Part 21 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’
It’s touching, really. C3P0 is the very first character to speak in a Star Wars film, and he’s present in every instalment, old and new. For much of the runtimes he serves in a comic relief role, pottering around with his diminutive friend R2D2, the pair of them inspired by the underclass peasants from The Hidden Fortress, one of Lucas’ original inspirations for Star Wars. Threepio (as he is unfailingly dubbed in supplementary material) is prissy, uptight and ill-adapted to the adventurous environments he always seems to find himself in, but with the death of Leia C3P0 is in fact the last remaining Skywalker – Rey’s nominal brother.
Given his central role in the series – assembled by a young Anakin Skywalker using one of those magazine subscriptions where they send you one part every month – it’s odd that Threepio has not really had a moment to take centre stage in the movies at least (he was the nominal star of the Droids cartoon). The closest he comes to the role of protagonist in the original trilogy is when Luke sends him in to Jabba’s palace to deliver his threat, which would perhaps be a noble self-sacrifice were C3P0 actually aware of it. And he has a specific history with memory wipes, given Bail Organa casually ordered him returned to a blank slate after the events of the prequel trilogy. Bail apparently unaware of this droid’s proximity to all the major events of the preceding decade, and his close connection to the man about to become Darth Vader.
So it’s nice that despite everything else about the script for Rise of Skywalker, here it allows C3P0 the genuinely heroic act of choosing oblivion for himself in service of the Rebellion (as-was) and in service of his friends. Eternal robo-butler, first to Anakin and Padme and later Luke and Leia and Han, here C3P0 is his own droid and makes his own call. It’s a moment of sincerity that the movie around it doesn’t seem quite able to believe is taking place.
Also – it’s just very fun when his eyes go red. Much more fun than when his arm was red for some reason.
Meanwhile, Rey is very excited to finds out that Chewie is still alive. Hope nothing bad happened to him!