As far as I’m concerned the entire Star Wars series is basically an elaborate vehicle to showcase a whole bunch of robots. Rogue One is no exception, though the droids do seem to be a bit less prominent in this trailer than has been the case for past movies. Even so, I’m still happy to announce there’s at least one specific droid in there we’ve met before.
Now, I started this post trying to find every droid in the Rogue One trailer, a task that proved a little tricky. There’s just not all that many droids clearly shown, though I admit I am happy to see an unusually prominent position for one of my favorite droids, the humble GNK “Gonk” power droid, who has been dutifully trudging around the background of the Star Wars universe since 1977, softly bumping into things and presumably providing sweet, nourishing power.
The well known Astromech droids, of which R2-D2 is the most famous, are barely in the trailer at all, but there is one astromech lurking in the shadows of one scene who looks familiar. An R5-series droid, with a fetching red-and-white paint scheme.
The most famous red-and-white R5 is, of course, R5-D4, known for blowing his motivator right out of his fool head, prompting Luke Skywalker’s uncle to inquire what kind of crap those Jawas were pushing on people.
This droid, though, isn’t R5-D4. It’s R5-X2, and we’ve seen him before.
I know the image is blown up, blurry, and in the shadows, but, come on, that’s the same droid. Or, at least a droid with an identical paint scheme, though the Star Wars universe seems to usually accept that droids have and can be ID’d by individual paint schemes, so I’m going to run with that.
R5-X2 showed up in the first of the prequels, The Phantom Menace. R5-X2 worked for none other than Jabba the Hutt, everyone’s favorite Hutt, where he acted sort of like Jabba’s bookie; his specialty was calculating the odds on podraces
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According to the Wookiepedia, R5-X2 didn’t advice Jabba to bet on the annoying six-year-old kid running in the race, and when Annakin ended up winning, we can safely bet that R5-X2 lost his job. That’s a shame, since other articles suggest that he was actually really good at what he did, and was surprisingly reliable for an R5 droid, a known budget model that didn’t exactly enjoy a stellar reputation.
The job with Jabba was about 30 years before A New Hope, so for Rogue One, we’re looking at R5-X2, what, 20-some-odd years after his days as an employee of the Hutt? That should be plenty of time for him to find his way to a bright new career with the rebellion.
There’s not too many characters that have crossed over from the main Star Wars series to Rogue One (at least that we’ve seen in the trailer). I mean, it’s the stately red-headed Mon Mothma
Aside from our pal Gonk, there’s other interesting droids that show up briefly in the trailer, like this humanoid one that’s a far better runner than most of the other humanoid robots we’ve seen before, like C-3PO, who walks like an octogenarian with a substantial pantload.
I’m hoping R5-X2 gets a nice, meaty role in Rogue One, hopefully with a scene where he takes a long swig of Droid Gin and dishes on what it was like working for that crazy bastard Jabba the Hutt.