C-3PO, sometimes spelled See-Threepio and often referred to as Threepio, was a bipedal, humanoid protocol droid designed to interact with organics, programmed primarily for etiquette and protocol. He was fluent in over six million forms of communication, and developed a fussy and worry-prone personality throughout his many decades of operation. After being destroyed and discarded on the planet Tatooine before 32 BBY, C-3PO was rebuilt; his salvaged nature gave him special qualities that distinguished him from similar droid models. Along with his counterpart, the astromech droid R2-D2, C-3PO constantly found himself directly involved in pivotal moments of galactic history, and aided in saving the galaxy on many occasions. C-3PO considered various droids and organics to be friends of his, and was very dedicated to them, as well as to any master that he served.

Originally activated on Affa in 112 BBY, C-3PO had served as a protocol droid to the emissary of the Manakron system. Nearly eighty years later, he was gutted and discarded on the streets of Mos Espa, a city on the Outer Rim world of Tatooine. After being rebuilt by the Human slave Anakin Skywalker, C-3PO served Skywalker and his mother Shmi for over ten years, performing household chores and helping Skywalker earn his freedom by winning a pod race. Skywalker left Tatooine but returned in 22 BBY when his mother passed away, and C-3PO was given to Skywalker, now a Jedi Padawan, by Shmi's stepson Owen Lars. C-3PO, Skywalker, R2-D2, and the Naboo Senator Padmé Amidala immediately became embroiled in the Clone Wars, a galaxy-wide conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems. Skywalker married Amidala and gave C-3PO to her as a wedding gift, and C-3PO faithfully assisted her in her senatorial duties throughout the three-year conflict. The two often entered the front lines of the war, at times fighting alongside Skywalker and R2-D2.

At the end of the war, Skywalker became a Sith Lord, Amidala passed away, the Jedi Order was exterminated, and the Republic was reorganized into a Galactic Empire. C-3PO's memory was erased, however R2-D2's memory was not. C-3PO and R2-D2 were assigned to the corvette Tantive IV of Alderaan, where they served Alderaan's viceroy Bail Organa for nineteen years. They were, however, separated from Organa during that time period, and got caught up in a wide variety of misadventures, ruining the gangster Tig Fromm, helping restore the Tammuz-an monarchy, and aiding the merchant Mungo Baobab in reviving his family's fortune, among other exploits. After rejoining the crew of the Tantive IV and serving under Captain Raymus Antilles, they became embroiled in the Galactic Civil War, and in 0 BBY, Leia Organa of the Rebel Alliance entrusted them to bring a copy of the Death Star plans to the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. After meeting Skywalker's son Luke and the smuggler Han Solo, the droids helped rescue princess Leia from the Empire's Death Star and became directly attached to the three Humans, helping them and their rebellion defeat the Empire and restore freedom to the galaxy.

When the Rebellion became a New Republic, C-3PO continued to serve Luke and the now-married Han and Leia Solo, helping them defeat remnants of the Empire. Notably, C-3PO helped the Solos raise their three children, and aided Luke in recruiting trainees for his New Jedi Order. His translation abilities proved crucial during major incidents on Bakura, the starship Teljkon Vagabond, and in the Kathol sector, and in 17 ABY, he and R2-D2 teamed up with a young mechanic named Cole Fardreamer to foil a plan to bomb the galactic capital of Coruscant. When an extra-galactic race of religious zealots known as the Yuuzhan Vong invaded the galaxy in 25 ABY, C-3PO participated in the four-year conflict that eventually saw the invaders defeated. The destruction wrought by the invaders, and particularly their harsh treatment of droids, caused C-3PO to deeply question his views on deactivation, immortality, and memory erasure. Twelve years later, he began helping raise the latest addition to the Solo/Skywalker clan: the spritely youth Allana.

Biography[]

Life on Tatooine[]

Original activations[]

C-3PO was originally activated on the Cybot Galactica foundry world of Affa^[1] in the year 112 BBY.^[2] Sometime in his early existence, he had served as a protocol droid to the emissary of the Manakron system.^[12] Nearly eighty years later, his head and gutted chassis had been discarded in a street of the city of Mos Espa on Tatooine, and were discovered by two Human youths, Anakin Skywalker and Kitster Banai. A poor slave, Skywalker decided to rebuild the 3PO-series protocol droid,^[13] and smuggled C-3PO to his home piece by piece.^[13] Due to this hodgepodge reconstruction, C-3PO had more mechanical similarities to the TC-series protocol droid than to his original model.^[14] Skywalker's intention was that the reactivated protocol droid would function as a servant to his mother,^[13] helping her with chores around the house while he worked at a nearby junk shop.^[4] C-3PO's gyro-balance circuitry was several decades old,^[13] but Skywalker used scrounged and improvised replacement parts to make the droid functional again. C-3PO boasted sound wiring, as well as a standard protocol droid verbobrain and communicator module, but Skywalker could not afford even the simplest of droid coverings, and as such, left the droid's wiring exposed. C-3PO's salvaged nature imbued special qualities in him that were absent from other protocol droids.^[1]

Skywalker sometimes brought C-3PO with him when bartering with nearby Jawa traders, and employed the droid's fluency in over six million forms of communication after discovering a wounded Tusken Raider. With the assistance of C-3PO's translation, Skywalker nursed the Tusken Raider back to health,^[1] although the Raider grew annoyed with the protocol droid and roared at him to "shut up." This rather offended C-3PO.^[10]

Race for freedom[]

When Skywalker met several off-worlders in the shop of his owner, the junk dealer Watto, he invited them to the safety of his home as refuge from a coming sandstorm. The Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, the Queen of Naboo Padmé Amidala, the Gungan Jar Jar Binks, and the astromech droid R2-D2 were brought to the slave quarters that Skywalker shared with his mother, Shmi, and Amidala and R2-D2 were introduced to C-3PO. Upon meeting R2-D2, C-3PO was shocked when the candid astromech droid commented that he was "naked." Despite the exchange, the two droids fast developed a friendship of sorts, working together to help Skywalker make final adjustments to his podracer in time to race it in the Boonta Eve Classic race. While working on the racer, the two droids discussed space travel and noted the clumsy actions of Binks.^[4]

On the day of the race, C-3PO represented his owner in the opening flag parade, carrying Skywalker's flag onto the course prior to the race. He then stood on the sidelines with R2-D2 and two of Skywalker's playmates, Banai and W. Wald, who cheered their friend on. Skywalker won the race, which, thanks to a deal that Jinn had struck with Watto, earned the boy his freedom from slavery and secured Jinn the hyperdrive generator he needed to leave the planet. As Skywalker prepared to depart Tatooine, he said his goodbyes to C-3PO, apologizing for not having completed the droid's construction, and expressing his wish that Shmi wouldn't sell him.^[4]

Soon afterwards, Grand Master Yoda of the Jedi Order dispatched a Jedi recruit to Tatooine to program stories into C-3PO's memory. The young Jedi programmed several tales or anecdotes related to Skywalker, Queen Amidala and the Jedi.^[15] Despite this fact, C-3PO would claim that he never was good at storytelling.^[16]

A new home, an old friend[]

Two years later, Shmi covered C-3PO with heavily tarnished silver plating so that he might last longer in Tatooine's sandy environment. In another three years, Shmi, who was still in Watto's possession, was sold to Cliegg Lars, a moisture farmer who lived with his son Owen on a farm in the Great Chott salt flat near the city of Anchorhead. Lars married Shmi and freed her from her bonds; Shmi brought C-3PO with her, and the droid served the Lars family at their home for another five years.^[18] In 22 BBY, shortly after Shmi was kidnapped by a group of Tusken Raiders, C-3PO was working on a moisture vaporator on the property when Skywalker, now a Jedi Padawan, arrived with Amidala, now a senator of the Galactic Republic. He initially didn't recognize Skywalker until the latter finished his name for him when introducing himself. Greeting his Maker, C-3PO discovered that Skywalker had come in search of his mother, and brought the two guests into the homestead's courtyard, where they were met by Owen and Cliegg Lars, as well as Owen's girlfriend, Beru Whitesun. Learning of his mother's peril,^[17] Skywalker took Owen's speeder bike^[19] to find her, and soon returned with her corpse, having recovered it from a Tusken village. C-3PO was present when he arrived, and later attended a funeral for Shmi on the farm's property. When R2-D2, who had been waiting aboard Amidala's nearby yacht, interrupted the funeral with an urgent message for the Padawan, C-3PO translated the astromech's binary beeps and whistles. After viewing the holocomm message, Skywalker and Amidala prepared to depart Tatooine for Geonosis to rescue Skywalker's Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi,^[17] and Owen gave C-3PO to Skywalker as a parting gift.^[19]

Entering the Clone Wars[]

The Battle of Geonosis[]

Landing the senator's yacht inside an exhaust vent on Geonosis, Skywalker and Amidala set out, leaving the droids behind. R2-D2 insisted on following them, but C-3PO disagreed and claimed to be in charge. The astromech droid ignored his friend and set out, and C-3PO reluctantly followed. Within the planet's catacombs, Geonosian warriors swarmed by the droids in a flight from Skywalker's lightsaber; the droids soon discovered an entrance to a battle droid factory, within which Skywalker and Amidala were battling Geonosian warriors. As C-3PO viewed the scene before him in awe, he found the concept of "machines making machines" quite perverse, but was knocked off of the platform on which he stood by R2-D2 before he could comment further.^[17]

With C-3PO out of his way, R2-D2 activated his booster jets and soared through the factory in an effort to protect Amidala. C-3PO, meanwhile, tumbled onto a moving platform, but was tossed off by a large droid's mechanical arm. After landing on a conveyor belt, he righted himself and walked along the belt's length before his head was knocked off by moving machinery. His head landed on a conveyor belt which carried the heads of B1-Series battle droids, and his body wandered onto a separate belt which carried the battle droids' bodies. Unaware of the mix-up, the machines continued their construction, which resulted in C-3PO's head being grafted to a battle droid's body, and his body receiving a battle droid's head.^[17]

Both incarnations of C-3PO joined a force of B1 battle droids that soon marched into a Geonosian execution arena. Once inside, the droids surrounded a strike force of 200 Jedi that had arrived to rescue Skywalker, Amidala, and Kenobi, all of whom had been captured and scheduled for execution. Fighting in the name of the Separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems, the battle droids attacked the Jedi; the battle droid head grafted to C-3PO's body found itself unable to properly fight, while C-3PO's head was very unnerved by its autonomous body, and apologized to any Jedi that the body fired its E-5 blaster rifle at. However, both incarnations soon suffered a mix-up of programming: C-3PO's body fired several shots from his rifle until a bolt deflected by a Human Jedi separated it from its battle droid head; the protocol droid's head screamed insults at the Jedi Knights that its battle droid body fired laser blasts at. The Jedi Master Kit Fisto neutralized the threat posed by the latter incarnation, however, by using the Force to knock it onto the arena floor, where a B2 super battle droid fell on top of it, effectively putting it out of the battle.^[17]

R2-D2 entered the melee and used his cable gun to detach C-3PO's head from its battle droid body, before dragging it across the arena and reattaching it to the correct torso. As the remaining battle droids overwhelmed the Jedi, the Jedi Master Yoda arrived with a large force of the newly commissioned Grand Army of the Republic, and the fighting spilled out of the arena, soon leaving R2-D2, C-3PO, and the young clone Boba Fett as its sole occupants. C-3PO then commented to R2-D2 about the events he had endured being "the most peculiar dream." The Republic Army soon won the battle, launching a galactic war between the Republic and the Confederacy. Shortly after the battle, R2-D2 and C-3PO accompanied Amidala and Skywalker back to Naboo, where they were the lone witnesses to a wedding between the two in the planet's Lake Country.^[17]

From silver to gold[]

C-3PO was given to Senator Amidala as a wedding gift from Skywalker,^[21] and the droid would go on to serve as Amidala's personal protocol droid throughout most of the Clone Wars. When on Naboo, the senator often assigned C-3PO to assist the Naboo Royal Council.^[21] Early in the war, C-3PO was on the galactic capital of Coruscant, and along with the senator and R2-D2, witnessed Skywalker depart the planet in a starfighter on his way to lay siege to Muunilinst.^[22] Following the defense of Naboo and the bio-plague of Ohma-D'un unleashed by the Confederacy, Queen Jamillia appointed C-3PO to serve as liaison to the Jedi during the remainder of that campaign.^[23]

Later, C-3PO and R2-D2 were traveling with Amidala in her yacht while the ship was host to Yoda. After Yoda convinced Amidala and her head of security, Captain Typho, to make a detour, the ship headed to Ilum on a rescue mission of the Mirialan Jedi Master Luminara Unduli and her Padawan Barriss Offee.^[24] Yoda set out into the planet's blizzard alone, causing some worry on Amidala's part. Although C-3PO assured her that it was safer to remain at the ship, the senator set out into the blizzard, and ordered the two droids to follow her. After being ambushed by three cloaked Separatist Chameleon droids, Amidala destroyed all three by using her cloak and C-3PO as decoys to attract blaster fire. Despite being in the vicinity of the explosion of a thermal detonator thrown by Amidala, C-3PO remained unscathed, and the victorious trio were greeted by their three wayward Jedi.^[25]

After returning to Coruscant, C-3PO received new gold platings to replace his dull silver ones. Afterwards, he and Amidala, both disguised in hooded cloaks, were walking in Coruscant's undercity when the senator disappeared. Searching for her, C-3PO was pulled into an alleyway by Skywalker, who had been engaging in a private rendezvous with Amidala. After being told by the Padawan that he looked different, C-3PO removed his cloak and revealed his new plating. Skywalker was promptly commed and summoned by Obi-Wan Kenobi, and was subsequently granted the title of Jedi Knight. Free of his Padawan braid, he gave the hairpiece to C-3PO to present to Amidala as a gift. Amidala returned the favor by giving R2-D2 to Skywalker, separating the two droids once more.^[20]

When Count Dooku, the Head of State of the Confederacy, arranged for the son of the notorious crime lord Jabba the Hutt to be kidnapped, the Republic feared that Jabba would blame the Jedi and in turn allow the Confederacy access to hyperspace routes through Hutt Space. Amidala offered to parley with Jabba's uncle Ziro, but ended up a captive in the Hutt's Coruscant palace after discovering that Ziro was in league with Dooku. Before being imprisoned, the senator contacted C-3PO and called for help; the protocol droid in turn brought a contingent of clone troopers to Ziro's palace, who captured the Hutt and freed Amidala. C-3PO was relieved that his timing had been perfect.^[26]

In the thick of the fighting[]

While Skywalker was leading a fleet of Republic warships against the Separatist heavy cruiser Malevolence, C-3PO was in Amidala's apartment, aiding the Senator and Jar Jar Binks in sifting through datacards for any mention of the cruiser or its fate. Minus Binks, the group took Amidala's yacht to a point in space near the Kaliida Shoals Medical Center to contact a member of the Separatist-allied InterGalactic Banking Clan who had sued for peace. With the senator focused on the mission, C-3PO set the hyperspace course and filed away several messages that had arrived from Rodian Senator Onaconda Farr via the HoloNet.^[28] When the ship exited hyperspace, the two found themselves caught in a trap, as Dooku had arranged for them to arrive immediately adjacent to the crippled Malevolence, which was incapable of hyperspace travel after being battered by Skywalker's fleet. The yacht became trapped in the cruiser's tractor beam, but Amidala set the yacht's engines to destroy themselves as she and C-3PO sneaked out of their ship and onto the Malevolence.^[27]

Following the yacht's explosion, C-3PO and Amidala made their way through the cruiser's corridors, and attempted to get a broken comm panel working in order to contact Skywalker's fleet. However, they were forced to hide when C-3PO spotted an advancing squad of battle droids led by General Grievous, the Supreme Commander of the Confederacy's droid armies. After the squad passed, Amidala contacted Skywalker, who had boarded the Malevolence along with Kenobi and R2-D2. They agreed to meet amidst the cruiser's rail jet system; when C-3PO and Amidala arrived, they were accosted by battle droids, which prompted the senator to push the protocol droid into a moving hovertrain. After the battle droid threat was neutralized, Kenobi began levitating C-3PO to safety, but the floating droid was hit full-on by a moving hover train, which was only halted when R2-D2 sliced into a computer terminal and shut it down. The sudden stop launched C-3PO onto a nearby platform, where he quickly regained his bearings and again wandered the cruiser's corridors before being located by R2-D2. The two droids joined Skywalker and Amidala in racing to the Twilight, a freighter that Skywalker had brought aboard, where they rendezvoused with Kenobi and fled the Malevolence, which, owing to an act of sabotage by Skywalker and Amidala, exploded when its hyperdrive was activated.^[27]

