There has been some speculation that J.J. Abrams is completely ignoring the Star Wars prequel trilogy as canon, fueled by remarks he made at Comic-Con that were – as with almost all things J.J. – perhaps more ambiguous than what people thought they were hearing. But now we have definite confirmation that at least one prequel character actually has a confirmed line of dialogue in The Force Awakens, one which opens up a lot more plot possibilities for the next movies. If you’ve seen it, you might have missed it. If you haven’t seen it, we need to make very clear that this is a…

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It’s…

…Young Obi-Wan Kenobi, as voiced by Ewan McGregor. You may recall our own Eric Diaz wrote that this could happen back in June, though we were thinking at the time he was coming back for a spin-off movie. Turns out his role may be more significant to the main story – when Rey has her Force-vision in Maz’s basement, it is McGregor who says “Rey … these are your first steps.” J.J. Abrams confirmed this in an interview with Entertainment Weekly‘s Anthony Breznican.

There’s more: Yoda can be heard during that vision too, and it’s newly recorded Frank Oz dialogue. And through the magic of editing, even a dead cast member is resurrected.

As they worked on editing the dream sequence, Bryan Burk, a longtime Bad Robot collaborator and one of the producers of the film, surprised Abrams one day with the gift of a single word: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s voice saying the name “Rey …”

“I said, ‘That’s cool, is that the thing from Ewan McGregor?’” Abrams recalled. “He said ‘No, we took a line from Alec Guinness saying ‘Afraid.’”

The only bummer about the whole thing – assuming Guinness’ actual ghost doesn’t come and Force-choke somebody for putting him back in a franchise he was famously grumpy about – came for actor James Arnold Taylor, whom you may remember as host of most of the Star Wars Celebration panels, and the Clone Wars voice of Kenobi. He was originally going to do the line until it was confirmed that McGregor would be available.

@t_betts94 yes, it was me originally but they replaced my version with Ewan. I guess if I’m gonna be replaced it should be him! 😀

— James Arnold Taylor (@JATactor) December 19, 2015

The plot implications for all this are interesting. If Obi-Wan and Yoda’s Force ghosts are still around, does that mean Anakin’s out there in the ether too? And if so, why doesn’t he appear to Kylo Ren and say “You’re doing it wrong!”

Speculate away in comments!

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IMAGES: Starwars.com/Lucasfilm/Disney