Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor to start filming Obi-Wan Kenobi series

The cast will see Ewan McGregor, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse and Hayden Christensen, are all reprising their roles

The Star Wars expanded universe continues to be fleshed out on Disney+ as the cast for the upcoming, Obi-Wan Kenobi, limited "special event series" is revealed. The announcement came from the official Star Wars Twitter account and people are already reacting across social media. The force is strong with these ones: https://twitter.com/starwars/status/1376534680002994183?s=20

What do we know?

Aside from the obvious return of Ewan McGregor as the eponymous protagonist (having been confirmed back in 2019), there are two other notable casting restorations from the prequel era of the franchise. Not only are Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse set to play Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru again, respectively - who only played minor roles in the previous films - but we finally get to see more of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. For any non-believers, you'll probably best know him by the name, Darth Vader. As the series takes place after the events of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Christensen will be playing Darth Vader. Little is still known about the script, so who knows whether we'll get to see any flashbacks of him in the role of Anakin? Either way, plenty of Star Wars fans are just glad to see him back involved. Among the other cast are plenty of familiar faces: Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick, Silicon Valley and another upcoming Disney project, Marvel's Eternals), Indira Varma (Luther, Game of Thrones); Rupert Friend (Hitman, Homeland) and Sung Kang (Fast & Furious franchise, Die Hard 4.0), just to name a few. Once again, we don't know who many of these actors will play, but we're just glad we're back with the character of Obi-Wan again. Whilst McGregor has confirmed that this will be a "standalone season" for now, fans are likely to lap up as much of this as the showrunners are willing to provide. The series is set to start filming this April and if all goes to plan, we could see something by the end of the year. It is being directed by Deborah Chow, who helped put her fingerprint on the first two episodes of The Mandalorian's first season. The show was virtually an instant hit and pretty much kicked off the spate on original series on Disney+, certainly on the Star Wars side of things, at least. Revisiting a much more well-known and iconic character, we reckon they'll find just as much success with the Obi-Wan Kenobi series too.