After returning to Coruscant, Amidala received Senator Farr's messages, and prepared to travel to Rodia in a bid to ensure that the beleaguered planet remained loyal to the Republic. C-3PO and Representative Binks began to prepare her star skiff for takeoff from a landing platform when they were approached by the con men Dannl Faytonni and Achk Med-Beq, who were posing as Republic Judicials. C-3PO calmly acquiesced when the scammers claimed that they were commandeering the skiff for "government business," but before the droid could disengage the ship's autopilot, Binks mistakenly caused the entire platform to flip upside-down. The Gungan quickly righted the platform, but the confusion caused C-3PO to forget to turn the autopilot off, which ultimately caused Faytonni and Med-Beq to be taken directly to the Senate Commandos that they had been fleeing from. With the skiff gone, C-3PO and Binks prepped Amidala's new yacht instead.^[29]

When the trio took the yacht to Rodia's Senatorial Palace, C-3PO and Binks were instructed to remain at its landing platform while Amidala conducted talks with Senator Farr. After an attempt by the two at communicating with local swamp creatures that resulted in fruit being thrown at the protocol droid's face, a squad of B1 battle droids approached the yacht, as Senator Farr had recently struck a deal with Viceroy Nute Gunray of the Separatist-allied Trade Federation. The unintentional machinations of the clumsy Gungan then set off a series of events: the yacht's hatch closed, C-3PO became stuck to a magnetic hoist that swung into and destroyed the battle droids, and an LM-432 crab droid arrived before plummeting off of the landing platform into water with Binks atop it. Still stuck to the magnetic hoist, C-3PO lamented what he believed to be the Gungan's death, before Binks climbed back onto the platform and released the droid from his magnetism. His next clumsy action was to crush and destroy the yacht with the hoist, however. As the two scoured what remained of the ship's bridge, Binks discovered a Jedi-esque cloak and rushed off to save Amidala, whom they deduced had been taken hostage by Separatist forces.^[30]

As C-3PO reluctantly followed the Gungan, they were spotted by the droid escort of Viceroy Gunray, who mistook Binks for a Jedi and chased him off. C-3PO surrendered, and was sent to a dismantling center on the orders of the Viceroy. En route, the two battle droids assigned to escort C-3PO were destroyed by an escaped Amidala, who quickly ordered the protocol droid to locate a comm center and send a distress signal to any nearby Republic forces. Discovering such a center, C-3PO told its battle droid guards that the "Jedi" had been spotted, resulting in them rushing to subdue it. C-3PO then accessed a secure military frequency and contacted a clone trooper, before being arrested by two new battle droids and being brought to Amidala, who had also been re-captured. As Gunray prepared to order the two to be shot by droidekas, Binks arrived with a Kwazel Maw, a large sea creature that he had befriended; the creature easily routed the battle droids present before Senator Farr turned on Gunray and arrested him in the name of the Republic. Commander CC-1004 and his forces then arrived to apprehend the Viceroy, and C-3PO found himself impressed that the Gungan's foolishness had saved the day.^[30]

A white truce, a blue shadow[]

C-3PO was again reunited with R2-D2 during a trip to Orto Plutonia, when Amidala lent the protocol droid to Skywalker for the mission to the icy world. When contact was lost with a planetside military outpost, Skywalker and Kenobi brought the droids and a contingent of Clone cold assault troopers to investigate, and were accompanied by Senator Riyo Chuchi of Pantora, as well as Chi Cho, Chairman of the Pantoran Assembly, due to the planet's location in Pantoran space. When the Jedi discovered that the clone troopers stationed on Pantora had been wiped out by a group of local Talz, C-3PO and Cho joined them in meeting with Thi-Sen, the Talz's tribal leader. C-3PO translated as Thi-Sen welcomed Cho in peace, and when Cho responded by angrily declaring war on the natives. The conflict was quickly halted when Chuchi received permission from the Pantoran Speaker of the Assembly to negotiate peace, and C-3PO and R2-D2 accompanied Chuchi, the Jedi, and what clone troopers were not fighting to the scene of the battle, where Chuchi, aided by C-3PO's translation, made peace with Thi-Sen.^[32]

Shortly after the Mission to Orto Plutonia, Queen Neeyutnee of Naboo summoned Amidala home after discovering a scouting party of battle droids on the planet; Amidala brought C-3PO and Representative Binks in another new Nubian yacht to investigate with the hope of procuring military aid.^[33] After landing in the hangar of Theed's Royal Palace, the three were taken to a secure room by Neeyutnee and Typho where a powered-down T-series tactical droid was being analyzed. When the droid awoke but found itself without the use of its photoreceptors, C-3PO convinced it that it was aboard a Separatist ship, and gleaned that there was a secret lab producing some sort of virus before Binks's clumsiness destroyed the droid. Binks, however, had found an insect inside the droid that he identified as coming from Naboo's Eastern swamps; the entire party contacted Jedi Masters Yoda and Mace Windu to request the aid of Skywalker and Kenobi. C-3PO and Typho remained in Theed to attempt to uncover data from other captured battle droids while Amidala and Binks left to scout the swamps, and discovered a hologram of the scientist Doctor Nuvo Vindi inside a B1's head. Joined by the Gungan Peppi Bow, who had discovered traces of the deadly Blue Shadow Virus in a nearby river, they greeted Skywalker, Kenobi, Skywalker's Padawan Ahsoka Tano, and R2-D2 as they arrived on-planet, and showed them the hologram before the Jedi set out to discover Vindi's laboratory.^[31] The mad doctor was synthesizing an airborne strain of the virus, but the Jedi and their clone troopers subdued him and prevented it from escaping his laboratory.^[34]

Intrigue in the Senate[]

Shortly after the blue shadow crisis, C-3PO was back on Coruscant, and accompanied Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan to Amidala's office in the Republic Executive Building. The two escorted Amidala to the lobby of the Senate Building, where the Gran Senator Philo had called a meeting of important senators in anticipation of a vote on the proposed Enhanced Privacy Invasion Bill. The meeting was interrupted, however, by the bounty hunter Cad Bane and several other mercenaries, who took the senators and their aides hostage in a bid to force a pardon for Ziro the Hutt. Bane shot and killed Philo, and his companions subdued Skywalker, who had been elsewhere in the Senate Building at the time. After an unconscious Skywalker was brought to the group of hostages, the bounty hunters left, but rigged a system of lasers that would trigger planted explosives with the slightest touch. After regaining consciousness, Skywalker used his lightsaber to cut a hole around the group, dropping them to safety in the room below just before Bane remotely activated the explosives.^[36]

C-3PO remained on Coruscant for some time afterwards, and when Skywalker arrived at Amidala's apartment to surprise his wife with dinner, the protocol droid warmly greeted his Maker before being promptly ignored and subsequently dismissed by Amidala. The married couple were soon sent by the Jedi Council to Cato Neimoidia along with Senator Rush Clovis of the Banking Clan, and brought C-3PO and R2-D2 with them. Amidala would parley with Senator Lott Dod of the Trade Federation while simultaneously spying on Clovis, as both Dod and Clovis were suspected of being in league with the Confederacy. After Amidala's star skiff landed outside of Dod's Palace, C-3PO accompanied Amidala and Clovis as they greeted the Neimoidian Senator, but soon found himself largely unneeded; he was dismissed by Clovis for the night following dinner, and retired to the quarters that Amidala had been assigned. There he found an agitated Skywalker, who quickly left after being commed by his wife. Amidala was soon poisoned by Dod, and was brought to her quarters by Clovis to be attended to by C-3PO and a 2-1B surgical droid; Skywalker sought an antidote to her poison and brought her to the palace's lobby to confront Dod, and was followed by C-3PO and Clovis. When Clovis threatened Dod's life, C-3PO accepted the antidote from one of Dod's aides. With the antidote and a datacard that Amidala had obtained that implicated Clovis in a Separatist scheme procured, Skywalker, Amidala, and the droids left the planet, leaving Clovis at the mercy of the Trade Federation.^[35]

Remaining at Amidala's side, C-3PO accompanied her and Kenobi in the senator's repulsorpod within the Senate's Grand Convocation Chamber as Amidala presented evidence to the gathered senators that revealed the wishes of Mandalore's Deputy Minister Jerec that his planet remain neutral in the war. With the evidence in front of them, the Senate rescinded an earlier vote that had called for Republic occupation of the planet.^[37] Shortly thereafter, Amidala and some of her allies in the Senate introduced a bill proposing the cutting of military spending, believing that diplomacy was the solution to war. C-3PO attended several meetings of the informal coalition in Amidala's office, and accompanied his master as she spoke to the Senate regarding their views. While he was serving drinks at one such meeting, Senator Farr of Rodia suffered what appeared to be a heart attack and died. C-3PO attended his funeral, and Amidala and Senator Organa soon after discovered that he had been poisoned by his aide Lolo Purs.^[38]

When a massive Zillo Beast was brought to Coruscant following its discovery on Malastare by Skywalker and Mace Windu, opinions on what to do with the creature differed greatly within the small circle of those who knew of its existence. Amidala caught wind of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's plan to kill the beast, and invited Skywalker and Kenobi to meet her and C-3PO in the Senate building. Skywalker arrived with R2-D2, who C-3PO greeted and ensured was staying out of trouble. The Senator convinced her husband to appeal to his friend Palpatine, and the droids joined their masters in appearing before Palpatine in the Chancellor's Suite. As Skywalker and Amidala discussed their options with Palpatine and Vice Chair Mas Amedda, the Zillo Beast meanwhile escaped from its captivity and charged through Coruscant's cityscape. Amidala assigned C-3PO to evacuate the staff of the Republic Executive Building, and after he had completed the task, the beast reached the Chancellor's office. Amedda had previously excused himself from the discussion, but Palpatine, Skywalker, Amidala, R2-D2, and C-3PO evacuated through an emergency escape route and boarded an executive ship piloted by a Senate Commando. As the commando took the ship into the air, it was grabbed by one of the Zillo Beast's massive hands.^[39]

Skywalker used his lightsaber to cleave the ship clean in half, sending the bow and all six passengers sliding down the exterior of the Senate Rotunda. C-3PO landed atop R2-D2, who had attached himself to the side of the building with a tow cable, but the astromech droid soon disengaged himself from the cable and used his booster rockets to make his way over to Palpatine and fly the Chancellor to safety. C-3PO lost hold of the cable and fell to the ground, but clone troopers in LAAT gunships used gas bombs to kill the creature and end the threat it posed to Coruscant's citizens. The poison they emitted was held back with the Force by Skywalker, as well as Yoda and Aayla Secura, who had been attempting to engage the beast. C-3PO, R2-D2, Palpatine, Amidala, and the three Jedi remained safe from the poison gas. The following morning, the entire party was present as the Zillo Beast's corpse was taken away from the scene.^[39]

Peculiar peril[]

C-3PO and R2-D2 were later dispatched on a mercy mission to Aleen alongside the clone trooper Wolfpack. A series of deadly groundquakes had shaken the planet, and C-3PO's role in the relief team was to act as a translator between the clones and the native Aleena. The group rode LAATs into a ruined city, where they were greeted by the Aleena King Manchucho. He heralded their arrival as a sign that the "Gods below" would once more know peace. A brief aftershock then rumbled through the ground, and C-3PO's insistence that the Aleena remain calm earned him a cheer from the delighted locals. While R2-D2 left to download information on the delivered equipment into the mainframe computer station, C-3PO remained with Clone Commander Wolffe, who was overseeing the setup of temporary hospitals and kitchens. However, Manchucho refused the kitchen, insisting that the relief team first needed to "make peace in the ground." C-3PO soon left Wolffe's side to seek out R2-D2, who was finishing his download in a destroyed building. A small group of Aleena were insistent that the two droids come and see something, and C-3PO and R2-D2 followed them to a large hole in the ground that was mostly covered by a heavy seal. C-3PO was sent tumbling into the hole by another aftershock, and R2-D2 followed his friend down with the aid of his booster rockets.^[40]

After landing in a dark, subterranean cavern, the droids sought a way out with the aid of R2-D2's glowrod. What C-3PO initially took to be daylight ahead turned out to be phosphorescent plants in the midst of an underground forest. C-3PO was then surrounded by what appeared to be glowing insects, but the pests were shooed by R2-D2's fire extinguishing foam. However, the action caused several of the forest's trees to stand up and encircle the droids. Actually members of the Kindalo species, they demanded to know why the droids had come and why the surface dwellers has disturbed their peace. C-3PO began to explain himself, and one Kindalo revealed that the ground had shaken in order to keep the deadly surface air out of the underground. When C-3PO offered to help solve their problem, he was directed to see someone called Orphne, and he and R2-D2 quickly departed. Inside a chamber, the glowing insects reappeared and metamorphosed into a radiant female being: Orphne.^[40]

Orphne told of an ancient covenant between the Aleena and the subterranean dwellers that had recently been broken by the movement of poisonous surface air to their world that did not go through the natural filtering process. The underground dwellers had caused the groundquakes in retaliation. Eager to prevent more Aleena deaths, C-3PO offered to seal the breach, but the mysterious Orphne disappeared after leaving them with a riddle: "You can run but can not walk. You have a mouth but cannot talk. You have a head but never weep. You have a bed but never sleep. Ask yourself, who are you?" C-3PO bid R2-D2 to play back the riddle one more time and then pondered its meaning. Unbeknownst to the protocol droid, R2-D2 found several circles on the floor that were decorated with symbols representing the four elements. When he sprayed some water on the appropriate circle, it helped C-3PO solve the riddle—a river. The chamber's central circle then rose into the air on a jet of water and carried both droids back to Aleen's surface.^[40]

Both droids were launched high into the air and sent crashing down next to the hole through which they had initially fallen. Toxic underground air was rising through the breach and causing nearby Aleena to cough, which prompted R2-D2 to pull on it with his cable gun. C-3PO added his own strength by pushing, and the droids sealed the hole. The two worlds were once more separated. At that moment, several clone troopers arrived; skeptical of C-3PO's claims of an adventure, they escorted the droids back to the LAATs. Manchucho thanked C-3PO for his help, and the group launched to return to their ship and proceed to a rendezvous with Jedi Master Adi Gallia.^[40]

While traveling aboard Gallia's Venator-class Star Destroyer en route to Republic space, C-3PO communicated with a holographic image of Amidala that was displayed by R2-D2. She told the protocol droid that he was needed back on Coruscant, but that plan was curtailed by the arrival of a Separatist fleet. An evacuation was ordered after the Venator's main reactor was hit and a Separatist attack force boarded the Star Destroyer. In a corridor, C-3PO and R2-D2 saw General Grievous engage Master Gallia in a lightsaber duel, and they consequently fled in search of an escape pod. When they ended up in a hangar, C-3PO reluctantly followed R2-D2 into a Y-wing bomber, which the astromech operated from the droid socket and piloted out into the unfolding space battle. R2-D2 destroyed one Separatist vulture droid but eventually took them to the nearby planet Patitite Pattuna when the Venator was turned into stellar debris. A pursuing vulture droid knocked out the fighter's reactor, but when it lost them in the atmosphere's cloud cover, R2-D2 brought the Y-wing around behind it and destroyed it. The Y-wing's reactor then shut down, and the droids crash-landed into a marsh.^[41]

After climbing out of the damaged ship, C-3PO and R2-D2 were charged at by the world's natives: the diminutive Patitites, who stood less than half a meter tall. The droids' dismissal of them as a threat was countered by strikes from the Patitites' powered spears, which produced electrical currents and knocked both droids to the ground. C-3PO and R2-D2 were both then tied to the ground and told of the virtues of the Big Hay-Zu, their leader. Hay-Zu soon arrived on the scene and banished them from the planet, but when the droids were cut loose, an offended R2-D2 approached the Patitite leader with the intention of fighting. C-3PO tried to intervene but ended up inadvertently knocking the astromech down and turning Hay-Zu into a pile of goo. Free from their leaders' despotism, the Patitites cheered his conquerors and set to work helping R2-D2 fix the Y-wing. Several of them asked C-3PO to be their new leader, but he instead decided to introduce them to democracy. The three smartest and most compassionate Patitites were brought forward, with the new leader to be chosen by way of applause, but squabbling broke out between the divided crowd. C-3PO and R2-D2 quickly boarded the repaired starfighter and left the Patitites to their new democracy, knocking them all over with the backwash of the ship's ion drive in the process.^[41]

