Rescue of Yoda

In 32 BBY, during the Invasion of Naboo, Anakin Skywalker, a Force-sensitive male human discovered on the planet Tatooine, came to the attention of the Jedi. Qui-Gon Jinn, a Jedi Master, believed Skywalker to be the Chosen One prophesied to bring balance to the Force. Jinn desired to train him, but Darth Maul, a Sith Lord, killed him during the Battle of Naboo before he could. In his dying breath, Jinn instructed his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, to take on Skywalker's training. Kenobi accepted, becoming a Jedi Knight, and Skywalker became his Padawan. However, by 26 BBY, Yoda, the Grand Master, along with Jedi Masters Mace Windu and Bant Eerin, felt a need to assess their teamwork. The Jedi Order emphasized the importance of a Padawan's obedience to their mentor, as well as the mentor's attentiveness to their learner.

The Masters' assessment included the temporary disabling of the Jedi Temple's holofeeds, preventing the use of security recordings for investigation. This was initiated on the same day as a training exercise involving Skywalker that they had observed, which proved unsuccessful. Kenobi challenged his Padawan to defend himself against Marksman-H training remotes using a wooden stick instead of his lightsaber. However, the younger Jedi attempted to teach Kenobi a lesson of his own, using the Force to take his master's blade. Following the exercise, an argument ensued between the two, as Kenobi increased the difficulty by deploying more remotes after Skywalker destroyed the initial ones.

After the departure of the trio of Jedi Masters, Skywalker and Kenobi both sensed a disturbance in the Force and encountered a squad of Jedi Temple Guards. One of them revealed that a break-in had occurred at the temple's storage level. Kenobi departed with the guards, instructing Skywalker to remain behind and tidy up the practice gallery, but Skywalker followed after realizing Kenobi still possessed his lightsaber. Reprogramming a pair of training remotes, Skywalker rode them down a shaft to the storage room, arriving in a pantry. Sensing the disturbance originated from the training stores, Skywalker entered the room and hurled one of the remotes at a B1 battle droid he detected behind him. Dodging blaster fire, Skywalker noticed three battle droids emerge from their hiding place.

Skywalker jumped onto the shelving to avoid the combat droids' blaster fire, then used the Force to throw crates at his robotic opponents, damaging at least one. Continuing to evade the droids, Skywalker searched for a weapon in nearby crates, finding blast visors in one container and electroblades in the next. The Padawan seized two of these blades and used them to eliminate the damaged battle droid. As Skywalker jumped into the air, the other two units inadvertently shot each other. However, five more droids arrived to confront the young Jedi, but his electroblades were no match for their blasters. Skywalker used the Force to push his attackers and then stole a discarded blaster, but the weapon was quickly dislodged from his grip.

He attempted to topple a shelving unit with the Force to take out the droids, but it was too heavy for his abilities. Luckily, Kenobi and the Temple Guards arrived, and the Jedi Knight returned Skywalker's lightsaber to his Padawan. As they fought the droids, Skywalker experienced a Force vision of the Jedi Council Chamber being damaged, forcing Kenobi, who had not sensed any disturbance, to save him from a blaster bolt. Despite Kenobi's desire to proceed to the chamber together after dealing with the droids, Skywalker abandoned the fight and ascended a turbolift. Upon arriving at the next lift, Skywalker found an unconscious Temple Guard in front of the elevator's open doors. Hoping the guard was unharmed, Skywalker decided to continue moving and entered the next turbolift. Unbeknownst to Skywalker, this was part of the test, as the "guard" was actually a disguised B1 battle droid with a concealed trap. Had he approached the unit, the B1 would have deployed a green knockout gas from his vocabulator against the Jedi.

All of the battle droids "attacking" the temple were actually a part of the Masters' test. The units were from a Techno Union batch the Jedi Order had recovered two years earlier from Chagrian smugglers. They were serving as a diversion so that, within the Council Chamber, Yoda and Eerin, who was disguised as a Temple Guard, could engage in a lightsaber duel. When Skywalker arrived in the room, Yoda was locked in the "duel" with the masked Eerin. Though the Grand Master ordered him to stay back, Skywalker entered the duel and managed to cut the "guard's" Lightsaber pike into two, but she Force pushed the Padawan into a wall. Unable to move or summon his lightsaber due to the pressure put on him, Skywalker was unable to stop four battle droids, arriving on jetpacks and with a battered freighter, from shattering the windows with their blasters.

