This Heartbreaking Theory Explains C-3PO’s Goodbye in the ‘Rise of Skywalker’ Trailer

The Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer debuted last night during Monday Night Football, and fans worldwide went crazy with excitement.

The trailer has resulted in The Rise of Skywalker ticket pre-sales doubling those of Avengers: Endgame. The conversation on Twitter and Reddit, in offices and over coffees, is almost wholly positive. Excitement is palpable.

Speaking of palpation, there was a lot more of Emperor Palpatine in this trailer than the teaser, finishing with a climactic moment where Rey stands, alone, to face him. But Palpatine’s impact has been felt across the Galaxy for decades, and one small (but emotional) moment in the trailer shows just how deep his dastardly roots go.

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While we were all debating C-3PO’s red eyes from the teaser, the trailer has given us a glimpse into the droid’s fate and it’s not pretty. And no, we’re not talking about his death.

It happens at 1:14, but if you don’t want to scroll through the trailer, the moment begins with Babu Frik working on C-3PO’s face. The droid looks around and Poe asks: “What are you doing there, Threepio?” He replies: “Taking one last look, sir. At my friends.”

Cue the waterworks.

Anyway, the reason why Babu Frik (the tiny new adorable creature from the teaser) is working on C-3PO is the subject of hot debate, but this theory seems highly likely and dates back to Star Wars lore from long (long) ago.

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Revenge of the Sith conveniently fixed a major plothole–that C-3PO would have had a lot of information about Anakin’s transition into Darth Vader, given he was Anakin’s droid to start with. So in the prequel Bail Organa orders that C-3PO’s mind be wiped so as not to give away any of these secrets when baby Luke and Leia were sent off to live in obscurity, safe from Darth Father.

You wouldn’t want teenage-angst-ridden Leia going off to find her birth father, after all.

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So what does this have to do with C-3PO’s fate in the Rise of Skywalker trailer?

We think it’s because the resistance plan to recall those memories previously wiped from C-3PO’s mind to give them an edge over the First Order and Emperor Palpatine. If you can recover deleted files from a hard drive, why not from a droid?

Lucasfilm Ltd

Because to do so, this would involve resetting C-3PO to a point before, potentially erasing all of his present memories – like restoring your iPhone to its previous settings, you lose all your text messages (‘the cloud’ obviously doesn’t exist in Star Wars. Outside of Cloud City).

C-3PO has to say goodbye to Rey, Finn, Poe, BB-8, and R2-D2 because his memory is going to go all the way back to prequel timing (19 years before the Battle of Yavin, for those who are counting) which is long before he came into contact with any of them. Even his memories of R2 will be highly limited.

They were paired up in 32 BBY, so he’ll only have 13 years of memories with R2 left.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker takes place in 34 ABY (that’s After the Battle of Yavin). This means C-3PO has 53 years of memories that will be wiped so he can be of use to the resistance as they go up against Palpatine.

Yep, get tissues. It’s going to be sob city.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has a release date of Friday, December 20 in the US.

From: Digital Spy

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