During their flight from Patitite Patuna, the droids realized that ship and occupants alike were running out of power. They accordingly touched down on the nearby planet of Balnab, and a frightened C-3PO followed his companion into the fog after R2-D2 scanned for a viable power source. However, a group of Balnab hunters quickly found them and ensnared them in a net. The two droids were brought to a clearing surrounded by canyon walls, where an enormous hologram of Albee Dewaw—a being of the same species as most of the Balnab hunters—killed one of his underlings with a bolt of lightning for daring to show independent thought by bringing non-living things before him. C-3PO did not hesitate to point out that he was a hologram, and Dewaw responded by sending more lightning bolts striking the ground around the protocol droid. Meanwhile, R2-D2 discovered a hidden room in a canyon wall and learned that Dewaw was nothing more than a false being projected by four DUM-series pit droids at computers. When he shoved one of the droids out into the open, the ruse was revealed and the Balnab hunters stormed the hidden room. A lightfight ensued, and C-3PO and R2-D2 walked away from the ensuing explosions that rocked the canyon.^[41]

The droids made their way back to the Y-wing but were forced to stop under a large mushroom as they both ran out of power. Not long afterward, a group of Weequay pirates found them and brought droids and Y-wing alike aboard their pirate ship, the Marauder. C-3PO and R2-D2 were plugged in to recharge, but when they awoke, they were ushered into a droid fighting ring, where the ASP-series droid K0-5D was vanquishing all challengers with deadly flamethrowers. C-3PO and R2-D2 were forced into the ring but were saved by a hull breach when General Grievous's flagship arrived in-system and decided to use the Marauder as target practice.^[41]

C-3PO grabbed hold of R2-D2 as the astromech used his booster rockets to carry them through space and safely take them to a hangar aboard Grievous's ship. A group of B1 battle droids immediately arrested them and sent them to the incinerator, where they were placed on a conveyor belt that began edging them toward their doom. However, a Republic fleet arrived at that moment and attacked, and R2-D2 rocketed both himself and C-3PO away from the incinerator in the midst of the chaos. They found both Adi Gallia and Master Plo Koon destroying a small resistance force of battle droids, as Grievous had fled at the first sign of trouble. A stunned Commander Wolffe recognized C-3PO and R2-D2, and C-3PO regaled him with a tale of their adventures as the Republic forces returned to their fleet.^[41]

War's end[]

Last-ditch diplomacy[]

Three years into the war, Senator Amidala yet sought to entice neutral worlds to join the Republic, and she brought C-3PO and Captain Typho on a mission to the planet Bri'ahl. R2-D2 joined the trio, and as Amidala negotiated with President Vuul, she told the droids to not stray too far from the Presidential Palace. Nevertheless, they took a ride on a Bri'ahlian Sky-sled and crashed into a forest. C-3PO's head was separated from its body, and after it argued with R2-D2 over whose fault the accident had been, the astromech left to retrieve the body. In his absence, a green creature considered eating C-3PO's head but ultimately tossed it down the side of a hill. It rolled into a river, and R2-D2 arrived with C-3PO's body in tow to make a rescue. However, a large mammoth was grazing by the river bank, and after an electrical charge from R2-D2, it swatted both droids high into the air.^[42]

The droids' rough landing crushed three Bri'ahlian rebels who had secretly thrown their lot in with Count Dooku. The rebels had outfitted their soldiers with clone trooper armor and planned to storm the Presidential Palace. C-3PO's head was hurriedly re-attached by R2-D2, and when the droids came across the faux-troopers, loose servomotors in C-3PO caused his hand to slap one trooper in the face. The rebel fell to the ground and accidentally blasted a companion, which led to a panic among the rebels and a round of blasting. A thermal detonator was thrown, and C-3PO and R2-D2 were suddenly the only ones left standing. Ignorant of the plot they had just foiled, they returned to the Palace, where Amidala berated them for being out too late.^[42]

A hero's fall[]

In the same year, the Republic chased the Confederacy from the Core Worlds and Inner Rim and took the fight to their opponents in the Outer Rim. Amidala's Loyalist Committee of senators saw this as a cue for the Supreme Chancellor to relinquish his emergency powers, and scheduled an appointment with him to discuss the matter. C-3PO and Amidala joined their loyalist compatriots outside Palpatine's office, where they were dismissed by Sate Pestage, one of his chief advisors. Despite this, the group waited for Palpatine to conclude a meeting with the rest of his inner circle, and was eventually welcomed in by the Chancellor. As Senator Organa requested that Palpatine overturn the Enhanced Security and Enforcement Act that allowed warrantless searches and seizures, the Chancellor told him to bring it before the Senate, and recognized C-3PO as having been built by Skywalker. C-3PO was honored that the Chancellor remembered him.^[44]

The distraction offered by the Outer Rim Sieges allowed the Separatists to launched a siege of Coruscant and kidnap the Supreme Chancellor.^[44] During the battle, a hole was blown in the side of Amidala's apartment, causing a good deal of distress to C-3PO. His master was unfazed, however, and along with C-3PO and Typho's assistance, began evacuating the residents of the building.^[45] Afterwards, C-3PO and Amidala made their way to the Senate Rotunda and rendezvoused with Senators Organa and Mon Mothma, who were in the company of Jedi Masters Shaak Ti and Stass Allie. As Separatist vulture droids and droid tri-fighters flew through the planet's skyways and rained destruction down on the Coruscanti people, the two Jedi were searching for and attempting to protect the Chancellor. They offered Allie's skimmer to the Senators and took off on Ti's speeder bike to Palpatine's residence at the 500 Republica building. C-3PO and the senators boarded the skimmer, and Organa piloted it through thick traffic, but they were soon shot down by vulture droids and made a crash landing on a landing platform. After exiting the downed vehicle, Amidala and Organa used blasters to keep vulture droids in patrol mode at bay in order to allow LAAT gunships clear shots at them, and the group then took refuge in the Embassy Mall shopping center.^[44]

Civilians crowded the mall, and C-3PO conferred with a silver protocol droid, who warned him that dark times were ahead. He told C-3PO to accept a memory wipe if it was ever offered, as the alternative would be living in confusion as the lines between good and evil were blurred. The silver droid departed, and C-3PO and Amidala watched on the Embassy's HoloNet monitor as General Grievous displayed the kidnapped Chancellor and proclaimed that the end of the Republic was at hand.^[44] Kenobi, Skywalker, and R2-D2 returned from the Outer Rim, however, boarded Grievous's flagship, the Invisible Hand, killed Count Dooku and rescued the Chancellor; Grievous and the Separatist then fled the planet. C-3PO joined the Senate's Loyalist Committee and Mace Windu in welcoming the day's heroes outside the Senate Building. After greeting R2-D2, C-3PO was entertained by the astromech's tales of the rescue.^[43]

As Amidala grew more distressed by the increasing power held by Palpatine, she drafted a petition asking him to lay down his emergency powers, and hosted other concerned senators at meetings in her apartment. During at least one such meeting, C-3PO served drinks to the gathered senators.^[46] The days after the Separatist attack were harrowing for both Amidala and Skywalker, and they ultimately saw the latter fall to the dark side of the Force under the influence of Palpatine, who was actually the Sith Lord Darth Sidious and had been conspiring against the Jedi. As Jedi across the galaxy were killed, Skywalker, now known as Darth Vader, brought the 501st Legion of clone troopers to the Jedi Temple and slaughtered all the Jedi present. As Amidala watched the temple burn from her apartment window, C-3PO contacted the office of the Chancellor and learned that Skywalker had returned to the temple. Vader and R2-D2 then arrived at the apartment in Vader's Jedi starfighter; C-3PO briefly conversed with R2-D2 before Vader took the fighter to Mustafar, where he killed the entire Separatist Council and ended the war. After learning of his fall to the dark side from Kenobi, Amidala took C-3PO to Mustafar to see him; C-3PO piloted the skiff, allowing a reprieve for the distraught senator.^[43]

Unbeknownst to either of them, Kenobi stowed away aboard the skiff, and his arrival at Mustafar caused an enraged Vader to choke his wife with the Force. As he and Kenobi left the platform and engaged in a lightsaber duel, C-3PO and R2-D2 brought Amidala back aboard the skiff and attempted to stabilize her condition. Kenobi soon returned, having defeated Vader, and piloted the skiff with C-3PO to the planetoid Polis Massa to rendezvous with Yoda and Senator Bail Organa. Amidala was brought to a medical center, where C-3PO, R2-D2, Kenobi, Organa and Yoda bore witness to the birth of two twins she had been carrying: Luke and Leia. Weakened and without the will to continue living, Amidala passed away on the operating table. As the five survivors brought her body to Naboo on Organa's corvette, the Sundered Heart, Kenobi and Yoda discussed the situation with Organa: The Jedi Order had nearly been wiped out, and the Republic had been reorganized into a Galactic Empire with Palpatine as its Emperor. Yoda and Kenobi went into hiding, the latter watching over Luke, who was entrusted to the Lars family on Tatooine. Leia was adopted by Organa and his wife; the twins would be kept safe from the Sith in the dark times ahead. Organa entrusted C-3PO and R2-D2 to Raymus Antilles, the Captain of the Tantive IV, who was instructed to treat them well and, to C-3PO's horror, to wipe the protocol droid's memory.^[43] As Organa intended for the droids to one day belong to Leia, he knew that erasing all knowledge of the child's parents from C-3PO was the best way to keep the chatty droid from revealing her true parentage.^[11] 3PO ultimately pushed the memory wipe button himself to erase his own memory (also making sure to say goodbye to R2-D2 before going through with it), although he unintentionally ended up erasing an RA-7 protocol droid who was guiding him through the process.^[47] During his time with the Alderaanian royal family, C-3PO served for a time as the Tantive IV's cook and maître d'.^[48]

Early Imperial era[]

Separated from the Tantive IV[]

In the early years of the Empire's reign, the droid duo were in one of the Tantive IV's escape pods while the ship's Chief Petty Officer, Corla Metonae, was supervising test launches of the pods^[50] in the Maramere system. The Lok Revenants, a local pirate group, attacked^[51] the Tantive IV, which was forced to flee and to abandon its jettisoned pods. Bail Organa made the finding of such valuable property an imperative priority,^[50] but the droids were captured by the Lok Revenants. They shared an adventure or two with the freebooters, but after suddenly finding themselves free of their captors, C-3PO and R2-D2 sought out employment with the Intergalactic Droid Agency. They were placed aboard a shuttle en route to the planet Dodz to meet their new master: the crystal merchant Lott Kemp.^[51]

Aboard the shuttle, several other droids made disparaging wisecracks about the tiny world's barren landscape. After landing, the counterparts trekked to the address they had been given, only to find Kemp's home in ruins. A young Human male named Jost Ellon appeared with a blaster drawn, but when C-3PO explained himself, Ellon calmed down and revealed that Dodz's Governor Kugg unleashed a massive Destroyer droid against any who refused to pay his exorbitant tax rates. Kemp had been the latest victim, although he had survived and gone missing. Ellon recruited C-3PO and R2-D2 to serve him and help him with lifting things; they then boarded Ellon's landspeeder and made their way to the boy's home.^[52]

Having lost his family to the Kugg's Destroyer, Ellon lived in a modest cave dwelling scattered with technology that he scavenged and sold. C-3PO and R2-D2 discovered an old Ranger X-One defense robot, which only activated when Ellon gave it a swift kick. The Ranger's power was almost depleted, but a reflexive shove that sent C-3PO tumbling into a tub of water was enough to convince Ellon that he now had the means with which to stand up to Kugg. The boy and his three droids raced to the main dwelling of the planet's Citizen's Council, only to find that Kugg had just terrorized them and forced them to pay triple what he had previously asked for. Head Councilman Althon had given up hope, but a mysterious old man convinced Ellon to fight against Kugg's tyranny. C-3PO and R2-D2 accompanied Ellon as he journeyed to Kugg's mansion the next day with his Ranger, and when Kugg unleashed the Destroyer, a battle began. The Ranger gained the upper hand but quickly began to lose power; when Ellon tried to interfere, the Destroyer easily knocked him over. The Ranger only made it back into the fight when R2-D2 fired his cables at the droid and used himself as a medium through which to siphon power from the Destroyer to the Ranger. However, he overloaded, and although the Destroyer exploded, R2-D2 was left severely depleted of power. Kugg was taken into citizens' custody, and Ellon saw the droids safely aboard^[52] an Intergalactic Droid Agency shuttle that had been dispatched to retrieve them for repairs.^[51] It was bound for the droid repair station of the scientist Lonn Idd,^[49] whom they hoped would repair R2-D2's microsynapse damage.^[52]

When the Annoo-dat gangster Tig Fromm came to the space station to steal a powerful laser from Idd, C-3PO and R2-D2 helped Idd's children, Vik and Nikki, free the scientist; C-3PO donned the outer shell of a guardian droid and destroyed all of Fromm's hover guard droids, allowing Vik to trap Fromm in a packing net and turn him over to the authorities.^[49] Lonn Idd gratefully repaired R2-D2, and his children ferried both droids to a nearby Intergalactic Droid Agency station, where they were almost immediately purchased by Ambassador Zell of Majoor^[51] and assigned to act as tutors and companions of Zell's son Llez, who had dreams of dismantling C-3PO and using R2-D2 for entertainment purposes. During a diplomatic mission to Armath that saw Zell command a fleet of Majooran consular ships, Llez fled from his father and took up with the pirate Reddjak, but returned to his father when Reddjak was personally defeated by Zell.^[53]

A wrinkle in time[]

After vowing to take a more active role in raising his son, Zell realized that the droids' service was no longer needed. They were dismissed, and the Intergalactic Droid Agency arranged for their sale to an impoverished branch of the Republic Diplomatic Corps in the Thanium sector. Their assignment was to be diplomatic couriers, which C-3PO believed would make them droids of distinction.^[51] When they arrived at the Royal Palace of the planet Sooma, they found that Plooz—son of King Gokus of nearby Alzar—had stowed away aboard a Sooman freighter and ended up in the court of Sooma's King Zornog. Sludd, First General to Alzar's forces, had in fact concocted a scheme to overthrow his King, and had tricked Plooz into boarding the freighter. C-3PO and R2-D2 stopped a hyperactive Plooz from choking Zornog, and the King gave them his fastest starship to use to ferry the Prince back to his furious father. En route, C-3PO was vexed when Plooz began devouring Neuvian sundaes from the ship's food synthesizer, but panicked when a graver threat appeared: battleships of General Sludd. C-3PO hailed the vessels and informed them that Plooz was aboard, but Sludd prepared to attack anyway. The protocol droid ordered R2-D2 to prepare the ship's hyperdrive, and Plooz, hoping to help, inadvertently disrupted the ship's antimatter pods. With electron torpedoes incoming, C-3PO ordered his counterpart to jump to hyperspace regardless.^[54]

Aware that there were no stars to be seen in the midst of a bright pink opening that surrounded the ship, C-3PO was surprised to learn from R2-D2 that their ship had created a time warp by causing an antimatter overload upon jumping to hyperspace.^[54] After rocketing through the Endor Gate they had created, the ship traveled years into the future^[51] and into the Endor system. C-3PO restrained a wailing Plooz from dashing for an escape pod, but he lost control of the child when attempting to give instructions to R2-D2. As Plooz's pod made its way towards the forest moon of Endor, C-3PO and R2-D2 landed the ship to give chase.^[54] On the moon, they met with Kneesaa a Jari Kintaka, an Ewok Princess and the daughter of Chief Chirpa of the Ewok's Bright Tree Village, who spoke an obscure dialect of the Inner Zuma that C-3PO understood. Kneesaa brought them to a peace summit occurring between Chirpa's Council of Elders and King Gorneesh of the Duloks, another sentient species native to the moon. Gorneesh was holding a terrified Plooz over a chasm, and C-3PO demanded that he be let go. Just then, rays from Endor's primary star Ibleam reflected off of C-3PO's plating, giving him the glowing appearance of what the Duloks perceived to be an Ewok demon. The Duloks fled, and Ploz was rescued from the chasm by R2-D2 and the Ewok Wicket Wystri Warrick.^[55]