Yoda moved in front of the fragments to protect the Padawan, rendering him unconscious and without his lightsaber. Two battle droids were able to retrieve the Jedi Master and take him to their freighter, though Skywalker was finally able to call upon his lightsaber while still being trapped to the wall. With her voice disguised by a speech scrambler, Eerin, who retrieved both halves of her pike, complimented Skywalker and claimed they would need to kill the young man, who she released from her Force grip. As Eerin escaped with Yoda aboard the freighter, Skywalker took out the battle droids and, while the jets did not initially fire, soon used one of the fallen unit's jetpacks to chase the starship. As he approached the freighter, the Padawan used his lightsaber to deflect a cannon's plasma bolts, which ricocheted off the blade and into a thruster.

This slowed the ship down, but Skywalker's stolen jetpack failed just as he could touch the craft. Losing the pack to the wind, he fell to the ground before Kenobi reached out from the Council Chamber window and caught him. As his Jedi mentor helped him into the room, Skywalker reported that Yoda had been kidnapped by a Temple Guard, so Windu, speaking to them via a full-size hologram, faked surprise. A team of Temple Guards then entered the room, bringing with them the disguised B1 that Skywalker had seen outside the turbolift. The guard commander reported that it had been a booby-trapped droid and that all guards were accounted for, meaning the kidnapper was not really one of the guardians.

Skywalker hoped the defeated battle droids would be able to help in their search for answers, and, while their receptors were fused as a fail-safe against investigators, he realized the signal confirmation module in a unit's head was a type used by the Techno Union. As Windu noted the union's senator in the Galactic Congress, Gume Saam, was not supportive of the Jedi, Kenobi suggested they instead travel to the union headquarters on the planet of Skako Minor, but Skywalker also found a non-union symbol on the droid head, indicating that they were not the group behind the attack.

Kenobi agreed to look into the markings, though he intended to travel to Skako Minor if it was nothing. Upon taking the symbol to the Jedi Archives, Jedi Chief Librarian Jocasta Nu cross-referenced the image and found that it was the logo of the Nova Crime Syndicate, a small criminal organization based out of the Wheel space station in the Besh Gorgon system. Nu also told them about Grynask Sanberge, an Anomid who ran the syndicate. The Jedi Order had promised to stay off the Wheel, so, to keep the uneasy truce between the Force-sensitives and Baron Administrator Jaspara, Kenobi flew himself and Skywalker to a nearby planetoid, where they left their Jedi shuttle. They instead booked passage to Besh Gorgon on a public hyperbus and posed as tourists. In order to find Sanberge, Kenobi and Skywalker then went to a gaudy cantina on the space station, where the former ordered information and two mupple juices from a service droid. They were soon joined by an Ortolan named Triss Terasu, who Kenobi gave his drink and some credits to. When he refused to yield any information on Sanberge, Kenobi used a mind trick on the informant, leading him to tell the Jedi to check Ashton Stadium on the third level.

Arriving in the shockball stadium a short time later, Kenobi correctly assumed Sanberge would support the home team, Jaspara's Galactic Globetrotters, and purchased tickets for that stand. Unknown to them, this was not actually the criminal, as it was actually Windu in disguise and working as part of the test. When the "mobster" spotted them pointing in his direction, he tried to escape his two pursuers, pushing past a Lepi spectator. Skywalker tried to chase the "criminal," though he soon ran into a Whiphid and angered the large alien by accidentally knocking his doughnuts away. Kenobi tried to negotiate with the spectator by offering to buy another bag, but the Whiphid instead knocked the Jedi Knight into a doughnut dispenser droid. Skywalker, knowing he needed to avoid using his lightsaber to keep their presence on the Wheel a secret, used the Force to open the dispenser droid's head and make doughnuts shoot out.

