Following reports that Loki composer Natalie Holt has been tapped to compose Obi-Wan Kenobi's score, that's now been confirmed in an interview with Vanity Fair. Confirming that we've yet to hear any of her work on the Disney+ series (the theme in the trailer was "Duel of the Fates" from The Phanom Menace), Holt started by revealing exactly how much she loves this iconic franchise.
"I've just always been a huge Star Wars fan. I watched the original trilogy with my dad when I was five years old," the composer, who is also working on Batgirl for HBO Max, enthused. "So the music from John Williams basically narrated my childhood: E.T., Raiders, Jurassic Park. So yeah, my starting point was just being a huge fan of the music for the show already. I'm a violinist and I come from an orchestral background, so I've been able to do something on an epic scale with these big forces."
Asked about John Williams' involvement with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Holt confirmed that she's been able to bring her own ideas to the table, but credited the legendary composer with creating the theme for the title character. As it happens, that was something he's been angling to make a reality for decades.
"Obi-Wan is a legacy character that John hadn't written a theme for because he died quite early on in A New Hope. It's the only legacy character that he hadn't done. So he spoke to [Lucasfilm president] Kathleen Kennedy and said, 'I just want to write Benny a theme.' So who can deny him that? And he did, he wrote the Obi theme, and it just embodies the spirit of the show entirely."
As for how she would describe that theme, Holt declined to give too much away, but teased the following: "It's reflective, and it's just entirely appropriate. And it distills what the show is about in just the perfect way that John Williams can. It's wistful, but there's an element of hope to it. It's doing something new and I think people are going to be really blown away by it."
There are lots of details from Holt to be found in the full interview, but after her work on Loki, we couldn't be more excited to see what she brings to this Galaxy Far, Far Away. Hopefully, the next trailer will reveal some of her work on the show, and we can only imagine what it must have been like for her to go from the MCU to composing the score for Obi-Wan's long-awaited rematch with Darth Vader.
Obi-Wan Kenobi will debut with its first two episodes on Disney+ on May 27.