Commander Cody and other clone troopers had key roles in a draft of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’

As is now known, the story of Obi-Wan Kenobi is largely based on a script written by Stuart Beattie when the project was still supposed to be a movie. In a new interview with The Direct, Beattie reveals that Commander Cody and other clone troopers had key roles in his version of the story:

“Yeah, yeah. Cody was the [other] big [legacy character]. I love the idea of Obi-Wan having a buddy on Tatooine. Like a secret buddy. So like the first time he goes into town, you see, Cody, and he’s following him through the streets and attacks him, takes him into an alley with a knife to his throat and says, ‘You’re dead.’ And then you realize, ‘Oh, no… Cody’s making a point.’ Like, ‘Come on. You got to be more careful.’”

“And you realize, ‘Oh, Cody has now morphed from someone who was trying to kill him when we last saw them to someone who is now devoting his life to protect him.’ Because by now he’s had the biochip taken out of his head, and now he realizes, ‘Oh my god, what I did was wrong.’ And he has driven by guilt, as much as Obi Wan is driven by guilt. So you got these two kind of old warriors bickering like this old married couple, bitching about, ‘God, it was so much better when we had an army at our backs,’ you know?’”

“And the idea of mine was that when Obi-Wan had to leave Tatooine, he left Cody in charge of Luke. And that gave us a fun little B-story to keep cutting away to. And yeah, he’s a really fun character and a guy racing against the clock obviously, because he’s aging twice as fast. He’s trying to atone for the worst thing he’s ever done in his life. So tragic in a way, but just fun… The way they bickered in my stuff, it was just, you know, put a smile on your face and, you know, (laughs) just arguing all the time. […]”

“[Reva] actually had a squad of Stormtrooper Marshals. So, I thought, ‘Yeah, of course the Storm Troopers have like the equivalent of the U.S. Marshals, right?…’ Except that these guys were Clones. So she was using Clones that, yes, they were all Cody basically.”

“They were all Temuera Morrison, you know, speaking in his voice, and they were all veterans of the Clone Wars, they all knew Kenobi, they knew these Jedi they were hunting, and they were still with the biochips in them… and they did not miss when they shot, and they were absolutely ruthless. There were ten of them. And they were commanded by a guy named Commander Jet. And so they were her squad basically. And they all ended up dying over the course of the story…”

Beattie also says that Obi-Wan was supposed to fight an adult Luke Skywalker on Mustafar in a Force vision.

“When he opens his eyes, he’s on Mustafar. And it’s like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, how I get here?’”

“And he sees a guy in a dark robe with a red lightsaber, and he’s like, ‘Anakin, Anakin, Anakin!’ And as… the guy in the robe comes up, he lifts his lightsaber, you see, it’s Luke. Mark Hamill, 19. And so, Luke attacks him. Obi-Wan and Luke had this lightsaber battle in mine, which was mirroring, of course, Empire Strikes Back… so it was that kind of a thing that ends with, you know, Luke, just almost killing Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan is snapping out of the, you know, the vision, basically, but it’s a vision of the future if Obi-Wan keeps training Luke and putting all his guilt on this kid, Luke’s gonna turn to the Dark Side.”

“So… it’s one of those moments that makes Obi-Wan realize, ’I’ve got to let this go, because this is the future I’m headed on right now. Luke is going to become a Sith and try to kill me on Mustafar at some point. So I love that. I love bringing in Luke… and this was before they brought back Luke in The Mandalorian. We were gonna be the first to do that, which would have been really fun. And a nightmare… Yeah, that’s probably the one I miss…”

Check out the full article if you want to know more about Beattie’s draft for Obi-Wan Kenobi. You should also read the first two parts of his interview.