Deborah Chow Just Shot Down Popular Obi-Wan Kenobi Droid Theory
Ever since it was first announced that Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) would be getting his own spin-off series on Disney+, countless die-hard Star Wars fans have taken to the internet to discuss their theories about what the upcoming series will entail. Some of these fan theories may be a tad far-fetched, such as the Twitter proposition about how Obi-Wan will use some sort of life-draining Force ability that will cause him to age rapidly (which is why he looks so old in "A New Hope), or the theory about how the series will introduce a Tusken Raider Jedi from the Expanded Universe.
Other fan theories for "Obi-Wan Kenobi" seem a lot more plausible, such as the one about how Obi-Wan will inevitably face down his old apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), who has now become the Sith lord Darth Vader. With the release of the second trailer for "Obi-Wan Kenobi," even more fan theories began lighting up across the internet, including theories about a certain droid who makes a brief appearance near the end of the trailer.
Unfortunately for true believers — unlike some other theories we've previously mentioned, which remain unanswered — director Deborah Chow has gone out of her way to debunk the theory about who this mysterious droid actually is.
Chow confirmed that the bounty hunter we see in the trailer is not 4-LOM
At about one minute into the "Obi-Wan Kenobi" Official Trailer, we hear an Inquisitor named the Third Sister (Moses Ingram) calling on "every lowlife and bounty hunter" to hunt Obi-Wan, which is followed by a quick shot of a droid bounty hunter firing a blaster at Obi-Wan. The design of this droid immediately got fans talking, since it bears a striking resemblance to 4-LOM, one of the bounty hunters Vader hires in "The Empire Strikes Back."
This brief shot had fans theorizing about whether or not 4-LOM would play a major role in the upcoming series (and, by extension, what other bounty hunters might make an appearance), though Deborah Chow recently confirmed that the droid is not actually 4-LOM at all. During an interview with UPROXX, Chow explained that (despite the similarities) the droid we see in the trailer is actually a new character called 1-JAC.
Chow declined to release any further information about 1-JAC in her interview, and no doubt fans will be incredibly disappointed to learn that 4-LOM won't be appearing in the series after all. Perhaps the funniest part about this case of mistaken identity is the fact that 1-JAC isn't even the first Disney+ droid to be mixed up with a character from "Empire Strikes Back." IG-11 from "The Mandalorian" looks identical to the assassin droid IG-88, who actually appeared in the exact same scene as 4-LOM. One has to wonder why Disney would bother reusing these identical droid designs just to create totally new characters, especially when the series itself is already being used to connect the prequel trilogy to the sequel trilogy.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi" premieres on Disney+ on May 27.