Learner; and Darth Maul (Sam Witwer), the long-in-hiding and not-dead former Sith apprentice. However, getting Master Kenobi is a big score, particularly since the series looks to include both versions of the character: the prequel trilogy’s Ewan McGregor and the original trilogy’s Alec Guinness.

This seems to be accomplished by starting the trailer off with General Kenobi’s holographic warning not to return to the Jedi Temple (a message we saw him record in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith), and then ending it with an older Ben Kenobi sitting beside a fire in his exile on Tatooine, warning a suddenly-arriving Maul that he’s in the wrong place. It’s here that Stephen Stanton’s dead-on Guinness impression is spotlighted – which isn’t surprising, given that the actor voiced both Old Ben and Maul (ironically enough) in the videogame Battlefront II – and it’s here that we also get a tease of what will be one of Rebels’s biggest developments yet: the long-building repeat duel between the former Jedi Master and Sith Lord.

While it’s unknown which exact episode this scene will fall in, fans can bide their time by welcoming yet another Star Wars stalwart, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who will be making his first appearance on the show when it returns from its mid-season hiatus this weekend.

Star Wars Rebels, season 3 will continue January 7, 2017 with “Ghosts of Geonosis” on Disney XD.

Source: Comic Book

About The Author

Marc N. Kleinhenz
(268 Articles Published)

Marc N. Kleinhenz is the author of “Nerdism In-Depth,” the Substack newsletter about every major piece of nerd culture. He was also the editor-in-chief of Orlando Informer for several years and still is the consulting editor of Tower of the Hand, which is dedicated to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. In addition, he’s written for 32 other sites (including IGN, The Escapist, and Gamasutra), has appeared on radio and television news as a pop-culture (read: Star Wars) specialist, and has served as a consultant on the theming industry.

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Marc majored in English and minored in philosophy in college, but his true passion for knowledge resides within the Star Wars universe, where he continues to document and analyze every last multimedia release, from the novels and comics to the television series and theme-park attractions.

Marc has had several short stories and comics published and has even spent a year teaching English in Japan (living in Kobe and working in Itami). He currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, two children, two cats, dog, and bird.

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