I have seen many of the main Geeks & Gamers team, including their podcast on Saturday and Ryan Kinel’s new video, talk about how a potential Vader-Kenobi rematch would completely destroy the line said by Vader in A New Hope, “The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner, now I am the master.” I just wanted to give my thoughts on how this would actually not break canon if this indeed occurs in the Kenobi show.
The middle part of the line is the most important. It says, “when I left you.”
It’s not “when we last met”, it’s “when I left you.” It is therefore referring only to when he left Obi-Wan and the Jedi, not the last time they fought. Now, Star Wars fans have filled in that gap from what we know in the six films and assumed he meant Mustafar, but it in no way definitively means that the last time they saw each other was their duel in ROTS. This is the simple explanation to what the G&G team sees as a canon violation. Vader is indeed referring to when he left Kenobi and the Jedi and turned to the Dark Side in the events of ROTS. However, that was when he “left” Kenobi, not the last time they saw each other. The dialogue would still work the same as we have always thought of in canon, being a clear reference to the events of ROTS, just with the added context of another fight in between the two movies. The line itself would still make sense for him to say in that Vader is now boasting to Kenobi his Dark Side training is complete since their last meeting. Thus, being “the master”, in other words finally being the more powerful of the two.
As Vader says, “Escape is not his plan. I must face him.” He knew Obi-Wan was there to fight, so he began by bringing up Vader’s beginnings, of him leaving Obi-Wan, and ended by telling him how far he had come in his Sith training in the present. Everything Vader said in that battle was to taunt Kenobi. There would be no reason to bring up a fight sometime in between that, I can only assume, ended in a draw. Listen to the exact words Vader is saying in that moment. The actual line’s meaning would not change at all by adding a duel between them in the Kenobi show. Only how we have thought about it would change.
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