These distracted the Whiphid by gumming up his fur and sticking to his face, giving the Jedi a chance to escape, while other spectators fumbled around them to take some of the now-free food. Kenobi and Skywalker soon found the Lepi whom "Sanberge" had knocked over, who pointed them in the direction the disguised Jedi Master had gone in. Accordingly, they followed him into the ultraspa he entered and were again pointed in his direction by its Gungan receptionist, who had tried to offer them several spa treatments. Passing a Gamorrean who then went to the mud baths, Kenobi and Skywalker found the supposed criminal armed with a scatterblaster and in a closet near the turboshowers. Skywalker deflected the blaster shot with his blade before destroying the gun. The "mobster" then claimed he had nothing to say, but Kenobi tried to use a mind trick on him.

When the "mobster" told Kenobi he was able to resist the Force power, the Jedi Knight played on the criminal's statements, saying things he agreed with to manipulate him into the mind trick. Windu played along with the ploy, pretending to have given into Kenobi's influence and telling the Jedi he had been ordered to send the droids to the Jedi Temple by a client. Pretending to not know who this was, the disguised Windu told the Jedi he had been given an audio only contact through a deep space relay. He played the audio recording for the two Jedi, which contained a modulated voice, which Skywalker realized belonged to the "Temple Guard" who had taken Yoda, ordering a squadron of battle droids be sent to Coruscant. Kenobi then had "Sanberge" give them the comlink and sent him towards the spa's hot petal treatments, as the Gungan receptionist had advised he get the treatment. Thus, Kenobi and Skywalker left for the hyperbus terminal, completely unaware that they had actually been dealing with a disguised Windu. The Jedi Master had successfully hidden his abilities and mind from the two of them, although it had been harder than he had anticipated.

Returning to their Jedi shuttle, Skywalker connected the comlink to its main computer and decrypted it, allowing them to trace its point of origin to the Jalor system. Though the data stream revealed the message could have come from Glee Anselm, Ramitrix, or Melacon, Skywalker theorized the origin point could be Anselm by realizing water could be heard in the background of the recording. Traveling to the mostly ocean-covered planet, Skywalker and Kenobi tried to search the Force for Yoda, though Skywalker, unable to sense the old Jedi Master, instead used the shuttle's sensor array to look for thruster particles in the atmosphere.

Transferring this information to the navigation computer, they soon found the freighter that had escaped the Jedi Temple on what they assumed to be a small island. While every hatch into the vessel was sealed, Skywalker cut into the freighter while Kenobi stood guard. They entered the vessel and headed to the flight deck, but the two Jedi concluded that the ship was abandoned and found that its databanks had been erased, much like the battle droids used at the temple. Kenobi also found Yoda's Jedi cloak near the pilot's chair and used it to help him call on the Force to locate the old Force-user. This pointed Kenobi to the ocean, and, because Skywalker had previously only found one trail when scanning for thruster particles, they knew the kidnapper had not simply moved to another ship.

As they prepared to travel underwater wearing space helmets equipped with breathing apparatuses, the "island" began to shake, as they had truly landed on the back of a massive whale. Its blowhole threw the "Temple Guard's" freighter into the air, and Kenobi, the Jedi shuttle, and Skywalker were forced into the water. The Padawan avoided being hit by a sucker before Kenobi reached him, warning Skywalker to not panic. The whale rushed at the two Jedi with its mouth open, but Kenobi stopped Skywalker from using his lightsaber and instead, after the whale collided with them, used beast control. With the animal now on their side, both Jedi grabbed onto its ivory tusks, and Kenobi had the creature take them to its master, bringing the two to an underwater base grown from glowing coral. While Skywalker spotted their shuttle, now submerged and upside down nearby, Kenobi advised his apprentice worry about their ship afterwards, as a pair of aquatic battle droids armed with energy harpoons were approaching them. Skywalker, however, knowing he was not comfortable with fighting in water, used beast control on the whale to force it to fight the droids. Though Kenobi objected, citing that a Jedi was meant to guide instead of control like Skywalker had, both took advantage of the opening and turned their attention to the base.

