The Star Wars Show introduced us to a new droid that will appear in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an evil take on R2-D2 named C2-B5. It’s likely C2-B5 will be no more than a background character, perhaps in some far-flung Imperial starbase, but the opportunity for a counterpart relationship with K-2SO sounds too intriguing for Rogue One to pass up entirely.
While there’s no indication the newly introduced C2-B5 will be a big part of Rogue One, it would be fascinating were the little droid to have a perverted version of R2-D2 and C-3PO’s relationship with the gangly war droid K-2SO (voiced and motion capture performed by Alan Tudyk).
This evil droid buddy dynamic was previously explored in Marvel’s Darth Vader comics miniseries, which introduced us to BT-1, a bloodthirsty astromech droid, and 0-0-0 (Triple Zero), his suitably fussy partner, expert in etiquette, protocol and torture.
BT-1 and 0-0-0 are both comic and tragic figures as consorts to Darth Vader, as he attempts to create his own twisted version of Luke Skywalker’s ad-hoc family. Will such parallels be explored in a relationship between C2-B5? Probably not, but it’s fun to imagine.
