Sassy Uncle Owen

About

Sassy Uncle Owen or Sassy Owen is a series of exploitable image macro memes in which the character Uncle Owen (played by Joel Edgerton) from Star Wars is depicted saying something sassy to another character. The meme is based on a scene from the 2022 Obi-Wan Kenobi television series and was popularized on Star Wars meme subreddits like /r/PrequelMemes and /r/starwarsmemes in mid-2022, gaining viral spread over the following years.

Origin

On May 4th, 2022, X^[1] user @ditzkoff posted four screenshots from a scene in the Obi Wan Kenobi trailer in which Obi-Wan tells Owen that Luke Skywalker must be trained as a Jedi when the time comes, Owen responding, "Like you trained his father?" The following two screenshots are edits not depicted in the trailer in which Owen continues to sass Kenobi, saying, "You know, the guy whose limbs you severed and left to die on a molten lava planet, and was placed into a mechanical body and is going to kill you a few years from now?" The post gained roughly 600 likes in two years and is the earliest known example of the meme (shown below).

Spread

Memes about Uncle Owen's sass gained viral spread that month, inspiring numerous examples on Star Wars meme subreddits. On May 4th, 2022, We Got This Covered^[2] reported on the reactions to Owen on X after the trailer was released.

On May 10th, Redditor u/Dranem78 posted an image macro to /r/PrequelMemes^[3] using a cropped version of Uncle Owen from the Obi-Wan scene, garnering over 26,000 upvotes in two years (shown below).

On May 15th, 2022, Redditor u/Kisaoda posted a version of the meme to /r/PrequelMemes^[4] that gained over 1,200 upvotes in two years (shown below, left). It was then reposted to the @rPrequelMemes X^[5] account the next day, garnering over 6,100 likes in the same span of time. On May 25th, Redditor u/flameo------hotman posted a version of the meme to /r/starwarsmemes^[6] that gained over 2,100 upvotes in two years (shown below, right).

On July 30th, 2022, Redditor u/gingy_65 posted a version of the meme to /r/PrequelMemes^[7] that garnered over 8,200 upvotes in two years (shown below). On June 27th, 2023, the Facebook^[8] page The Jedi Archives reposted a version of the meme that garnered over 1,600 reactions in a year.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References