Alright, here it goes. Sorry I haven't written in a while, I'm an English major in college and I'm currently trying to handle 19 hours of classes and operate my own karate studio. Today I'm going to begin a series on the droids that, as usual, does my best to address and analyze every theory and present some new ideas of my own in hopes of coming to a conclusion that fits best in solving the problems.

So what are the big problems with the droids and why is everyone so interested in them? Here's what I've seen:

First of all, at the end of episode 3, Lucas has 3PO's mind erased, but leaves R2 alone. Why would the Jedi desire this? Second, why don't Yoda or Obi-Wan seem to recognize R2 in the OT? And why does R2 think Obi-Wan owned him and not recognize Yoda at all? Third, what exactly happened to the droids between ROTS and ANH? And finally, where did R2's anti-grav boosters go?

In the following blogs, I will try to use all the theories I've seen on here, a little research, and my own thoughts to answer all of these questions.

Let's begin shall we?

Why did the Jedi and/or Bail Organa have C3PO's mind erased and not R2's? As usual I have read several theories on this. The first I would like to address is the simple assumption that C3PO is very talkative and would give away a secret while R2 would not.

It's obvious from the saga that this is somewhat true, and in looking at C3PO's responses to R2 throughout, it seems that the astromech droid says very little that is not related to what they are actually doing at the moment. R2 doesn't speculate, he doesn't sit and chat about stories. He doesn't share his memories. Thus, the Jedi and Bail could have assumed that the secret was safe with him.

Next, one of the books in the EU states that R2's memory had been locked so that Luke could not access certain files and that many of the files were actually corrupted when Luke tried to view them. One holofile he is able to view is that of Padme and Anakin standing on the balcony after Anakin has his first dream about her death. This suggests that perhaps R2's memories of the PT were locked from certain viewers, effectively preventing him from sharing his memories with others.

Alright, now let's bring some of my own thoughts to the table.

Both of the above theories are highly possible explanations with nothing to disprove them. But I would like to point out that both droids would be easy characters for Lucas to use in the upcoming tv series (both animated and live action) and it would make a lot of sense for him to use them since they are in every star wars item to date. Thus, many of these secrets have a high likelihood of being revealed in the future by Lucas himself.

With all of the above in mind, I would like to go into another theory on why R2's memory wasn't wiped. Think about this:

R2, unlike C3PO had a very close connection to Padme for years. She was the one that first praised him for his actions and bravery aboard the Naboo Royal Starship and he later served her as both bodyguard and friend. A running theme of the entire saga is that droids have feelings, so its easy to assume that R2 probably cared about Padme quite a bit. Thus, when she died and the twins survived, R2 probably cared pretty deeply, and if he was told that his secrecy was in order to protect the twins, I am certain he would have done exactly that- especially given his obvious sense of honor and purpose.

Finally, we are talking about a very advanced society here. They would have an appreciation for history and understand its importance probably more than we do today. No one but R2 has a near complete history of what happened and without access to a massive databank (and even if they had access, an entry of R2's memories could attract the emperor's attention) the only way to wipe R2's memory and perserve the history would have been a holocron or some other even less safe method. In the end, leaving the memories within the astromech droid just seems wiser to me. The memories are less likely to fall into the wrong hands or be shown to Luke or Leia.

And, as I thought, this entry is growing very long. I will continue with a part 2 either tonight or tomorrow and continue addressing the above questions about the droids (especially what exactly the Jedi were intending for Luke and Leia, and why R2 didn't recognize them and visa-versa). As usual, I am very interested in hearing what everyone has to say, so feel free to comment.

See you all later!

Part Two is now online! Click Here to check it out!

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