This Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi article contains spoilers.
Like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett before it, Obi-Wan Kenobi is full of both Prequel and Original Trilogy easter eggs. But “Part III” also has several callbacks to the old Legends continuity that was erased from canon after Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. Most intriguingly, the episode suggests that a few Jedi Knights from the old timeline have been brought back to canon and into the history of the galaxy far, far away in a way that could hint at their future involvement in this Disney+ series or future Star Wars stories.
It’s possible you missed these references during the action-packed episode that finally sees Obi-Wan come face to face with the monstrosity Anakin Skywalker has become 10 years after the events of Revenge of the Sith. Before the fight where Darth Vader absolutely demolishes his old master, we get scenes of Obi-Wan and Leia hiding out in a safe house on the mining planet Mapuzo with Tala Durith (Indira Varma), the Imperial officer who is secretly a rebel double agent helping smuggle the Force-sensitive around the galaxy and away from Inquisitors. It’s during this sequence, as Obi-Wan studies the walls of the safe house, that the Jedi Master discovers that there are still several other Jedi working against the Empire from the underground.
Obi-Wan mentions one particular Jedi by name: Quinlan Vos, a fellow Clone Wars general who now works to hide Force-sensitive children from the Empire before they can be executed or recruited as one of Vader’s Jedi hunters. We watch as Obi-Wan reads a hopeful message scribbled by Quinlan on the wall. To anyone who can’t read Aurebesh (the alphabet of the Star Wars universe) that was probably the extent of this moment of fan service, but there are actually a few other names written down that might turn the heads of fans of the Legends continuity…
Valin Halycon, Roganda Ismaren, and Djinn Altis. Those are names we’ve not heard in a long time. But Star Wars fans who grew up in the ’90s and early 2000s will likely recognize the former as the father of fan-favorite New Jedi Order character Corran Horn and the latter two as relatively deep cuts from the 1995 Expanded Universe novel Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly. In the Legends timeline, all three characters were Jedi who survived Order 66 and the Jedi Purge, and in Obi-Wan Kenobi, that also seems to be the case.
That said, it’s impossible to say just how much of their Expanded Universe backstory has actually been preserved for the new canon. Are these even meant to be the same characters we first met in Legends or just names graffitied on a wall for the sole purpose of fan service? We don’t know.
But if Star Wars is planning to bring back any of these characters in a more substantial way in the future, there’s certainly precedent. The Rebels animated series brought notorious EU villain Grand Admiral Thrawn back to canon in 2016. Yes, he returned in a different time period than in his original debut in post-Return of the Jedi novel Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, but most of the other characteristics that made this character memorable in 1991 were all still there in the new canon. The Mandalorian and the upcoming Ahsoka show have even teased that they’ll eventually do some kind of remixed version of Heir to the Empire Thrawn, but with story elements from Rebels mixed in, such as his connection to lost Jedi Ezra Bridger.
So it’s certainly possible re-introducing a name like “Valin Halcyon” to Disney canon could be a way to incorporate the more popular Corran Horn into the post-Return of the Jedi era currently being explored on Disney+. In fact, we even watched a mother trying to smuggle a little Force-sensitive boy named Corran off Daiyu in the second episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is that just another coincidence? Legends Corran would be about nine in the year in which Obi-Wan Kenobi is set, so it does kind of line up correctly…
For now, this is all pure speculation, and you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up, anyway. The nods to Valin, Roganda, and Djinn could just be intended as fun little Legends references that we are thinking way too hard about. But if they aren’t, please bring back Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors next, Disney!
Obi-Wan Kenobi is streaming now on Disney+.