After the Ewoks escorted the droids and Plooz back to their Sooman craft, the trio piloted the ship through the Endor Gate seconds before it closed, and returned to their own time. Sludd's fleet remained where they had left it and fired on them, but C-3PO took control of the situation and directed R2-D2 to land the damaged craft outside Gokus's palace. As Plooz entered the palace to find his father, Sludd landed his own ship and held the two droids at gunpoint. When Gokus arrived, demanding an explanation from his general, R2-D2 played a recording of Sludd's earlier threat to kill Plooz and seize control of both Alzar and Sooma. Livid, Gokus had his general and his co-conspirators thrown in prison.^[55] C-3PO and R2-D2 remained in Zornog's service, but the fidgety king quickly tired of their constant bickering. The last straw came when R2-D2 inadvertently shorted out the palace's power system, and the droids were abandoned on the planet of R-Duba.^[51] They made their way to The Droid Store of businessman Van P. Quist.^[56]

When R2-D2 was purchased by the human Kirk Windjammer, C-3PO found a new owner of his own after Baron Gavern Starlock bought him to serve as a translator for R-Duba's Prince Jagoda. Starlock soon betrayed his Prince by helping the people of Dorande attempt to conquer R-Duba, but found his efforts thwarted by C-3PO, R2-D2, and Windjammer. In the process, C-3PO stopped Starlock's droid BX-00 from assassinating the Prince.^[56] Reunited, the droids left Jagoda's court and suggested that Windjammer be appointed Jagoda's Chief Advisor. Continuing their journey through the stars, C-3PO and R2-D2 stowed away aboard a ship headed for Ord Gertoth.^[51]

Troubles with Tig Fromm[]

C-3PO and R2-D2 were kicked off of the ship, however, at a one-woman refueling station operated by a Bimm businesswoman named Sindee. As their new master, Sindee taught R2-D2 how to play dejarik, but her gambling addiction saw her lose both droids to the smuggler Zevel Hortine in a game of Liar's Cut.^[51] In the year 15 BBY,^[58] Hortine jettisoned a large amount of contraband from his ship while being arrested above the planet Ingo. The droids were in the ship's cargo bay at the time.^[51] After landing in the planet's Vaj Desert, the droids trekked across the sands before being spotted by two speeder jockeys, Thall Joben and Jord Dusat. Having been in search of an R2 unit, the two declared themselves the new masters of the droid duo and welcomed them into Joben's speeder. While traveling to their auto-shop, the jockeys crossed into the desert's restricted zone and were pursued by seeker probe droids; the chase saw C-3PO fall from Joben's speeder and land in the desert's sands, where he was accosted by a large droid tank. Throwing a rock at it, the protocol droid was surprised to see it explode. Unbeknownst to him, the Fromm Tower Droid had actually been destroyed by Kea Moll, a young resistance fighter from Annoo who had made her way to Ingo.^[57]

With the seekers successfully evaded, the jockeys brought the droids back to their shop. C-3PO and R2-D2 helped fix up Joben and Dusat's speeders and were shown the White Witch, a heavily modified speeder that the jockeys intended to enter into an upcoming race with R2-D2 flying in its droid socket. Joben then left the shop for the night and brought the droids with him, but noticed pursuit by an unknown party and hid his speeder accordingly. With the pursuers dodged, the trio returned to the shop, only to find that Dusat had been kidnapped. Following the arrival of Kea Moll, who had been seeking a mechanic, R2-D2's sensors detected movement outside. Investigating, Joben discovered that his speeder had been sabotaged, and soon found himself surrounded by hostile droids. C-3PO, R2-D2, and Moll took the White Witch outside and saved Joben, before tracking the droids to a base belonging to Tig Fromm, the Anoo-Dat gangster that C-3PO and R2-D2 had previously encountered while in the service of Lonn Idd.^[57]

After R2-D2 infiltrated the base, a Fromm Tower Droid opened the complex's doors in an effort to locate the intruder. It was swiftly decapitated by the White Witch, which zoomed into the open doors and made its way through a cave system after locating Dusat on a map of the base. After coming to a locked door, Joben cut his way through with a lightsaber that a customer had previously left him, before taking R2-D2 in the White Witch through the base's tube system to rescue Dusat. Remaining at the computer that displayed the map, C-3PO and Moll monitored Joben's progress and redirected tube traffic out of his way. Their efforts were nearly thwarted by a patrol droid and a maintenance droid, but C-3PO tricked the two into inadvertently destroying each other. The protocol droid's cunning continued as he directed all patrol droids away from the Witch over a loudspeaker, and convinced two more of the units that he was their ally and had captured Moll.^[57]

After rescuing Dusat, Joben and R2-D2 recovered C-3PO and Moll, and piloted the speeder to the base's exit, only to find several droid cruisers waiting outside and firing at them. C-3PO located a computer and overrode orders from Tig Fromm that had deactivated several tower droids; the reactivated tanks battled the cruisers, allowing the White Witch to escape in the confusion. Joben destroyed several seeker probes that attempted to follow it, before taking the speeder was to Moll's ship, the Sand Sloth, where Moll, the droids, and their masters prepared to take the Witch to the Boonta Speeder Race. Aboard the ship, C-3PO and R2-D2 held a discussion regarding speeder racing^[57] before the ship jumped to the Annoo system. Following the jump, the droids made their way to the ship's hull to enact repairs. C-3PO and the ship's hyperdrive began to float away, but R2-D2 wheeled the protocol droid back towards the ship via a rope that C-3PO had attached himself to. C-3PO's servomotors seized up when R2-D2 attempted to keep him stuck to the hull, temporarily locking his torso in a position perpendicular to his legs. The crew of the Sand Sloth needed a new hyperdrive, and traveled to Annoo to find one.^[59]

Following a scuffle with another droid at Annoo customs, C-3PO and R2-D2 spotted two members of the Fromm Gang and caused a scene, offering a distraction that allowed their human companions to escape. Joben, Dusat, and Moll took the droids to the home of Kea's mother Demma, where C-3PO and R2-D2 performed various chores while their masters slept. After a sand sloth knocked him into a wall, C-3PO unintentionally activated a secret door leading to a rebel base of the Annoo resistance. When the droids went to wake Joben up and inform him of their discovery, they found an assassin droid spraying the jockey with gas. A brief skirmish ensued that concluded with Moll arriving and shooting the assassin; her mother promptly arrived home and informed her guests that Sise Fromm, the leader of the Fromm gang, was trying to kill Joben and Dusat for having discovered his secret base on Ingo. In that base, the Fromm gang was developing a secret and deadly weapons satellite called the Trigon One. When the humans returned to their slumber, C-3PO prepared himself for an eventual confrontation with the Fromms by practicing hand-to-hand combat, but found the endeavor taxing when his servomotors seized up again.^[59]

Tig Fromm moved the Trigon One into hiding among Ingo's desert cliffs at some point, and Joben and Dusat intercepted a transmission between Tig and his father that revealed as much. Along with C-3PO and R2-D2, they raced to the weapons satellite in the White Witch and another speeder; C-3PO and Joben fired their vehicle's blasters to distract some guards while Dusat and R2-D2 entered the Trigon One and disconnected the computer's main memory. The group then returned to the speeder racers' shop to celebrate.^[60]

To take the Trigon[]

The morning after the gas attack, Dusat and Moll took the White Witch to a ship that belonged to the Fromm gang, hoping to ride it back to Ingo and sabotage the Trigon One. When Joben, still in recovery from the gas, later woke up, he took the droids and followed his friends, finding them held captive by a pair of Annoo-Dat thugs at one of the gang's freighters. The gangsters were knocked unconscious in an ensuing confrontation, and Joben and Moll hid themselves in two cargo containers, giving C-3PO a thermal detonator to hold still until they reached Ingo. The droids and Dusat posed as laborers when more gang members passed by, and Dusat then left the scene, intending to remain on Annoo and protect Demma. C-3PO and R2-D2 were soon after witnesses to a conversation between Sise and Tig Fromm regarding their plans for the Trigon One. Under their guise as laborers, they boarded the freighter and were accosted by two other droids during the journey to Ingo. A chance passage through a meteor shower saved them, but also caused them to lose track of the cargo container that Joben and Moll were hiding in.^[59]

At the Fromm gang's base on Ingo, C-3PO saved the life of the gang's head of security, Vlix Oncard, by pushing him out of the way of falling debris. After quickly identifying the container that held his companions, C-3PO asked the grateful security chief to take it to the hangar that held the Trigon One. Oncard agreed, and the droids began making their own way to the hangar, dropping Oncard's name in order to avoid trouble with rowdy gangsters that they passed. Two of the gangsters, however, unintentionally activated the thermal detonator. With only ten minutes until its detonation, the droids hurried to the hangar and rendezvoused with their companions, who, with R2-D2's help, fended off attacking guard droids and boarded the Trigon One. After the thermal detonator destroyed the scaffolding holding the satellite in place, the team took the satellite into atmosphere, where R2-D2 destroyed several attacking droid fighters.^[59]

After Joben, Dusat, and the droids made off with the weapons satellite, agents of the Fromm Gang captured Moll. Oncard met the droids and their masters at their shop on Ingo and presented Tig Fromm's demands: the return of the Trigon One in exchange for Moll's freedom. R2-D2 instead hatched a plan to rescue their friend, and the droids flew a starship to Sise Fromm's stronghold on Annoo and infiltrated the base. After R2-D2 distracted several guards with a blinding ray and knocked a guardian droid out of commission with his circuit board disruptor beam, the droids rescued Moll, escaped, and returned to Ingo.^[61]

C-3PO and R2-D2 were soon afterward kidnapped by the Fromm Gang and brought to their mining facility on the moon Auren. Imprisoned at the bottom of the complex's eight levels, the droids managed to escape from their cell and ascend all eight levels, evading various Fromm Tower Droids, ceiling-mounted gun emplacements and other hazards along the way, and activating turbolifts by entering correct sequences of colored keys. After exiting the facility, the droids found Joben and Dusat waiting to rescue them.^[62]

Back in Joben's care,^[62] the droids traveled back to Ingo with their masters. R2-D2 and Joben hid and sabotaged the Trigon One, ensuring that any subsequent activation of its drives would send it on a collision course with the Fromm gang's stronghold on Annoo. While they were away, C-3PO was modifying a subspace transceiver in Joben's auto-shop when he unintentionally tuned in to the frequency used by the Fromm gang. Witnessing a conversation between Sise and Tig Fromm, he and Moll learned that Oncard had brought a group of Fromm gangsters to the shop. A swift arrival by Joben and R2-D2 in a speeder saved them, but a subsequent chase through a nearby city concluded with the Fromm gang trapping them in a warehouse.^[63]

The four were taken prisoner and brought to the Fromm gang's Annoo stronghold, where Joben informed Sise Fromm that he had taken the Trigon One to Ingo. They were then locked in a cell with Dusat, who had been previously captured along with Demma. R2-D2 hatched an escape plan, and C-3PO, preying on their guard's avarice, loudly claimed that his counterpart's dome was filled with jewels. Investigating, the guard was covered with foam by R2-D2, who then used his shock arm to zap Joben's binders. Joben freed his four companions and took Moll to rescue Demma, while Dusat and the droids made their way to a hangar and commandeered a ship. After discovering that the Trigon One was inbound, R2-D2 informed Dusat and C-3PO of the sabotage, and consequently took a cargo sled with C-3PO to aid Joben and Moll, knocking over several patrol droids in the process. The droids activated an evacuation alarm and brought Joben, Moll, and Demma back to the ship, which Dusat had hotwired. However, he needed C-3PO's servomotors to guide the stolen ship. Connecting himself to the ship's navigation controls, C-3PO guided the ship away from the exploding base.^[63]

With the Trigon One destroyed and the Fromm gang finished, Joben and Dusat could finally focus on the upcoming speeder race. En route to Boonta, C-3PO and R2-D2 were on the Sand Sloth's hull enacting repairs to the White Witch's power couplings when another starship appeared and fired at them. R2-D2 quickly activated the hyperdrive via external controls, and the droids rode through hyperspace on the hull. After arriving at Boonta, an engine damaged in the firefight caused the Sand Sloth to crash into a scrapyard. An old Proto Droid named Proto One appeared and, after befriending R2-D2, offered to fix the ship. Moll agreed, and along with Joben and the droids, brought Dusat to a local hospital, as Dusat had injured an arm during the firefight. The White Witch had also been damaged in the crash, and when R2-D2 suggested that Proto One fix it, a jealous C-3PO enlisted the help of a droid named BL-17 instead. BL-17 offered the used of a garage that he claimed was owned by his master, and Moll accepted the offer, unaware that BL-17 was actually working for Boba Fett. Fett, now a bounty hunter, had been hired by Sise Fromm, who wanted revenge on the group that had ruined his gang.^[64]

While R2-D2 and Moll were fixing the Witch, C-3PO, unaware of BL-17's duplicity, became fast friends with the droid. BL-17 suggested that they leave the garage to search for Joben, and took the opportunity to lock the door and remotely trigger a gas leak in the garage's welding tanks. When he and C-3PO returned to find the door open and R2-D2 guarding the Witch, C-3PO blamed his old friend for any trouble that might have happened and agreed to BL-17's suggestion to move the speeder to the safety of a nearby processing plant. At the plant, C-3PO and BL-17 ran into Proto One, who had a long-standing rivalry with BL-17. A fight ensued, causing C-3PO to realize his mistake and to regret opening a rift between himself and R2-D2. As if on cue, the astromech droid arrived, and C-3PO took advantage of the distraction by body-checking BL-17 into a pile of rubble, which then collapsed on the duplicitous droid. Joben and Moll arrived, but when Fett appeared and shot at the group, Joben and R2-D2 fled in the Witch to participate in the imminent Boonta Race. Proto One then warned C-3PO and Moll of a thermal detonator that the Fromms had placed inside the Witch, set to detonate after ten laps of the race were completed.^[64]

Helpless to intervene, C-3PO and Moll arrived at the racetrack and watched as Joben and R2-D2 participated in the race, dodging Fett's speeder in the process. When the thermal detonator came loose and landed on Fett's vehicle, Joben won the race. While celebrating, he and Dusat were approached by Zebulon Dak, the owner of a powerful speeder corporation, who offered them both jobs. The jockeys eagerly accepted, but their mirth was interrupted by the arrival of Sise Fromm, Tig Fromm, and Vlix Oncard, who were fuming at having once again been foiled. Proto One arrived as well, however, and arrested them, but Fett was unimpressed by their meddling in his work after having hired him, and captured them in order to deliver them to Jabba the Hutt. C-3PO and R2-D2 joined their masters and Moll aboard the Sand Sloth, where they overheard a conversation between the humans: Dak would not allow C-3PO and R2-D2 to accompany the jockeys unless they were reprogrammed. Having grown attached to the droids' personalities, Joben and Dusat decided not to take the jobs. Accordingly, the droids fled the ship in an escape pod, hoping that their masters would be free to pursue their dreams.^[64]

The lost Prince[]

C-3PO and R2-D2 made their way back to the Intergalactic Droid Agency, whose agents found them a new owner in the form of Doodnik, a cantankerous chef who owned and operated a café on the planet^[65] Tyne's Horky.^[66] Arriving at the establishment in one of the world's mining colonies, the droids anticipated respectively being put to work as translator and maintenance droids, but were instead relegated to waiting tables. C-3PO found the task of remembering orders difficult, and after tripping over one another and disrupting the meal of the crime lord Kleb Zellock, he and R2-D2 were disowned by Doodnik and told never to return to the café. Desiring a master, they found their way to a public auction within the colony, where an asking price of 500 keschels was given for the two of them. When C-3PO expressed offense at what he believed to be a low price, the auctioneer retaliated by including an android in the deal. C-3PO picked a young Human male out in the crowd and asked if he would buy them, but the sale was made for sixty keschels to Yorpo Mog, the bodyguard of Zellock, whom R2-D2 had earlier sent face-first into his boss's soup. When Mog began manhandling the android, the young man that C-3PO had appealed to intervened and traded his mining droid for Mop's three acquisitions, with the aid of translation by C-3PO. Named Jann Tosh, the young man took his new comrades to his wheel bike, but was pursued by Mog after the bodyguard remembered that Zellock had charged him with acquiring the android. C-3PO piloted the vehicle away from Mog, but the bodyguard boarded it before being quickly shaken off. Tosh and his companions then returned to Tosh's mine.^[65]

