Filoni’s larger-than-life dramatic character stuff works well enough for me in animation, I think, but I agree that it’s nice to see something a little more understated here in live-action. His episodes of Mando and BOBF felt kind of shallow or sketchy, never quite getting into the actual meat of things - Ahsoka and Luke’s scene was very stilted and hollow (not helped by Deep Fakewalker).
Anyway, as the most forgiving Disney Star Wars shill alive, I am really looking forward to Kenobi. It’s interesting seeing the perspectives on this from people who have been checked out since the prequels, or since TCW, or since Rebels, or since the sequels… we all have our own ‘Star Wars’. Luckily for me, Lucasfilm seem to be making this for people like myself who like or have at least have seen basically everything that’s been released, and have thus managed to build up a tolerance to bizarre lightsaber spins and continuity violations. If it manages to be emotionally compelling and exciting, I can happily forgive A LOT of silliness - I always ask myself “is this worse than the Ewoks?” and the answer is almost always no.
Re: the last episode leaks…
I don’t think it’s too unreasonable for Luke to have seen a lightsaber before. He never explicitly says he hasn’t, and he does know about the Clone Wars, which featured Jedi and lightsabers quite prominently. Back in TPM, random backwater planet slave boy Anakin Skywalker was aware of Jedi and their “laser swords”, also. Rewatching the scene in IV, it can easily be viewed as Luke just not knowing that the object Obi-Wan presents him with is a lightsaber, which makes sense as it looks quite different from Reva’s dual-bladed one.
Obviously it is a bit of a stretch to get it to fit with the implications made by the OT, but… that’s true of A LOT of things at this point. In just this same scene, Obi-Wan claims he had an apprentice named Darth Vader who killed Luke’s father, which was retconned to be a lie, and Darth was retconned to be a title rather than a name. Obi-Wan also acts as if he has no idea who Artoo is and claims to have never owned a droid, which is ludicrous in light of the prequel trilogy. The whole thing is a complete mess. I think part of the ‘deal’ you make when suspending your disbelief for these things is just allowing a bit of flexibility, in the same way you accept Obi-Wan or Owen having entirely different faces.