Did Obi-Wan Kenobi episode one just hint at the show's big twist?

Obi-Wan Kenobi spoilers follow.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is back! Fans of the Star Wars prequels are in heaven right now as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen return to their iconic roles in the brand-new Disney+ series.

Apart from everyone's favourite best-friend/brother combo coming back, one of the show's most anticipated factors has been the first-ever live-action appearance of The Inquisitors.

Palpatine's group of Sith-adjacent Jedi hunters have popped up in various forms (across both canon and legends) over the years, but they really made a splash as the main villains of animated series Star Wars: Rebels.

Their unique costumes, outrageous spinning lightsabers, and the way they (in classic Sith style) neatly outwit that pesky Rule of Two cemented them as fan-favourite villains.

Disney's new Obi-Wan Kenobi series wastes no time getting these bad guys on screen, introducing us to three Inquisitors straight off the bat. Third Sister, played by Moses Ingram, Second Brother, played by Sung Kang, and the Grand Inquisitor himself, played by Rupert Friend.

Viewers unfamiliar with the group might be wondering a) where they come from, and b) what their presence might mean for everyone's favorite desert-daddy Ben.

Luckily we've been working up a theory that relates to the Inquisitor's origins and also, perhaps, a major twist the show is setting up. And the clue was right at the very start of the first episode.

Obi-Wan Kenobi episode one opens with another live-action revisiting of the moment the Clones turned against the Jedi, aka Order 66. The event was first witnessed in Revenge of the Sith and then again across The Clone Wars, Bad Batch and most recently in a curious flashback in The Book of Boba Fett.

In the scene, we watch a group of Jedi younglings escape the Clones' clutches (for now) thanks to the brave sacrifice of their teacher. We've seen familiar versions of this story over the years, including Rebels and Bad Batch's Kanan Jarrus and Jedi: Fallen Order's Cal Kestis.

Beyond familiar Star Wars motifs though it's unclear what purpose this scene serves, apart from reminding us how grim Order 66 was, as none of the characters we meet here recur in the first two episodes… as far as we know.

In previous appearances and stories, Palpatine's Inquisitors have been comprised of ex-Jedi who are tortured into submission, or occasionally 'force sensitive' children who have been kidnapped.

Most recently, and relevantly, this was the case with the main antagonist of the canon video game Jedi: Fallen Order – the Second Sister, Trilla Suduri. Suduri was a former Jedi padawan whose master was killed while outrunning the Empire, who was then conditioned into working for Vader and Palpatine.

We know this career path is available in the world of Obi-Wan Kenobi too, as in episode two our favourite ex-Jedi explains that the Inquisitors are "Jedi that turned to the dark side, and now they hunt their own kind."

To recap: that's a number of stories where the Inquisitors are ex-Jedi padawans, the establishing shot of the series involving younglings fleeing the Empire, and a group of new Inquisitor characters.

If you ask us, all of these clearly point to at least one of the Inquisitors being an ex-Jedi, and it seems obvious to us it'll be Moses Ingram's Third Sister. She's certainly the main antagonist of the show so far, especially after that episode two twist, and there's a key piece of dialogue that suggests she has specific, personal beef with the Jedi.

In the first episode, after being reprimanded by Sung Kang's Second Brother over her obsession with catching Obi-Wan, she says that catching the Jedi will get her "what [she's] owed".

We also get a hint to her origins in episode two, when The Grand Inquisitor remarks that Third Sister "came to us from the gutter". If this is all true then Obi-Wan Kenobi has pulled off one hell of a Jedi mind trick, hiding its big villainous twist in plain sight.

Beyond the shock of the twist, we're also hoping the theory holds water because of the narrative and thematic weight it would lend to the rest of the series.

Given the show is fundamentally about Obi-Wan Kenobi attempting to protect Leia and Luke, it would certainly be interesting to use the Second Sister as a comparative path not taken.

If she is a Jedi child/youngling who was not protected from the Empire, it was because she was seen as less important than the Skywalkers. This is a rather grim scenario, especially if you've spent your whole adult life eschewing personal connections altogether – and we'd love to know how Obi-Wan would react to that knowledge.

New episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi stream on Disney+ every Friday.

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Ali Griffiths

Ali has been covering TV and movies for more than four years, all while wrangling Digital Spy’s social media and video channels - for which he received a PPA 30 Under 30 award.  He specializes in writing about anime, LGBTQ+ representation, science fiction, and comic book adaptations.  Recently he's begun collecting Star Wars interviews like Infinity Stones and has spoken with The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy and the creative team behind The Bad Batch. Dave Filoni, you're next.