Tosh's uncle Gundy was less than impressed that Tosh had returned home without a mining droid, and his vexation only increased when R2-D2's sensors discovered that the android was in fact an addle-brained member of the Tammuz-an species. Regardless, all three were put to work; C-3PO performed such duties as making stew, carrying water, and working in the mine. He was often helped by the Tammuz-an stranger, who displayed great strength and impressed Gundy by using it to rescue the miner from a collapsing mineshaft. Tosh dubbed the stranger Kez-Iban, a Bocce word meaning "he that returns from death," and took him and the droids along as he brought an injured Gundy to a local hospital. When R2-D2 witnessed Mog steal Kez-Iban away from the medical facility, Tosh took the droids back to Doodnik's, where they confronted Zellock, leading to a brawl erupting throughout the café. After a young female Human paralyzed one of Zellock's thugs with a miniature stunner, Tosh and the droids rushed out of the eatery, only to find Mog and several more thugs waiting for them. They were brought to Zellock's Nergon-14-filled mine and sentenced to perform labor, but escaped their chains when R2-D2 used a detached lower leg segment of C-3PO to deactivate the power restraints of the mine's power conductor. Their efforts were nearly thwarted by a mining droid, but C-3PO neutralized the threat by throwing a piece of machinery. When the Tammuz-an Sollag arrived and presented Kez-Iban with a scepter, Kez-Iban's vitality was restored, and he revealed himself as Mon Julpa, Prince of Tammuz-an. He thanked Tosh for his kindness, but the joyful moment was cut short when R2-D2's sensors detected rising levels of combustible gas. Fearful of the Nergon-14's impending activation, Tosh, Julpa, Sollag, and the droids rushed out of the mine.^[65]

Several mining droids attempted to repulse them, but were neutralized by R2-D2, the power of Julpa's scepter, and C-3PO, whose reattached lower leg segment acted on its own due to crossed wires and kicked a droid over. Commandeering a bulldozer, the desperate team drove it through a large door before ascending to Zellock's control platform in a turbolift. The Nergon-14 was activated by the gas leak just as they confronted Zellock and Mog, who fled from the base, pursued by Tosh and his allies. When the latter group split up in order to find their way out of the mine's twisting tunnels, it was C-3PO and R2-D2 who came upon Zellock and Mog arriving at their getaway ship. C-3PO's independent lower leg segment sprang forward, knocking a miniature stunner from Zellock's hand into Mog's, and Mog, having just been betrayed by his boss, fired the weapon at Zellock. Tosh, Julpa, and Sollag arrived, and the group brought Zellock's prone form onto the ship and escaped from the base just prior to its destruction. Returning to his mine, Tosh discovered that his uncle had found a large deposit of keschels where the mineshaft had earlier collapsed; Gundy polished and shone C-3PO and R2-D2 up, but informed them that he intended to keep them working hard at the mine.^[65]

Hoping to help Julpa regain his rightful place as King of Tammuz-An, Tosh enlisted the help of a stranger named Old Iron Pants to take he, his droids, Julpa, and Sollag to the planet. Before Tosh left his mine, Gundy recorded a farewell hologram inside of R2-D2 and instructed both droids to ensure that only Tosh received it. On the bridge of Iron Pants's ship, she revealed to Tosh that she was actually Jessica Meade, the stranger who had saved him in Doodnik's Café. C-3PO and R2-D2 then rushed onto the bridge, where the astromech droid played the hologram to both Tosh and Meade in spite of Gundy's request. Julpa and Sollag entered the bridge just before the ship was attacked by the Dianoga, a hostile starship belonging to the pirate Kybo Ren. R2-D2 detached the bridge, a starship in its own right, from the rest of the vessel, before the bounty hunter IG-88, having been hired by Tammuz-an's Vizier Zatec-Cha to take Julpa alive, arrived in-system in his own ship and crippled the Dianoga. Free of pirate trouble, Meade brought her ship to ground level on the planet and was hailed by ships belonging to the forces of Zatec-Cha. Thinking quickly, C-3PO asserted that it was the ineptitude of the ships' guards that had allowed them to be attacked by pirates; the guards, fearful of retribution from Zatec-Cha, left Meade's ship alone.^[67]

Injured from the firefight, Meade was taken to a hospital by Sollag, while the others booked a room at a local inn. At the inn, Julpa revealed that he needed to infiltrate Zatec-Cha's fortress and reach the royal tower in order to hold his scepter up to the rising sun at dawn and be crowned King. Tosh noticed a spy outside their room and gave chase, while the droids left the inn to check on Meade at the hospital. Discovering that Meade and Sollag had been escorted out of the hospital by the Vizier's guards, they attempted to return to the inn but got lost on the way, eventually discovering Tosh surrounded by the spy, named Vinga, and several of his companions in an alleyway. The distraction of the droids' arrival prompted Tosh to start a fight with his foes, which C-3PO and R2-D2 helped him win by each grabbing a guard's wig and pulling at it, spinning the guard around until he collapsed. With less than three hours until dawn, they rushed to the Vizier's palace to save their missing comrades, whom Julpa had joined the ranks of after being captured by IG-88. After entering the palace via a secret door that Julpa had revealed to them, Tosh and C-3PO fell through a trap door and were followed down by R2-D2. Landing without injury, they were chased by a giant droid that fired lasers from its photoreceptors, but their foe fell from a partially extended bridge into a pit of lava. The next room that the trio found their way into saw its ceiling begin to press in on them, but the crisis was averted when R2-D2 pressed a floor panel that caused the walls to follow suit; the stress created by the walls acting against the ceiling caused both elements to cease their pressure, allowing the trio to escape.^[67]

Unfazed by the hazards, the trio pressed on, soon entering a pit where Julpa was being chased by a Durkii. The beast's tail lifted C-3PO from the ground and onto its back, but the Durkii lost its aggression and fell asleep when R2-D2 removed several pesterous kleexs from its body. The droids and Tosh, joined by Julpa and Sollag, rushed after Zatec-Cha to rescue Meade and recover the scepter. They dodged several barrels before Tosh mounted a Floater-935 repulsorlift vehicle to chase Zatec-Cha and his henchmen, who rode Ubrikkian Airhooks out of the fortress and into Tammuz-an's pre-dawn air. In a chase around the royal tower, the scepter changed hands repeatedly before R2-D2, riding on an Imperial Sniper vehicle awkwardly piloted by C-3PO, grabbed it with his claw-arm. It fell again into the hands of Zatec-Cha, who readied himself to approach the Keeper of the Tower and present it at dawn. Landing his vehicle, C-3PO stood atop R2-D2's dome and donned a cloak over both of them, posing as Vinga, Zatec-Cha's assistant. When Meade wrestled the scepter from the Vizier's hands, C-3PO recovered it and tossed it to Julpa, who presented it to the Keeper of the Tower and was declared King of Tamuz-an. Now loyal to Julpa, the guards took Zatec-Cha and Vinga away. C-3PO and R2-D2 received medals, were polished and shined, and, along with Tosh, were appointed advisors to Julpa's court.^[67]

The revenge of Kybo Ren[]

Desperate to power his R-22 Spearhead fighters, Julpa tasked Tosh, Meade, and the droids with obtaining fuel and bringing it to Tammuz-an. Tosh flew in a Spearhead while Meade brought the droids aboard her ship. On the return flight to Tammuz-an, a ship was sent ahead containing the fuel, but C-3PO and R2-D2 were kept in the dark and told that it was a decoy meant to attract pirates. The pirate Kybo Ren fell for the ploy, and brought the Dianoga and several stolen Imperial TIE fighters against Meade and Tosh. Tosh crippled the TIEs, but Ren and several of his crew boarded and seized control of Meade's ship. C-3PO contacted Tosh and informed him of their plight before being stunned with an ion bolt. When R2-D2 reactivated him, C-3PO discovered that Tosh had surrendered to Ren and that the pirate was bringing his quarry to his base, an island grotto on Tarnoonga.^[68]

Enamored with her fiery spirit,^[69] Ren personally brought Meade as a guest of honor to his court, while Tosh and the droids were separately escorted by guards. C-3PO was too slow to step onto a turbolift, and after falling off of a ledge, he landed on an inflatable mattress released by R2-D2. Bouncing and landing on his feet, C-3PO's bipedal stabilizers contracted, causing his knees to briefly jam in a bent position. Brought before Ren, Tosh and the droids learned that the pirate was planning to invade Tammuz-an, and had pursued the fuel in order to leave the planet defenseless. The following morning, he brought the trio on his skiff to the ocean surrounding his base, fitted Tosh with stun cuffs, and threw him into the ocean to be eaten by a Miridon sea monster. R2-D2 plunged into the water after his master, bringing an unwitting C-3PO with him. Tangling with a squid-like creature, the protocol droid sank to the sea floor while his counterpart used a built-in propeller to navigate through the lake's depths. R2-D2 fitted Tosh with a breath mask and broke his stun cuffs with a shock of electricity, and then began evading the Miridon, Tosh hanging onto the droid and C-3PO hanging onto Tosh. The monster found itself stuck inside a sunken ship, and R2-D2 propelled his allies back to Ren's base, which the trio entered via an underwater pipe.^[68]

Inside the base, they pulled two fishing guards into the water, and the droids donned their uniforms in order to infiltrate the base and rescue Meade. C-3PO mistakenly woke a sleeping guard who wore his hair similar to Meade, causing a scuffle that saw Tosh and the droids commandeer a boat and pilot it through the base's waters. Several guards gave chase in a boat of their own, but were intercepted by the Miridon, the beast having entered the base through the same pipe as Tosh and the droids. With the guards distracted, Ren stood alone against the trio, and was caught in a net by Meade, who had escaped from her cell. She joined Tosh and the droids in racing to their ships and escaping the planet, the droids inside Tosh's Spearhead. Several TIE fighters gave chase, leading the starfighter into the tractor beam of Ren's Gladiator-class Star Destroyer Demolisher that the pirate had stolen from an Imperial repair dock. When the spearhead was brought into a hangar of the Star Destroyer, Tosh was imprisoned and the droids were put to work loading arms as the warship jumped to Tammuz-an.^[68]

As C-3PO and R2-D2 worked at loading proton torpedoes, the astromech droid inverted one before trapping their droid overseer on a magnetic hoist. The two then made their way to the detention level and freed Tosh, who raced to the bridge while the droids further sabotaged the ship's weapons systems. Having arrived at Tammuz-an, the Demolisher fired its turbolasers at Meade's ship, and Ren was shocked to discover that it was a decoy. The fully fueled Tammuz-an space navy arrived from the planet's atmosphere and engaged the Demolisher, which became crippled after attempting to fire the inverted torpedo. Tosh and the droids fled the ship in his Spearhead and returned to Tammuz-an, where the droids were treated to an oil bath,^[68] and Ren and his crew were placed in the dungeons.^[66]

Soon after capturing Ren, Julpa invited the warrior chief Toda to his court, proposing a peace treaty and hoping to end a longstanding rivalry between the royal court and the warrior chief. C-3PO and R2-D2 prepared dessert for the occasion, and after accidentally tossing the prepared food out a window, made a second cake and rushed into the courtroom, crashing into a wall and ending up covered in the cake. Their hijinks cut tension that had been mounting between Toda and Sollag, but Toda remained suspicious of Julpa's motives and decided to wait until the following morning to give Julpa his answer. Later that evening, the droids and Tosh were working on Tosh's spearhead when C-3PO unintentionally sealed the hatch, trapping Tosh and R2-D2 inside. As he searched for Meade, hoping that she could help free them, C-3PO noticed Kybo Ren escaping from the palace and rushed after him. He ended up in Ren's arms and was thrown at Gerin, Toda's daughter, who had been ready to fire a miniature stunner at Ren prior to C-3PO's arrival. Ren picked up the stunner and fired it at Gerin and Tosh, the latter having freed himself from the spearhead, before taking Gerin and fleeing the planet in another spearhead. A furious Toda wanted C-3PO destroyed, but Julpa placated the warrior chief by sending Tosh and Meade to rescue Gerin and surrendering himself to Toda until she was safely returned.^[66]

C-3PO hoped to redeem himself, and hatched a plan to discover where Ren had brought Gerin. He entered the prison cell of Ren's first mate Jyn Obah and began shouting, with R2-D2 in tow, many of the astromech droid's weapons and tools extended menacingly. C-3PO begged a confused and frightened Obah to reveal the location, and gleaned the word "Bogden" from Obah's babbled response. He then brought the news to Tosh and Meade, who took the two droids in spearheads to Bogden. In the planet's orbit, R2-D2 detected life-form readings in a shipwrecked starcruiser on the surface, and the rescue team proceeded to Ren's makeshift base. After they split up, C-3PO and Tosh found Gerin, having escaped from a cell, surrounded by snarling Sungwas. Still feeling guilt over his earlier blunder, the protocol droid offered himself as a meal to the Sungwas and ran away, the beasts in tow. After chewing his left arm off and losing interest in his non-organic body, the Sungwas left him, and he was discovered by Tosh and Gerin. The trio was then contacted by Meade via the base's surveillance system, who told them that Ren was wandering the hallways and was close to them. They hid and spotted Sungwas chasing Ren, and after finding R2-D2 and Meade, followed the pirate to one of the base's landing platforms. Obah and several of Ren's other henchmen had arrived in Ren's ship with a captive Julpa, as Ren had contacted Toda and arranged a prisoner swap. When Ren refused to make the trade, Toda and several of his warriors burst forth from a secret compartment in Ren's ship and attacked Ren's gang. When Ren attempted to escape, C-3PO tripped him, allowing Julpa and Toda to subdue the pirate.^[66]

Back on Tammuz-an, Meade prepared to return to Tyne's Horky, and Toda's young son Coby insisted that C-3PO entertain him with tales of the rescue.^[66] Coby was soon after accepted into the Imperial^[70] space academy, and the droids and Tosh were assigned to escort him there. A passenger ship took them from Tammuz-an to Chuzalla, where they would be taking a connecting flight from the planet's spaceport Zallakesh. As Tosh searched for the connection, the droids watched over Coby, holding onto the inheritance he had received from his great-uncle and forbidding him to spend it foolishly. When members of Starhunter's Intergalactic Menagerie spotted Ingey, Coby's pet tessellated Arboreal binjinphant, they stole the creature and fled aboard their ship. As Coby pounded on the door, C-3PO attempted to bargain with the starhunters, but ended up crashing to the ground when the ship lifted off, stretching out his neck and fracturing his vocal synthesizer.^[71]

C-3PO was separated from both Coby and R2-D2, and wandered the streets of the spaceport until he was picked up by his two companions in a Blackhawk Destroyer. In the ship's cockpit, Coby fixed C-3PO's loose neck while R2-D2 flew the vessel and pursued the starhunters. C-3PO intervened and attached the destroyer to the side of the starhunters' vessel via magnetic landing gear; the trio thus traveled with the starhunters through hyperspace to the planet Dandelo. Within Dandelo's atmosphere, they detached the destroyer, but discovered that it was out of fuel and promptly crashed into the forested ground. Although the ship was destroyed, R2-D2 was able to send a distress signal immediately before Dandelo's native Fuzzums subdued the trio. C-3PO understood their language, and diverted their spears by explaining Coby's missing pet. Moved by the boy's plight, the Fuzzums took the trio to the starhunters' base, where they witnessed Ingey being placed in a cell. After C-3PO and R2-D2 restrained Coby from rushing out of their hiding place in the woods, a plan was concocted to rescue both Ingey and several Fuzzums that the starhunters also held captive.^[71]

The protocol droid's role in the plan was to create a diversion: C-3PO imitated the call of a native spotted jugadoo, and the starhunters who were gathered around their base rushed into the forest in an attempt to catch the rare animal. When an actual spotted jugadoo heard the call, it rushed through the forest to C-3PO and wrapped the droid in its trunk. A horrified C-3PO escaped, only to find himself ensnared in a net the starhunters had laid as a jugadoo trap. After untangling himself, he exited the forest and found Coby, Ingey, the Fuzzums, and an old man named Greej standing in the base clearing. The jugadoo was hot on his tail and charged into the clearing, dragging the net along with it. When it loosed the net and picked up C-3PO again, the group noticed that the starhunters had all become trapped in the net. They freed themselves, however, and their leader acquired a blaster that Greej had taken from a patrol droid, only to have it knocked out of his hand by Jann Tosh, who had picked up R2-D2's distress signal and traveled to Dandelo to help. The starhunters were imprisoned, and as the Fuzzums danced in celebration, Tosh and Greej fixed R2-D2, who had been damaged by a patrol droid. Coby and Greej made plans to return all of the starhunters' captive creatures to their natural habitats, and Tosh revealed that he had been accepted into the^[71] Imperial^[70] academy. After heartfelt goodbyes were exchanged, Tosh, Greej, and Coby departed the planet, and the spotted jugadoo returned, chasing a befuddled C-3PO yet again.^[71]

