WAS OBI-WAN AFFECTED BY SATINE’S DEATH?

Hello Anon! This is a good question and one that I really struggle with.

Canonically, I’m not sure there’s much to go on here. Like you said, we’re not really shown anything. It’s always bugged me that The Clone Wars didn’t give us any explicit signs of grief from Obi-Wan… I mean… he looks kind of sad:

On a little side tangent: I’m not terribly surprised by Obi-Wan’s emotional dissonance. In A New Hope, when Luke returns home and finds his family literally burned to a crisp, Mark Hamill wanted to perform the scene with a lot more emotion but George Lucas told him not to. This has partly to do with trying to keep the story light (like a Saturday morning matinee… granted, I don’t know how you burn two people to death and keep the story “light” but whatever), but it also keeps the character from dipping too deeply into a dark place. If the hero is overly devastated, they run the risk of becoming a villain.

Any who! Back to Kenobi.

As I’ve said in previous posts, Obi-Wan’s lack of grief makes him appear overly dispassionate. Considering the implied connection he shared with Satine, it would be hard to believe he wasn’t affected by her death.

After “The Lawless,” Kenobi isn’t in The Clone Wars very much. He makes some minor appearances but none of the episodes focus on him. The closest he ever gets to admitting his feelings for Satine is the scene where he tells Anakin he once “harbored feelings for her.” Pardon me if I’m not bowled over by this clinical declaration. You know what else people harbor? Outlaws.

I mean… he seems pretty sad. And if you watch The Lost Missions then go back and watch Clone Wars season 1, you realize that Obi-Wan used to smile a lot more. The longer the war went on, the less visibly happy he seemed.

But canonically we’ve got nothing explicit. Maybe there’s something in a book somewhere that implies he had love “feelings” for Satine. If so, let me know.

Sometimes I worry that we’re projecting our feelings onto Obi-Wan, wishing desperately that he loved Qui-Gon and Satine. I worry that canonically he’s so strict about the Code that he would rather feel nothing than break his oath to the Jedi Order.

But then I remember something that makes me feel happy. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. These two lovely people believe that Obi-Wan and Satine were in love, and that’s canon in my book!