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"You could tell a lot about a person from their strut. Were they powerful? Were they... sexy? Were they insecure about the shape of their head?"
Species: Pau'an
Gender: Male
Title: Grand Inquisitor
Head: Round (very)
Status: Wack
Affiliation: Strutters
Weapon: Twirly laser sword (lame)
Weakness: Sensitive about his round head
The Grand Inquisitor is another character who first appeared in Star Wars: Rebels, and while he was initially just a mysterious threat, we did eventually learn his backstory: he was once a Jedi Knight, and even a Jedi temple Guard - he was one of the ones present at Ahsoka's to her trial, in fact - but he grew to resent that he wasn't allowed to move higher in the ranks. After surviving Order 66, he was personallly recruited by Palpatine to lead the Inquisitorius.
Just like the Fifth Brother, the Grand Inquisitor looks drastically different in live action than he's meant to. Remember when Obi-Wan went
to Utapau to find General Grievous? He landed on the planet and was met by that tall guy with a head that looked like a sweater? That's a Pau'an, and that's what the Grand Inquisitor is supposed to look like. Instead, the first trailers showed us a squat, round head. Fans hoped that was just unfinished effects, and that he'd be corrected by the time the show aired... but no. Wrong head in the previews, wrong head in the show, wrong head on the toy.
The Inquisitor's costume is basically unchanged from what he would later be wearing on Rebels: grey bodysuit beneath black armor. The only major difference is that the animated version didn't have a plate over the stomach - presumably because he learned in this show that it doesn't really provide any additional protection (or at least not enough to offset the loss of mobility). He still has the high collar, the flared pauldrons, and the armor on the outside of his legs, but at this point he was accessorizing with a cape. Fancy!
The character's body is just as squished as the head;
the Inquisitor is a narrow character, but that didn't translate to live action. Maybe Pau'ans are like blobfish, and their anatomy gets weird if you take them off their homeworld? Is he being squished by higher gravity? Articulation is the usual, with a balljointed head and neck, swivel/hinge shoulder, elbows, and wrists, balljointed chest and hips, swivel thighs, and swivel/hinge knees and ankles.
The figure comes with the little machine that did
his dance-fighting for him - that Pumpkinhead guy couldn't even do the moves on his own! his turntable lightsaber hilt plugs onto his back, and the two red blades are removable. Since I'm dumb sometimes, I initially thought the only way to do that was to put it under his cape, which would be terrible for accessibility in a fight; but no, the center of his cape hangs down low enough that the plugs can fit in place while still leaving the rest of the hilt outside the cloth.
The Inquisitor was not as good a character in Kenobi as he was in Rebels, but that's to be expected: this was Reva's show, not his. But really, could they not have at least made him look right? Ideally, they'd have hired (original voice actor) Jason Isaacs, covered him in makeup, and then digitally stretched him if need be. Like the Fifth Brother, the Grand Inquisitor is a character who needed a toy, but the live-action design is too far from the real one for this to be as good as it could be.
-- 05/06/23
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