Disney+ Adds Content Warning to Obi-Wan Kenobi Following Texas Massacre

Cold violence has been part of the Star Wars franchise since Grand Moff Tarkin confirmed off the may of the Dying Star by turning Alderaan into house mud. However as Obi-Wan Kenobi, the most recent collection from that galaxy far, far-off made its debut this week on Disney+ and at Anaheim’s Star Wars Celebration pep rally, the timing wasn’t so scorching for the primary episode’s preliminary scene.

The brand new Ewan McGregor-led present, which takes place after Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and earlier than Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (e.g. the primary movie from 1977), begins with a sequence of stormtroopers opening hearth on a Jedi college, sending distressed kids and academics fleeing for canopy. This, coming because the nation remains to be in collective shock from the bloodbath in Uvalde, Texas, triggered a little bit of an comprehensible stir for a family-friendly tv occasion. 

Some followers on the Anaheim conference referred to as Disney “tone deaf” for presenting the episode as is, simply two days after the capturing, and lots of watching at dwelling voiced related opinions on Twitter.  

Disney+ heard the complaints and took motion, and the episode will now characteristic a content material warning. “Though this fictional collection is a continuation of the story from Star Wars films filmed a few years in the past, some scenes could also be upsetting to viewers in mild of the current tragic occasions,” the “particulars” blurb for the episode now reads on the Disney+ app. A Disney rep additionally advised Leisure Weekly that the corporate is “additionally working so as to add an advisory in entrance of the collection as rapidly as attainable.”

Because it occurs, the debut of Stranger Issues’s season 4 made an analogous transfer. Whereas that present’s vibe is rather less family-friendly (and on Netflix, in fact, not the good babysitter that’s Disney+), the opening sequence of an assault on a laboratory involving kids additionally struck a nerve. 

A title card now seems when one presses play studying “[w]e filmed this season of Stranger Issues a yr in the past. However given the current tragic capturing at a faculty in Texas, viewers might discover the opening scene of episode 1 distressing. We’re deeply saddened by this unspeakable violence, and our hearts exit to each household mourning a liked one.” The Verge experiences that the message doesn’t repeat on second viewings.