Later owners[]

Tosh brought C-3PO and R2-D2 with him when he traveled coreward to the Imperial Academy on Raithal. The droids were dropped off at a spaceport on the planet Manda, where Tosh caught a commercial starliner. The droids spent weeks working a hotel at the spaceport, spending their mornings scrubbing saltwater tanks after aquatic guests checked out. A hotel guest named Mungo Baobab, a wealthy heir to the Baobab Merchant Fleet, purchased C-3PO and R2-D2,^[73] and the droids made their way to the planet Biitu to meet him. They found their new master imprisoned by the Empire's Admiral Screed and a gargantuan droid known as the Great Heep. Together, the three thwarted the Heep,^[74] and the droids later adventured with Baobab on Roon, where they discovered some Roonstones,^[75] participated in the Roon Colonial Games in place of the droid BIX,^[76] and brought down Governor Koong of the world's Tawntoom province.^[77]

C-3PO and R2-D2 remained in Baobab's service following Koong's defeat, standing by him as he expanded the Merchant Fleet and established lucrative trade between Roon, Manda, and Ryloth. C-3PO discovered that the crystalline structure of the Roonstones had "Dha Werda Verda," an epic poem, etched into them, and Baobab sent both droids to the Baobab Archives to translate all the engravings. However, the archives' researchers were happy with the TelBrinTel science droids assigned to the task and saw no need for a protocol or astromech droid to help them.^[73] They also took issue with C-3PO's know-it-all attitude and with R2-D2's pushiness, and "mistakenly" arranged for the droids to be sold to the Arkanian Krellus Barzane, a trafficker of used technological goods and a renegade technolord.^[48] C-3PO protested indignantly, but, without electronic confirmation of their orders, he had little recourse.^[73] The droids helped Barzane stay one step ahead of her enemies, but she eventually met with misfortune. C-3PO and R2-D2 also discovered, to their horror, that the Fromm Gang had been released by Jabba the Hutt.^[48]

At some point, the masterless droids made their way to a ship garage on Roon in a damaged hotrod, which R2-D2 fixed. When they found the ship stolen, C-3PO alerted a technician named Nik, who informed them that the ship had taken off just minutes beforehand. The droids told Nik their secret communication code, which allowed them to see the ship thief on a computer monitor: the Fromm Gang's own Vlix Oncard. R2-D2 then revealed the modifications he had made to the ship by jacking into the computer and overriding the craft's controls. The ship returned to the garage, and Oncard asked to be locked up for a long time rather than face the wrath of his boss.^[78]

The droids were re-united with Jann Tosh, and C-3PO and R2-D2 accompanied him to Roon's communications satellite to pay a visit to his old friend, Professor Akary Smith. Upon their arrival, Smith's droid XR seized the trio and brought them before Smith, who revealed that his droid had been sabotaged. One of Smith's friends appeared on a wallscreen, but XR aborted the conversation with a laser blast. As the evil General Koong was controlling XR via a television camera, C-3PO and R2-D2 searched for said camera, but the astromech eventually fired his blaster at a mirror. The blast ricocheted off and destroyed XR, thus rescuing Smith and foiling Koong's plans.^[79]

Tosh also took them to a space station to make some purchases, and C-3PO fell through a trap door and into the laboratory of one Professor Cantebarius H. Broom. While laughing evilly, Broom revealed that he captured droids and experimented on them, and he drew a blaster on R2-D2 and Tosh when they burst into the laboratory. The distraction, however, allowed C-3PO to club the professor in the head with a piece of metal.^[80]

The masterless droid duo visited Kea Moll on Annoo at some point, and she offered to serve as their master for the duration of their visit. Aboard a starship, they were fired upon by several fighters, and Moll surmised that they were intentionally missing in order to secure a top secret information disk from her possession. The Fromm Gang sought the disk, as it contained instructions on how to build a nuclear-powered missile, and Vlix Oncard soon appeared on the starship's monitor to demand that they make their way to Tig Fromm's fortress. R2-D2 hatched a plan and copied the disk's contents; C-3PO then blanked the original, and when they were brought before Fromm, the trio happily gave him the empty disk and went on their way.^[81]

While searching for new adventures in a starship, C-3PO and R2-D2 flew into a strange cloud, and C-3PO became frightened when he saw several phantom-like apparitions. The droids then discovered and boarded a satellite that was producing smoke and thus the cloud—the satellite belonged to Tig Fromm, who was scheming to use the cloud to eliminate all trace of passing vessels. When a video of Fromm revealing his plans was espied by the droids on a monitor, they simply flipped a switch to deactivate the device and left the satellite.^[82]

C-3PO and R2-D2 were assigned menial and unremarkable tasks until they were purchased by Wena Havid, the indulgent governor of the Kalarba system, who roamed the galaxy as a roving ambassador. Aboard his opulent diplomatic starship, every droid was retuned, recalibrated, and treated to a lavish oil bath at least once daily. C-3PO found himself in heaven and never wanted to leave. However, Wena's superiors learned of his extravagance and cut off his funds before forcing him to repay millions of credits. C-3PO and R2-D2 were auctioned off along with most of his possessions, and the two were purchased by a junk trader for a rock-bottom price.^[73] In 5.5 BBY,^[83] the droids were placed on a barge bound for Hosk Station, a city-covered moon in orbit above Kalarba in Wena's own home system.^[73]

On Hosk Station and Kalarba, the droids were involved in a number of adventures with Nak Pitareeze and his family, Olag Greck, and Jace Forno. Though Nak would often disrespect him, C-3PO nonetheless cared for the boy and his family. When Nak was kidnapped by Greck, C-3PO and R2-D2 came to the rescue and foiled Greck's plans. One time, C-3PO fell out of a speeder and cracked his faceplate. The crude repair job he got afterward was two pieces of tape in the shape of an X. That X on his head led him to be mistaken for C-3PX, an extremely dangerous assassin droid who was wanted in seven systems. Some Hosk Arena promoters who thought C-3PO was C-3PX tried to make him fight in a droid death match. C-3PX later sacrificed himself to save C-3PO, having decided that he had no interest in staying alive in a galaxy where he would eventually die whatever he chose.^[84]

C-3PO and R2-D2 later went with a police droid named Unit Zed to Nar Shaddaa, where Jace Forno blasted off C-3PO's right leg below the knee. However, the replacement leg that he got actually contained secret programming that overrode his regular personality. The new C-3PO led a droid rebellion against Boonda the Hutt. However, his original programming was later restored when R2-D2 replaced his leg. After that, the two droids were owned by an Ithorian botanist named Zorneth and then a diplomat, Counselor Harthan, before finding their way into the possession of Mistress Larka Nimondro, a young Tahlboorean who dreamed of seeing the stars.^[73]

Larka eventually gave way to other masters and mistresses.^[73] C-3PO drifted through a variety of jobs, including programming binary loadlifters and converters. He once spent a month operating a shovel loader, and on another occasion was the personal caregiver of a Huttlet.^[73] Eventually, the droids finally found their way back to the Royal House of Alderaan. C-3PO felt that he had finally come into his own after years of rudderless drifting. Political formalities kept him busy and happy,^[73] as did the endless state dinners and masquerades. As a member of the Organa Family's entourage, he attended the annual Emperor's Ball one year and encountered the Sith Lord Darth Vader, who had been encased in a suit of black armor since his accident. While attempting to make small talk, C-3PO mistook Vader for a new model of guard droid, and he was consequently assigned to a year of duty^[85] at the palace preschool, which he found to be very frustrating.^[73]

C-3PO and R2-D2 were eventually reassigned to the Tantive IV and its droid labor pool.^[73] Both droids were given instructions to never again enter an escape pod unless explicitly ordered to do so.^[50] At some point between 1 BBY and 0 BBY,^[86] Captain Raymus Antilles lent the two droids to the Star Tours travel agency, a new intergalactic space line that sought to preserve unrestricted travel in a galaxy being squeezed by the tightening grip of the Galactic Empire.^[87] As the Royal House of Alderaan was suspected by the Empire to have ties to the nascent Rebel Alliance,^[88] Antilles's move fueled Imperial suspicion that Star Tours was operated by the Rebels.^[87]

Star Tours Flight 1401 was the agency's first flight, due to depart from a Star Tours space station. Prior to its departure, C-3PO and R2-D2 were tasked with making last-minute repairs to the StarSpeeder 1000 that would be whisking civilian passengers across the galaxy. C-3PO settled into the pilot's seat to inspect a faulty binary motivator while the pilot droid, AC-38, left to inspect the exterior of the vessel, and R2-D2 settled into the ship's droid socket. When the ship was quickly elevated to the passenger boarding level, the two droids were forced to fly the ship on its maiden voyage, even as Imperials attempted to halt them after discovering that a Rebel spy was aboard. After fleeing the space station and into hyperspace, the droids piloted the ship through a harrowing experience and eventually received coordinates to a Rebel rendezvous point. They safely delivered the Rebel spy.^[87] After the fiasco, C-3PO, alongside R2-D2, were quietly returned to Antilles.^[86]

The Organa family were in fact Rebels, and in their service, C-3PO and R2-D2 deactivated an Imperial defense system during the Battle on Wayland, allowing the Alliance Fleet to land on Fresia.^[89]

Accidental heroes[]

Escape from the Empire[]

As the Galactic Civil War between the Empire and the Rebellion raged across the galaxy, C-3PO continued his service aboard the Tantive IV. Although he worked as Captain Antilles's translator for a time, he was assigned to the corvette's droid labor pool on diplomatic missions that did not require interpreters. He and R2-D2 were paired together, with the former acting as the interpreter counterpart of the latter. C-3PO found the work to be humiliating drudgery. In 0 BBY, Princess and Senator Leia Organa took the Tantive IV to the planet Ralltiir to deliver military-grade equipment to Alliance operatives under the guise of a diplomatic mission to deliver supplies to the Ralltiiri High Council. Contact with the operatives in the midst of the Empire's subjugation of the planet, coupled with info spilled by The Empire's Lord Tion during a dinner with Organa and her father Bail back on Alderaan, alerted the Royal House of Alderaan to the existence of a secret Imperial construction project: The Death Star, a massive battle station with enough power to destroy an entire planet. A tip from a horrified Bail allowed Alliance agents on Toprawa to intercept the plans to the Death Star, and Leia Organa prepared to take the Tantive IV there to retrieve them.^[88] As the corvette was readied to leave Alderaan, C-3PO and R2-D2 boarded while father and daughter hugged farewell.^[90]

During the journey to Toprawa, C-3PO and R2-D2 were pressed into service by the labor pool overseer, who required an astromech droid and an interpreter for special work detail. The two reported to Princess Organa and Captain Antilles, who gave them a voice override indicating that they were to protect all references to the Princess being aboard the vessel and to follow her orders unquestionably. After the Tantive IV reverted to realspace in the Toprawa system, Organa ordered R2-D2 to exit through an airlock and pretend to make repairs on the navigation computer sensor suite, all the while making periodic reports to C-3PO via comlink. When the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Devastator demanded to know why the corvette was in a restricted zone, Organa used the apparently malfunctioning navigation computer as an alibi. While a transmission containing the Death Star plans was beamed to the Tantive IV, R2-D2 returned to the ship's interior; when the transmission concluded, Antilles took the ship into hyperspace and away from the pursuing Devastator.^[88]

Bail Organa believed that the Rebellion needed to call on Obi-Wan Kenobi in such a desperate hour, and Organa accordingly took the Tantive IV to Tatooine. However, the Devastator had caught the corvette's receipt of the Death Star plans, and it followed them to the Tatoo system. After both ships decanted from hyperspace, the Devastator attacked.^[88] C-3PO and R2-D2 made their way through the Tantive IV's corridors as the ship was rocked by explosions; when the Devastator trapped the corvette in a tractor beam, Imperial stormtroopers boarded and engaged the stationed Rebel troopers in a firefight. The two droids weaved their way through the laser blasts. As the Rebel defenders quickly fell,^[16] a blast struck the wall behind C-3PO, and the exposed circuitry shot an electric current through the protocol droid. He was freed from the tangled wires by his counterpart, and both escaped the notice of Darth Vader, the Imperial Dark Lord of the Sith, as he and a stormtrooper escort passed by.^[91]

C-3PO became separated from R2-D2 in the midst of the chaos, and he eventually found him^[16] near the labor pool. Fearing that a crewmember had betrayed them and smuggled a homing beacon aboard, Organa and Antilles had quickly devised a plan to use her voice override and smuggle the Death Star plans off the ship inside R2-D2.^[88] C-3PO caught up to his counterpart just as Organa finished giving the astromech droid the plans, and as the Princess fled, C-3PO dismissed R2-D2's claims of a secret mission and tried to stop his counterpart from entering an escape pod. He changed his mind, however, when a laser blast struck a nearby bulkhead, and the two launched for the surface of Tatooine.^[16] Captain Antilles had already jettisoned a number of decoy escape pods,^[88] and the Devastator's gunners neglected to shoot down the droids due to a lack of detected life forms aboard.^[16]

R2-D2 was intent on getting the plans to Kenobi, and he steered the pod toward a location Organa had given him. The pod nevertheless landed in the middle of a desert, and C-3PO helped manually lift the astromech out of the crashed vehicle.^[88] C-3PO refused to believe his counterpart's claims of a mission, even when the astromech droid began to make his way toward rocky terrain. The two set off in different directions,^[16] but C-3PO turned around to give his counterpart one last warning. R2-D2 steadfastly continued on his way, but when he suddenly fell through the sand, C-3PO rushed after him and fell through himself. The two landed in a system of subterranean tunnels, and they were quickly surrounded by a group of mole creatures. C-3PO attempted to communicate with them, and the little he understood suggested that the moles would serve the droids, their new masters. The underground dwellers then carried the new arrivals through the tunnels, all the while chanting the word "Gotar," which turned out to be the name of a giant hungry acid lizard. As it turned out, the moles would indeed "serve" the droids—to Gotar for dinner. The lizard gobbled the droids up but kept them in his mouth in order to allow the acid there to dissolve them, but R2-D2 shorted out his electrical system, which caused Gotar to spit them out so hard that they landed back on the sand above. C-3PO pleaded for R2-D2 to follow him one last time, but R2-D2 continued toward the mesas, and the two finally parted ways.^[92]

Another Skywalker[]

After several hours of wandering through Tatooine's endless-seeming Dune Sea, C-3PO was edging close to an overheat shutdown.^[91] He vocalized a suspicion that R2-D2 had tricked him into going that way, but the sudden appearance of a vehicle on the horizon raised his spirits. He called to it,^[16] and the vehicle—a Jawa Sandcrawler—homed in on him. With blasters pointed, the Jawas forced C-3PO to wear a restraining bolt. He accepted his capture and asked if they had spotted an astromech droid wandering through the desert, but they made no reply and instead loaded him aboard the transport.^[88] Later on, R2-D2 was indeed brought aboard, and the counterparts had a joyful reunion. As the Sandcrawler plowed through the desert,^[16] R2-D2 shut himself down both to conserve energy and to tune out C-3PO's complaints.^[91] Guided by a signal flare launched by the homestead's occupants, the Jawas made their way to a dwelling: The Lars homestead,^[88] where C-3PO had lived long ago, prior to his memory wipe.^[17] After waking R2-D2 up, C-3PO joined the line of droids who were marched outside to be displayed in front of a potential buyer.^[16]

Despite C-3PO's protests, R2-D2 covertly made some modifications to R5-D4, another astromech in the line.^[88] Owen Lars, now a much older man, approached the Sandcrawler along with a nineteen-year-old Luke Skywalker, and selected R5-D4 over R2-D2 before approaching C-3PO, whom he did not recognize. Although the moisture farmer had no need of a droid who understood etiquette and protocol, C-3PO touted his ability to understand both the binary language of moisture vaporators and the Bocce trade language. Lars was sold, and his two new droids followed Skywalker to the homestead. R5-D4's motivator blew, however, and C-3PO convinced Skywalker and Lars to purchase R2-D2 instead.^[16] The droids were taken by the young Skywalker to the homestead's tech dome, where C-3PO received an oil bath, R2-D2 recharged, and Skywalker worked on a T-16 skyhopper.^[91] He complained about an unfulfilling life on a boring planet, and when C-3PO mentioned the Rebellion, it piqued Skywalker's interest considerably. While cleaning a dirty R2-D2, Skywalker came across the datacard that the Princess had inserted into R2-D2, and an excerpt from Organa's holographic recording suddenly materialized on the dome floor. She spoke a single line: "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."^[16]

