I've gone on a streak of re-reading the Star Wars books from the Clone Wars period. Some could be considered Canon some not.
In terms of a quick jolt look at the books.
Darth Plagueis - Covers the period of 70 years before the Clone Wars to the end of TPM. James Lucerno just gets Star Wars, and we get to see Plagueis from his ascension to Dark Lord of the Sith to his recruitment of Palpatine and the rise of the future Emperor, right to the point where Palpatine murders Plageuis in his sleep. Just a really well done book that helps to understand why the Sith beat the Jedi.
Republic Commando Series by Karen Traviss. 5 books that follow a squad of Republic Commandos and their Mandalorian trainer. Its not bad, though Karen is a bit toooo interested in the whole Mandalorian thing. But this book goes from the battle of Genosis right to the events post ROTS with the Commando's joining Vader's 501st. There's a lot of intrigue as the Clones become less like combat droids and more like people and there's a quest to get around their limited mortality.
Labyrinth of Evil - James Lucerno - Just a great book and could be considered to be Canon just because of the events in there. This book follows the hunt for Darth Sidious by Kenobi and Skywalker and Mace. They get so close that Sidious triggers the invasion of Coruscant to get him off world. We get some great background into Grievous and Dooku. The description of the Jedi trying to save Palpatine from Grievous is exceptional, especially since we know that Sidious is Grievous. Lucerno really writes Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin well.
ROTS novel - Love this book as its the way the movie should have been if it had been an hour longer or split into two movies ala Harry Potter. We get a lot of This is what its like to be segments that go into the psyche of the main characters. The one around Vader at the end was heart breaking. We saw how quickly the darkside destroyed the good man that was Anakin Skywalker when he justifies the slaughter of the Clones and when he loses his temper with Padme. The dialogue that I talked about with Vader was incredibly good, especially when he fights Kenobi and tries to get him to flee and go meditate for the rest of his life out of his former friendship. Yoda is really well portrayed too, especially in the fight scene against Sidious when he realizes that the Jedi had lost this war thousands of years ago.
Dark Lord the Rise of Darth Vader Lucerno again- I gush about this book a lot because if you're a Vader fan its an exceptional book and we see that Vader wasn't Vader for a long time as he recovered from his injuries. We also get a lot of Palpatine and see how incredibly powerful he is, not because of the Force, but because of his mind set.
Keobi by John Jackson Miller - The first year for Kenobi on Tattooine, very similar story as we see a PTSD riddled Ben Kenobi, but instead of an interstellar adventure, we see Ben taking on corruption on Tattooine and he runs into conflict with the Sand People. Not quite as strong as the books above, but still a good story.
Death Star - Michael Reeves - If you want to dive deeper into the construction of the Death Star to its destruction its a pretty good book where you see a lot of background characters. Before the Death Star explodes you hear a voice of the gunner saying "Stand by" over and over again. You do get the background story of the chief gunner of the Death Star and why it happened. It the Solo being chased by the Storm Trooper scenes. You learn why the Blast Doors close. You get a lot of Tarkin here and a pretty evil Vader as well. You also find out that Alderaan wasn't the first planet blasted to chunks. Not a bad book, a little dry in places. And they made the Death Star at times a little too luxurious. One of the main characters is a bar owner. But an interesting story is there.
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Another major issue with another Obi series is that for ANH to make sense Obi needs to be a hermit for a long time. If he's out running around the galaxy for even more years, it really takes away from that.
Even with this series I was concerned about how meeting Vader would affect the eventual meeting in ANH. The confrontation was great though, so it didn't really take away too much from the ANH confrontation, but another one certainly would.
After we see Luke put into Jeopardy when Ben goes off on one of his damn fool idealistic crusades. You'd think that even though he told Owen that Luke was in good hands. Ben was not going to leave the planet again.
I mean Beru can't be a complete bad ass forever, but I love that they made her that.
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I think we could see the story split into two series in the future. One side follows The Path and Vader and the Inquisitors' hunt to find them. Kumail Nanjiani and O'Shea Jackson Jr's characters could be the leads (or they could introduce Quinlan), with Reva trying to help them out (but the don't trust her, until she proves herself). -- I suspect this was the plan even if there's never a second season of Obi-Wan.
For the other half, have a more-personal adventure with Ben on Tatooine. It doesn't need to be galaxy saving.
What I'd really like would be a reluctant team-up between Ben and Owen, where a new threat appears on the planet and Ben and Owen each realize that something needs to be done. After failing on their own, they team up and stop the threat, with Owen gaining some measure of respect for Ben.
They could even give us a backstory on Owen's line "that wizard's just a crazy old man". Maybe Luke sees Ben using the Force and they explain it away as just a magic trick that Crazy Old Ben used to trick the bad guys.
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I think we could see the story split into two series in the future. One side follows The Path and Vader and the Inquisitors' hunt to find them. Kumail Nanjiani and O'Shea Jackson Jr's characters could be the leads (or they could introduce Quinlan), with Reva trying to help them out (but the don't trust her, until she proves herself). -- I suspect this was the plan even if there's never a second season of Obi-Wan.
For the other half, have a more-personal adventure with Ben on Tatooine. It doesn't need to be galaxy saving.
What I'd really like would be a reluctant team-up between Ben and Owen, where a new threat appears on the planet and Ben and Owen each realize that something needs to be done. After failing on their own, they team up and stop the threat, with Owen gaining some measure of respect for Ben.
They could even give us a backstory on Owen's line "that wizard's just a crazy old man". Maybe Luke sees Ben using the Force and they explain it away as just a magic trick that Crazy Old Ben used to trick the bad guys.
If they wanted to bring in more legends stuff like they did with Rebels and Clone Wars. They could leave Ben on Tattooine and have the war against the Sand People lead by A'Sharad Hett, a former Jedi who after Order 66 returned to Tattooine and lead the Sandpeople and then fell to the Dark Side and later became Darth Krayt.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
I wanted to call out this post by KTrain. Its too old so I cant thank it, but I did want to follow up.
Disclaimer: Not Obi-Wan related.
Other than 'The Bad Batch' I didnt watch the cartoon shows. For a variety of reasons, I have nothing against cartoons, I dont consider them childish, hell, I still like comic books so what the hell?
They were just unwieldy, jumped all over the place, diverted the story and had throwaway episodes, etc and there was just too much content.
Whoever this guy who did these cuts is, he is brilliant.
The way he stitched these together into self-contained continuous storylines in film-cut format, cutting out extraneous crap like commercial breaks, credits, intros, side-stories, etc is fantastic as well as separating the wheat from the chaff.
He still gives you the opportunity to watch side-stories, but if you dont care about certain elements like Padme's adventures, Jar-Jar (shudder), droid adventures, etc. You can still make your way through the series understanding everything thats going on.
Filoni had restrictions and a format to follow to make a show that was palatable for TV, syndication, etc. This guy doesnt have to follow those rules.
So if you havent seen these shows and are interested I would highly recommend going the route of watching this guy's content.
Its well organized, well thought out and completely relevant and coherent and cuts away all the unimportant crap and just gets to the meat of the content. Its really good.
And finally...Jar-Jar Binks should be fired into the Sun. Any Sun. I'm not picky.
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