Before his mentor had a chance to stop him, Skywalker cut into the base with his blade, flooding the room but giving them an opening. Now inside, Skywalker could feel Yoda's presence, and they found the old Jedi behind an energy field. Suspended in a large air bubble to hold back the water, the Grand Master was floating in the bubble, his eyes were closed, and his arms were bound by a thick seaweed. Kenobi ordered his Padawan to bring down the energy shield, but, having lost his bit driver when submerging, Skywalker planned on using his lightsaber to cut into the control panel. Instead, though, the Padawan sensed something was wrong and found a thermal detonator in the back of the panel, forcing him to spend more time on the work.

After he realized this, Eerin, still disguised as a fake Temple Guard, arrived and activated both halves of her lightsaber pike. Kenobi launched himself at the "guard" and dueled her, while Skywalker continued to work on the panel and, though his master was starting to tire, was soon able to access the base's main systems. This included the environmental systems, meaning he would be able to pump the water back out to sea. When the "guard" knocked Kenobi's lightsaber out of his hands, Skywalker decided to go through with this plan, and the sudden change in water level distracted Eerin. Now given an opening, Kenobi pushed her back and reclaimed his blade. With this, Kenobi and the "guard" continued the duel, but the Jedi Knight quickly outmaneuvered her.

After Eerin surrendered, Kenobi offered Skywalker the honor of finally unmasking their opponent as thanks for noticing the markings on the battle droids back at the Jedi Temple. He used the Force to remove the guard mask, revealing it had been Eerin all along. Kenobi was in disbelief, and Skywalker soon felt hurt and anger arise in his mentor, but Kenobi stated she would stand trial on Coruscant instead of giving into his anger. The three were then interrupted by "Grynask Sanberge," who used the Force to take away Kenobi and Skywalker's lightsabers before unmasking himself. Now aware that Windu had been part of the plot, Skywalker deduced the entire "kidnapping" had been a test, which Yoda soon revealed was the case from behind the energy field.

Yoda then joined them by simply removing the seaweed bonds and walking through the "force field." Kenobi was in a state of surprise, which Windu and Eerin compared to their own thoughts when they had completed the same test. Kenobi soon asked why he had not been told they were testing his Padawan, but the Masters clarified that the lesson was for both of them. Yoda stated the two of them had passed the test. He stated they would have a great future together and impact the galaxy itself. After this, Skywalker and Kenobi lifted their shuttle from the seafloor together, and, unlike the lesson with the training remotes, neither cared that the Masters were watching them.

When Kenobi and Skywalker journeyed to Glee Anselm to recover the shuttle, their bond extended beyond the roles of master and apprentice; they shared a deep friendship, akin to brotherhood. Skywalker cherished this connection, hoping it would endure indefinitely. Despite occasional disagreements, their collaborative efforts proved successful both before and during the Clone Wars, a galactic-spanning war against the Confederacy of Independent Systems. By 19 BBY, the war's conclusion saw Yoda's vision of Skywalker and Kenobi shaping the galaxy realized, albeit in a tragic and unforeseen manner.

Sheev Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor and secretly the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, corrupted Skywalker, leading him to embrace the dark side of the Force. Renamed Darth Vader, the Dark Lord turned against Kenobi, engaging in a fierce duel on the lava-covered planet of Mustafar with the man he once considered a brother. Left for dead on the banks of a lava flow, Vader was rescued by Sidious and encased in a life support suit. As a ruthless enforcer for the First Galactic Empire, Vader later killed Kenobi aboard the DS-1 Death Star Mobile Battle Station in 0 BBY. However, in 4 ABY, Vader found redemption through the influence of his son, Luke Skywalker, returning to the light.

The central narrative of the 2019 children's Choose Your Destiny book, Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure, revolves around the rescue of Yoda. Given the interactive nature of the Choose your Destiny series, certain narrative paths diverge into non-canon or optional segments. This article only considers the required story paths leading to the "good" ending as canon, and any details from the other chapters are not assumed to be true.