When C-3PO questioned his counterpart, the astromech suggested that he might be able to play the entire message if his bolt were removed. A mesmerized Skywalker obliged, but R2-D2 subsequently ceased playing the message entirely. Frustrated, Skywalker left the task of uncovering the rest of it to C-3PO and left to eat dinner with his aunt and uncle. The protocol droid scolded his counterpart for disobeying their new master,^[16] and when R2-D2 promptly left the homestead to continue his search for Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO realized that he had tricked Skywalker into removing the bolt.^[88] Ashamed, C-3PO hid in a corner, and when Skywalker returned and discovered him, the protocol droid revealed what had happened. Since the world's twin suns had set and night had already fallen, Skywalker resolved to search for R2-D2 in the morning, which would allow him and C-3PO safer passage across the desert.^[16] The protocol droid charged himself overnight and was awoken at dawn by Skywalker, who did not want his aunt or uncle to know about the missing astromech. As the homestead's power was still shut off, C-3PO pushed an X-34 landspeeder outside while Skywalker held the door open manually, and the two then set out with C-3PO behind the controls. As R2-D2's tracks had disappeared, C-3PO suggested checking the area toward which the astromech had been headed from the escape pod, and Skywalker scanned the terrain with his macrobinoculars.^[88]

As C-3PO took them toward the mesas of Tatooine's Jundland Wastes, Skywalker told C-3PO about an old hermit named Ben Kenobi who lived in the desert. As R2-D2 was searching for the similarly named Obi-Wan Kenobi, the youngster wondered if the two Kenobis were related. When they eventually spotted and confronted R2-D2, Skywalker wanted to take him home, and C-3PO suggested deactivating him.^[88] However, the astromech detected some approaching lifeforms, and the group was soon attacked by the Tusken Raider URoRRuR'R'R.^[16] C-3PO tumbled backward over a sand dune^[91] and lost his left arm in the process. Several minutes later, he was retrieved by Skywalker and Ben Kenobi, who had come to the group's rescue by imitating the call of a local Krayt dragon. As it turned out, Ben and Obi-Wan were one and the same, and the elderly Obi-Wan Kenobi brought the group to the safety of his desert hut.^[16]

Soon after being repaired and R2 showing Obi-Wan the message from Leia, they discovered the ruined Sandcrawler and Jawas who had sold him. Luke had sped off to discover that Owen and Beru Lars had been murdered by Imperial stormtroopers, leaving C-3PO and R2-D2 in Luke's care. After traveling to Mos Eisley while evading stormtroopers, C-3PO and R2-D2 escaped on the Millennium Falcon with Luke, Obi-Wan, the ship's captain Han Solo, and his first mate Chewbacca, whom he would assist R2-D2 against in a game of dejarik. After hearing that Wookiees were known to rip people's arms out of their sockets when they lost, he gave R2-D2 one final piece of advice: "let the Wookiee win."^[16]

Entering the Rebellion[]

When finally arriving in the Alderaan system, they found the planet gone and themselves brought aboard the Empire's new weapon, the Death Star. He and R2 were left in the hangar control center, with the only advice given to lock the doors if they were to be discovered. This almost became the end for C-3PO's master when Luke, Han, Chewbacca and the now rescued Princess Leia escaped stormtroopers by jumping into a trash compactor and the compactor was activated. C-3PO had left the comlink he had been using to stay in touch with the group out while he and R2 hid from stormtroopers. Moments after C-3PO found the comlink, he cursed his metal body that they had been killed. However, R2 halted the compactor and unlocked the door. Finally, the group made it back to the Falcon and escaped after Obi-Wan Kenobi sacrificed himself while fighting Darth Vader.^[16]

Making haste to the Rebel base on Yavin 4, a plan was made to attack the Death Star. Despite being constantly annoyed by R2-D2's recklessness and impulsive nature, Threepio discovered that he considered R2 his best friend, and told R2 that he'd better make it back or his life would get boring. When the battle was won, R2-D2 made it back. However, he was badly damaged and C-3PO had offered to donate any of his parts that would be helpful in his repair. R2-D2 was repaired and looked good as new.^[16]

Robotic rebel[]

On assignment for the Alliance[]

Following the Battle of Yavin, C-3PO accompanied Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca and R2-D2 on numerous missions for the Alliance. On one such mission, Threepio and Luke encountered the bounty hunter Beilert Valance on Feriae Junction while they were looking for parts to repair Artoo. While exploring Junction City, Threepio and Luke met a man named Skinker, who took them to his salvage yard. Unaware of Darth Vader's bounty on himself, Skywalker, and R2-D2, C-3PO and the others fell into a trap. Sensing a trap, Skywalker shoved C-3PO into Skinker's office and dove in after, and then sent the droid out the back while he tried to hold off the bounty hunter. As Valance was about to deliver the final blow, C-3PO suddenly reappeared and placed himself in front of his master, willing to sacrifice himself to save Skywalker. The boy in turn, concerned for his droid's safety, tried to send him away. Valance, not understanding the droid's actions questioned Threepio. He answered "Certainly it's not widely accepted. But perhaps if it were, even being a cyborg might be easier to bear." Because of Threepio's selfless act, the bounty hunter left them, allowing C-3PO to pick up Skywalker's fallen lightsaber and carry him back to their ship.^[93] Another time, C-3PO and R2-D2 accompanied Luke when the latter reluctantly returned to Tatooine after a transport capsule suspected to contain information vital to the survival of the Alliance landed on the planet and was recovered by Jawas. After Luke was infected with Bledsoe's Disease, Threepio ended up under R2's suggestion using the Sandcrawler to travel to the Imperial base to rescue Luke, but the plan only succeeded in demolishing a wall as well as resulting in their capture and near disposal by the base's personnel before Luke rescued them.^[94]

During this time, Threepio served as interpreter for and worked with Leia Organa at the Rebels' ring base. He traveled with Luke Skywalker on a mission to Panna to rescue Han Solo for the first time. After arriving on Panna, Threepio and the others encountered the bounty hunter Boba Fett, who was also on the planet seeking information from Luke Skywalker about the Rebel Alliance.^[95]

C-3PO later related many of these events to Mistress Mnemos, an Alliance BRT supercomputer, for historical preservation.^[96]

In 1 ABY,^[97] C-3PO and R2-D2 visited a droid factory on Corellia in order to study the programming of the helper droids manufactured there. C-3PO requested a spacer to retrieve several droid interfaces for further analysis.^[98]

Crisis on Cloud City[]

When the Alliance transferred to the ice world of Hoth, C-3PO continued to work with Princess Leia on some personal matters such as drying out her clothes in the frozen environment. Things became worse when Luke Skywalker went missing on a scouting mission. After failing to pinpoint his exact location, Threepio could do little but wait until Han Solo returned with the latter. Skywalker was saved due to the efforts of Solo. The evening after Skywalker recovered from his bacta treatment, Echo Base came under attack by a horde of wampa ice creatures. Threepio, along with R2-D2, was instrumental in alerting the base's defenders how to help stop the creatures. They noticed that behind each individual attack was one commonality: the high-pitched beeping of the base's astromech droids seemed to drive the wampas into berserker rages. They informed Major Bren Derlin, the base's head of security, and the Rebels finally had an advantage. They used recordings of astromech droids to round up the final wampas still hiding within the base, stunned them into incapacitation, and secured them in highly shielded pens.^[99] Later, C-3PO was responsible for identifying the Empire's probot, alerting the Rebels to the Empire's awareness of their location.

Soon afterward in the Battle of Hoth, C-3PO joined Solo, Organa, and Chewbacca in a desperate race to the Millennium Falcon while an advanced group of the Empire's invading snowtroopers pursued. During the escape, C-3PO came upon one of the wampa pens. Pasted on the door was a yellow and orange hazard label. An ancient part of him, a holdover from one of his earlier daring masters, seemed to take over. C-3PO tore the label off. He ran faster than before after his party, disappearing around the next bend in the corridor. The group of pursuing snowtroopers came upon the door, and marched inside with military efficiency. They were quickly slaughtered by the caged wampas inside, buying the escaping Rebels just enough time to flee the planet.^[99] C-3PO escaped with Solo in the Millennium Falcon, while his partner joined Skywalker in his pursuit of the mysterious Yoda.^[3]

During this time, C-3PO and Han developed a strange relationship, with C-3PO quoting odds and Han defying them. Normally, Han would have simply shut C-3PO down but due to the mechanical failures on the Falcon, C-3PO was plugged into the ship and communicated with it to determine the problem (which Han took credit for). C-3PO later commented that the Falcon had a most peculiar dialect. After a chase through the Hoth asteroid field, the Falcon escaped to Cloud City on Bespin.^[3]

Almost immediately after their arrival, C-3PO encountered a fellow protocol droid, E-3PO, and greeted him as they passed each other, only to be insulted in response. From the room the other droid had come from, C-3PO heard the sound of an astromech droid.^[3] Exploring it out of curiosity, he was then blasted by Corporal Drazin,^[100] a stormtrooper from Gamma Squad.^[101] Vader demanded his memory be retrieved and when he saw his parts, recognized his creation and ordered its destruction.^[13] However, after C-3PO was gone far too long, Chewbacca headed to the Ugnaught recycling facility, where he found the dismembered droid. When Darth Vader revealed his presence to the group, Chewbacca was sent into a holding cell but, after an apparent change of heart from Vader, was permitted to rebuild the droid, which, much to the displeasure of C-3PO, was done poorly. While still being repaired, Chewbacca carried C-3PO on his back during Han Solo's encasement in carbonite.^[3]

With the help of the city's administrator, Lando Calrissian, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO escaped. Although Chewbacca upon release instantly choked Lando for Han Solo's capture, C-3PO apologized for the enraged Wookiee's behavior, which he feared would be the end of him. Having C-3PO on Chewbacca's back was beneficial: when Boba Fett escaped the city with Han Solo, C-3PO notified them of pursuing stormtroopers. Finally, after a chase through the corridors of Cloud City, the group made it to the Millennium Falcon. R2-D2, whom they found after Luke Skywalker arrived to rescue them, unlocked the door to the landing pad under C-3PO's command. After the group escaped Vader's flagship, the Executor, C-3PO was fully repaired by R2-D2.^[3]

Rescue of Solo and the mission to Endor[]

Shortly after escaping Imperials on Cloud City, C-3PO joined in the search for Solo. When the rendezvous point, Haven, ended up in danger of being exposed by the Imperials, C-3PO attempted to talk Luke (who was still recovering from his injuries from his duel with Darth Vader), eventually pointing out with R2-D2 that his ship's undergoing maintenance, thus making the decision final. After the danger was narrowly averted, C-3PO told R2-D2 that his earlier repairs may have been faulty, as C-3PO had an unnatural urge to kick himself, although R2-D2 claimed it was not unnatural, with his explanation apparently hurting the protocol droid.^[102] On one occasion, he and Artoo piloted Han's ship, the Millennium Falcon, and rescued Leia from Prince Xizor.^[103]

Roughly a year after escaping Cloud City, Luke commanded C-3PO and R2-D2 to deliver a message to Jabba the Hutt, the gangster who had the encased Han Solo in his palace. Unbeknownst to him, Luke had given the droids to Jabba as a ploy to gain entrance. C-3PO was placed as Jabba's replacement translator while R2-D2 served on his sail barge. C-3PO's first translation for the crime lord was of Boushh claiming the bounty for Chewbacca, whom he had on a chained leash. The meeting became intense when Boushh demanded 50,000 credits and in surprise, Jabba the Hutt smacked C-3PO, who then noticed Boushh had a thermal detonator. C-3PO was undamaged and negotiated the deal of 35,000 credits to Boushh (which came as a relief to the paranoid droid).^[9]

While Boushh was discovered to be Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker infiltrated the palace and killed Jabba's pet rancor in a fierce duel. This angered Jabba, and he transferred his court to the sail barge with Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca as food for the Sarlacc, while Leia served as Jabba's slave. Just as Luke Skywalker was pushed off the plank, he bounded back up and R2-D2 tossed him his lightsaber. In the midst of the battle, C-3PO was attacked by Salacious B. Crumb, yanking one of his sensors out its socket. Salacious was forced off by R2-D2, which gave C-3PO and R2-D2 a chance to escape the sail barge. Making their way to the platform, R2-D2 pushed C-3PO off and rolled off himself into the sands of the Dune Sea. As the sail barge was burning, the two were quickly rescued and the group headed off planet to the Rebels' gathering on Home One.^[9]

C-3PO accompanied the strike force to forest moon of Endor to disable the shield generator protecting the Death Star II. When he, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and R2-D2 were captured by the Ewoks, they thought he was a prophesied god known as the Golden One. Though C-3PO claimed that pretending to be a deity was "against [his] programming," the droid was brought to Bright Tree Village as an honored guest at a banquet. Meanwhile, his companions were brought to the Ewok village as prisoners, intended to be the main course at a banquet honoring "the Golden One."^[9]

Despite the droid's reluctance, Luke Skywalker convinced C-3PO at the banquet to demand that the release of the prisoners. C-3PO told the Ewoks he'd bring down lightning and fire and wrath if his friends were not released. Skywalker then levitated the frightened droid above the clamoring crowd, "proving" to the Ewoks that the droid really did have "magic" powers. Later that night, C-3PO acted as a storyteller, explaining the history (help·info) and intentions of the Rebels to the tribe. This gained sympathy from the Ewoks and convinced them to help the Rebels at the Battle of Endor.^[9]

C-3PO's part in the Battle of Endor was not yet complete, however. After infiltrating the shield bunker and being captured by Imperial forces, C-3PO began the Ewoks' assault on the Empire by calling over a group of stormtroopers with a false surrender. Chaos ensued as Ewoks jumped from hiding and attacked the Imperials, allowing Han Solo and Leia to reach the bunker controls. When R2-D2 was summoned to assist in infiltrating the bunker, C-3PO followed, evading enemy fire. The battle ended with the Death Star II's destruction and the death of the Emperor. C-3PO was present at the celebration afterward.^[9]

After Endor[]

Republic reborn[]

One day after the victory at Endor, an Imperial message drone addressed to the late Emperor was intercepted by Wedge Antilles in Endorian space. It told of an invasion of the remote planet Bakura by a mysterious alien species. C-3PO and R2-D2 joined a team led by Organa that was sent by Rebel High Command to help counter the invasion and attempt to gain the allegiance of Bakura, an Imperial world. The team arrived at Bakura and negotiated with Imperial governor Wilek Nereus while Rebel and Imperial fleets joined forces to ward off attacks by the Ssi-ruuk of the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium. The Bakurans had been unaware of Palpatine's demise, and after a temporary truce was struck, C-3PO translated the Ssi-ruuvi language and helped decipher the aliens' codes. During a session of the Bakuran Senate when the Ssi-ruuvi puppet Dev Sibwarra revealed his masters' intentions of enteching the life forces of Bakura's population into robotic bodies, C-3PO expressed his shock and horror at the spectacle on behalf of all droids. However, it did little to allay the prevalent anti-droid sentiment among many Bakuran senators, who responded with catcalls.^[104]

After C-3PO and R2-D2 translated the Ssi-ruuvi communiques, they learned that the Ssi-ruuk planned to capture Skywalker and to attack Bakura in one hour.^[105] C-3PO conveyed the information to Solo, as well as the location of Organa, who had been arrested by Nereus following a breakdown in negotiations. After first cutting Solo a highly illegal override code, C-3PO was ordered to dress in a suit of stormtrooper armor forcibly acquired by Solo. He then proceeded to the Millennium Falcon to rendezvous with Chewbacca and warn Skywalker. However, upon arriving at the light freighter, C-3PO was mistaken for a stormtrooper by Chewbacca and shot down. Although he sustained only minor damage and was able to warn Skywalker about the capture attempt, the protocol droid was indignant at his treatment by the Wookiee.^[104]

