Obi-Wan Kenobi: How Did Reva Survive Anakin's Attack? The Dark Side May Have Answers

Of all the characters introduced in the Disney+ limited series "Obi-Wan Kenobi," perhaps none is more compelling than Moses Ingram's ruthless Sith Inquisitor Reva Sevander. Vengeful to the point of being sociopathic, her traumatic survival of Anakin Skywalker's (Hayden Christensen) Jedi Temple massacre creates a dark obsession within her to become his ultimate assassin. 

She comes close to exacting this goal by leveraging both her apparent loyalty to the Dark Side and Darth Vader's own obsessive hatred of his old master (Ewan McGregor) to make an attempt on the Sith Lord's life (while his thoughts and energies are otherwise expended). Reva is eventually disarmed during her long-awaited duel with Vader, giving him an opening to drive his lightsaber through her chest — and yet, this seemingly mortal wound would not prove fatal.

While it may be a bit hard to swallow for some (after all, a similar wound claims Qui-Gon Jinn's life decades earlier), Reva's survival could be explained through her powerful connection to the dark side of the force. As fans have already seen, those with this connection are often able to sustain themselves through raw hate alone, even when confronted with dire circumstances. In this manner, Maul (Ray Park, Sam Witwer in "The Clone Wars") survives being severed in half. Meanwhile, in the expanded "Legends" continuity, the ancient Sith Lord Darth Sion survives the Great Sith War and achieves a perverse sort of immortality by using his unspeakable agony to fuel his hatred, and his hatred to fuel his grotesque vitality. "Kenobi" even depicts how exactly Reva channels her hate to survive to the series' end.

After being defeated by Darth Vader, Reva Sevander's wounds are arguably more psychological than they are physical. Her sole self-determined purpose in life is to assassinate the man that made her feel so powerless and afraid as a child. The fact that she is, essentially, humiliated by his sheer might in direct combat and reduced to that powerless child turns her only ambition into her greatest failure. As she trembles in the sand, inching her way helplessly toward the weapon that was just used against her, it's clear her feelings for Skywalker can no longer fuel her, lest they return rage and debilitating humiliation in equal measure. It isn't until Reva hears the transmission from Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) that life returns to her eyes. If she can't slay Vader physically, she can at least take the one thing he wants — vengeance against Obi-Wan Kenobi (it certainly doesn't hurt that he's indirectly responsible for her defeat).

Many viewers are still perplexed as to why Reva would immediately redirect her motivations in order to kill the young Luke Skywalker instead of his father, but it may be that — like Kenobi before him — Luke was only a means for drawing out her true target. Killing Kenobi herself may not have meant much in the series premiere, but after having her own chance at cathartic, life-affirming vengeance torn from her destiny, robbing Vader of his chance may be the only weapon she has left against her ultimate enemy. It's this idea that allows Reva to persist past her mortal wounds and make one last attempt to destroy the man that destroyed her.