The Ssi-Ruuk were repelled by the combined fleets, and a Bakuran revolt ousted the treacherous Nereus from power.^[104] The Rebel Alliance transitioned into the Alliance of Free Planets,^[105] and the Ssi-Ruuk proved not to be the only invaders from beyond, as the Alliance found itself at war with the Nagai, a warfaring species from the satellite galaxy known as Firefist.^[106] C-3PO served in the conflict, which saw the Alliance and the Nagai eventually unite against and defeat the latters' old enemy, the Tofs. Secretly fueling the war had been the Dark Lady of the Sith, Lumiya.^[107]

The Alliance of Free Planets was soon replaced by a New Republic,^[105] and Leia Organa sat on the new government's Provisional Council as a representative from Alderaan. C-3PO attended her in that role as a translator.^[108] He was, however, briefly leant to the Star Tours travel agency along with R2-D2^[109] around 4.3 ABY,^[110] while their owners were out fighting in the late stages of the Nagai–Tof War. The agency was sending its new StarSpeeder 3000 models on an Endor Express tour^[109] in an attempt to cash in on the moon's sudden fame,^[111] but C-3PO doubted the competency of the pilot droid, RX-24, who sported a "Remove Before Flight" factory tag. During this time, C-3PO and R2-D2 were hard at work trying to repair one of the 3000 models, Transport 22—having near-disasters in the process such as C-3PO forgetting to shut off the main valve when the fuel pressure was getting too high, and nearly causing the cannons to discharge—as well as commenting on the various advertisements for the various travel destinations, including Hoth, Tatooine, and Endor. Although C-3PO wanted to return to Endor, he wished to avoid returning to Hoth and Tatooine. Nevertheless, RX-24 flew Star Tours Flight 45 from a Star Tours spaceport with R2-D2 in the droid socket, and the protocol droid's fears proved founded when a harrowing flight saw the StarSpeeder return to the spaceport in a shaken and beat-up state.^[86][109]

One year after Endor, C-3PO was present at several meetings of the Provisional Council that discussed an offer made by Sate Pestage, the former Imperial Grand Vizier who had seized Palpatine's throne following the Emperor's death. Pestage offered Coruscant to the New Republic in exchange for safe haven from his political rivals,^[108][112] but his enemies ultimately foiled his plans, and both the Empire and Coruscant were left in the hands of Director of Imperial Intelligence Ysanne Isard.^[113] Around the same time, C-3PO and R2-D2 were with Solo, Organa, Skywalker, and Chewbacca during the Battle of Mindor against the Imperial warlord Lord Shadowspawn.^[114] Also in 5 ABY, the Central Committee of Grand Moffs made a claim to the Imperial throne in opposition to Isard.^[115] C-3PO and R2-D2 served as members of the Senate Planetary Intelligence Network (SPIN) and underwent transformation by the Droid Modification Team to be disguised as Kessel droids. They then infiltrated a gathering of Committee-loyal Imperials to find out who was planning to take control of the Grand Moffs' Imperial faction. The leader turned out to be the three-eyed mutant Trioculus,^[116] who was later defeated by the New Republic.^[117]

In 6 ABY, a conquest of Imperial-held Coruscant was being planned, and the New Republic Provisional Council met on the world of Noquivzor to discuss strategy. Organa was attended by C-3PO, who translated into Basic the remarks of the Wookiee Councillor Kerrithrarr. The plan was a success, as Coruscant was indeed taken by the New Republic and installed as their new capital world.^[118] Still facing threats from Imperial warlords who had broken away from the chain of command, the New Republic soon afterward sent Organa on a diplomatic mission to the Hapes Consortium to request aid in the continuing war.^[119] 8 ABY saw Hapan delegates visit Coruscant in turn, offering their aid in exchange for a marriage between Organa and the Hapan Prince Isolder. While Organa met with the Hapan delegates in Coruscant's Grand Reception Hall, C-3PO watched from a balcony along with Solo, Chewbacca, and Mon Mothma, translating words that were spoken in the Hapan language.^[120] A jealous Solo enlisted C-3PO to keep an eye on Isolder and Organa during the former's stay on the capital world, and the protocol droid uncovered computer data that named Solo as a descendant of the Corellian King Berethron e Solo. C-3PO accordingly proposed to the Alderaanian Council that Organa marry Solo instead.^[121]

While accompanying Solo and Chewbacca to the planet of Dathomir, which the Captain had won in a game of sabacc, C-3PO was shocked to find that a desperate Solo had kidnapped Organa and smuggled her along aboard the Millennium Falcon.^[122] Their subsequent adventure on the planet saw C-3PO write a song with at least fifteen verses entitled "The Virtues of King Han Solo," which he performed in a voice reminiscent of that of popular vocalist Jukas Alim and with the sound of a full symphony orchestra. The adventure included an encounter with the Force-using Witches of Dathomir and a final showdown with Warlord Zsinj, and in the end, Organa and Solo realized their true love for one another while Isolder fell for a witch named Teneniel Djo.^[123] On the day of the Solo-Organa wedding, C-3PO discovered that Solo's great-grandfather had only been a pretender to the Corellian throne. His panicked decision to spread the news prompted Skywalker to deactivate him and hide him in an empty office of Coruscant's Alderaanian Consulate,^[124] but, as C-3PO was the ring-bearer, he was turned back on in time to attend the ceremony.^[125]

After the wedding, C-3PO returned to Tatooine with the new married couple in their search for the Alderaanian moss painting Killik Twilight, which stored a valuable code. The protocol droid reunited with Kitster Banai and W. Wald, childhood friends of Anakin Skywalker, and with their help C-3PO and the others discovered Shmi Skywalker's diary. Inside was valuable information on the man who had become the most feared figure in the galaxy. After reading the diary, Organa remarked that the droid her grandmother described reminded her of C-3PO. The code was eventually found and destroyed, and Organa, having read about her father's innocent childhood, firmly decided that having children of her own despite her family's dark legacy was the right decision.^[126]

Imperial resurgence[]

By 9 ABY, five years after Endor, the New Republic had established itself as the galaxy's dominant power. However, the remnants of the Empire mounted a serious challenge to that rule when Thrawn, the last Imperial Grand Admiral, returned from exile in the Unknown Regions and took control of the Imperial fleet. During the Thrawn campaign of 9 ABY, Noghri commandos loyal to the Grand Admiral repeatedly tried to kidnap Organa Solo, who was pregnant with twins—Thrawn's ally, the insane Jedi clone Joruus C'baoth, sought to train the twins in his own twisted ways. C-3PO was part of a New Republic team that had to fend off a Noghri attack on the planet Bimmisaari, and he later accompanied Solo and Organa Solo to Lando Calrissian's newest mining operation on the world of Nkllon. There, Organa Solo decided to hide from the Noghri on Kashyyyk, and C-3PO reluctantly became a part of the ruse used to cover her disappearance. Although he insisted that it was not covered by protocol, the droid's programming was altered so that his voice became identical to Organa Solo's. While Organa Solo fled aboard Calrissian's Lady Luck, C-3PO sent a transmission from the Millennium Falcon that was intended to be intercepted by the Empire.^[127]

Following the Battle of Sluis Van, C-3PO accompanied Captain Solo back to Coruscant aboard the Falcon, but he was banned from the annoyed pilot's presence during most of the journey home. Despite the ruse, Organa Solo had been followed to Kashyyyk, but there the Noghri warrior Khabarakh—who had served Darth Vader before the Sith Lord's death—recognized Organa Solo's scent and declared her the Mal'ary'ush, "daughter of the savior." As such, Organa Solo, C-3PO, and Chewbacca traveled with Khabarakh to the Noghri homeworld of Honoghr in order to learn more about their servitude to the Empire. C-3PO acted as a translator, but the group was forced to quickly hide inside a Noghri dukha building when Thrawn himself showed up in order to impose his will upon his subjects. They avoided the Imperials^[128] and later returned to Coruscant, where Organa Solo gave birth to her twins: Jacen and Jaina Solo.^[129]

One of the New Republic's newest allies, Mara Jade—a former Emperor's Hand—helped the Skywalker/Solo clan obtain a piece of vital intelligence: before his death, Emperor Palpatine had maintained a cloning facility on the planet Wayland. Since Thrawn was using clones to fuel his war machine, a strike team was assembled for a mission to Wayland to sabotage the clone production. C-3PO and R2-D2 joined Skywalker, Solo, Calrissian, Chewbacca, Jade, and several Noghri commandos; on the planet's surface, as they made their way through dense undergrowth toward the facility, C-3PO helped them communicate with the world's native Myneyrshi. When Skywalker convinced them that the New Republic team was there to help rather than invade, the Myneyrshi allowed the group passage across the planet. Inside the cloning facility, a confrontation with C'baoth and a clone of Skywalker saw Jade kill both of their foes, and the mission was a success. Concurrently, Thrawn was murdered by his Noghri bodyguard Rukh during a battle with New Republic forces over the Bilbringi Shipyards, and his campaign was brought to a halt.^[129]

In 10 ABY, not long after the loss of their last Grand Admiral, the remaining Imperial Fleet Commanders joined forces with surviving members of the Imperial Ruling Council and launched a sudden and violent campaign from the Deep Core. The New Republic, with its fleet out of position in the Rim, quickly lost Coruscant and several other key systems. However, various Imperial factions afterward turned on each other, and the Imperial Mutiny saw them battle it out in an attempt to reap the spoils of the Empire's recent successes. As the Imperial Civil War raged, the New Republic took advantage of the confusion by using two captured Star Destroyers to conduct hit-and-run attacks inside war zones.^[130] When the Liberator crashed onto Coruscant and stranded Skywalker, Calrissian, Antilles, R2-D2, and the entire crew on-world, C-3PO participated in a rescue mission aboard the Millennium Falcon alongside Solo, Organa Solo, and Chewbacca. Solo piloted the ship through the mayhem of a battle between Imperial factions and landed in Imperial City, where C-3PO was reunited with his counterpart.^[131]

Having felt a great disturbance in the Force, Skywalker remained on the planet while the rest of the New Republic team escaped. To C-3PO's horror, R2-D2 remained at his master's side, and both man and droid were engulfed by a hyperspace wormhole created by a powerful Force storm.^[131] C-3PO and the rest of the team returned to the New Republic's Pinnacle Base on the moon Da Soocha V,^[132] and several days later, the protocol droid discovered that Organa Solo had collapsed in her quarters after being visited by a Force apparition of her brother. Skywalker had pledged himself to the teachings of a reborn Emperor Palpatine in order to destroy the dark side from within. After Organa Solo was brought to an infirmary, C-3PO and Mon Mothma sought out Solo and brought him to his wife. The Force told her that Skywalker was somewhere in the galaxy's Deep Core, where they would not be able to travel without help from old friends of Solo's. Although Organa Solo felt that the rescue mission was too dangerous for C-3PO, he insisted on coming along in order to potentially help R2-D2.^[133]

After an encounter with several bounty hunters on Nar Shaddaa, C-3PO, Solo, Organa Solo, and Chewbacca recruited Solo's old friends Shug Ninx and Salla Zend to take them to the Deep Core world of Byss. In the Emperor's Citadel, Skywalker refused to go with them,^[134] and although the Emperor imprisoned Solo and Chewbacca, C-3PO and Organa Solo were allowed free reign of the Citadel while Palpatine attempted to bring the latter under his sway. Ninx and Zend soon rescued everyone save for Skywalker, who assured the skeptical group that he knew what he was doing.^[135] In the Millennium Falcon, the group rushed to the besieged planet of Mon Calamari in order to employ Palpatine's master control signal and priority battle plans, which Skywalker had secretly stored inside R2-D2. The codes shut down the Imperial World Devastator superweapons that were attacking the planet, and the battle ended. Skywalker and Organa Solo later combined their powers to defeat the Emperor,^[136] but he soon afterward returned in a new clone body.^[137]

With the squabbling Imperial factions united under his banner, Palpatine's Dark Empire unleashed a devastating campaign against the galaxy. Amidst the carnage, C-3PO was present on the planet of Nespis VIII when Organa Solo gave birth to a third child: Anakin Solo. While on Nespis VIII, C-3PO and R2-D2 were nearly destroyed after they spotted an Imperial installing a homing beacon on the Millennium Falcon, but they were saved by the timely arrival of Captain Solo and Chewbacca. Palpatine's campaign was brought to an end in 11 ABY after his final death and the destruction of his remaining superweapons,^[138] and with the Empire in ruins, the New Republic retook Coruscant.^[139]

Caretaker of the Solo children[]

After being cared for in hiding by Organa Solo's friend Winter throughout most of the Imperial Civil War, Jacen and Jaina were brought back to Coruscant, where C-3PO aided Organa Solo in caring for them. The protocol droid uploaded information regarding child-rearing into his memory banks and met the challenge with an initial enthusiasm but mixed results. C-3PO sometimes recited stories such as The Little Lost Bantha Cub and took the twins on field trips along with Chewbacca, who would keep an eye on them. On one such instance though, while attending a diplomatic reception, the twins started playing near a tentacle-cactus. When C-3PO went to retrieve them, he himself became entangled in the plant, but was eventually saved.^[139] On another occasion, Jacen and Jaina escaped from Chewbacca's and C-3PO's watch during a trip to the Holographic Zoo of Extinct Animals on Coruscant and ended up in the planet's sub-levels. Distraught, the protocol droid frantically searched for them, but they were found by the underworld King Onibald Daykim and reunited with their parents.^[141]

After Solo and Chewbacca stumbled across the Imperial Maw Installation, which had existed in isolation from the galaxy for years, the Wookiee addressed the New Republic Ruling Council with the aid of C-3PO's translation skills. They agreed to his proposal to occupy the installation, free its Wookiee prisoners, and confiscate any deadly weapon designs created by its engineers. Organa Solo assigned C-3PO to the mission alongside Chewbacca and the Katarn Commandos, with his task being to sift through any data found in the installation's computers. While boarding the assault shuttle, C-3PO repeatedly objected to the assignment, and when Chewbacca turned off the droid's power switch, the Wookiee received a round of applause from the gathered commandos. After the team arrived inside the Kessel Maw, C-3PO helped the former Imperial scientist Qwi Xux examine the station's computers, but the New Republic's occupation team soon came under attack by the station's Death Star prototype and the Gorgon, flagship of the crazed Imperial Admiral Daala. Chewbacca lifted the protocol droid into the co-pilot's chair of a Gamma-class assault shuttle, where he used his electronic brain to coordinate the movements and attacks of five shuttles in total. The battle was a New Republic victory, and with Daala's campaign brought to an end, C-3PO resumed helping raise Jacen, Jaina, and Anakin.^[142]

11 ABY also saw Skywalker begin training members of a New Jedi Order.^[141] One year later, C-3PO accompanied Skywalker to a Herd Meet on the planet Ithor, where the Jedi Master hoped the Ithorian healers could help his Jedi student, Nichos Marr. After contracting Quannot's Syndrome, Marr had had his consciousness transferred into a droid body using Ssi-Ruuk technology, and Skywalker believed that C-3PO's translation skills were necessary in order for the healers to help Marr become the man he had once been. Their journey led them to Pzob, where they were picked up by the massive dreadnaught known as the Eye of Palpatine. Having lain dormant for years, the former Imperial superweapon had recently been reactivated by former Emperor's Hand Roganda Ismaren, and it was following its programming by collecting sentients from across the galaxy to serve as stormtroopers in its original mission to destroy a group of renegade Jedi.^[143]

C-3PO assisted Skywalker in navigating through the ship and communicating with its inhabitants of various species, including Jawas, Talz, Kitonak, and Gamorreans. While they solved the ship's mysteries, C-3PO supported the Jedi Master following a leg injury suffered by Skywalker at the hands of a Gamorrean wielding a vibroblade. When the Eye arrived at its target, the planet Belsavis, Marr and his partner Cray Mingla sacrificed themselves to destroy the dreadnaught. Although Mingla died, her body became a host for the consciousness of Callista, a Jedi of the Old Order whose essence had been inhabiting the Eye's computers for over three decades following her original sabotage of the ship. While communicating with each other aboard the Eye, Skywalker and Callista had fallen in love.^[143] As her new body was completely insensitive to the Force, she and Skywalker embarked on a galactic journey to rediscover her Force connection, and C-3PO returned to Coruscant, where he resumed his duties with the Solo children. He also helped Organa Solo—now the New Republic's Chief of State—receive Lord Durga the Hutt of the Besadii kajidic, who was making a diplomatic visit to the galactic capital.^[140]

R2-D2, who had been spending his time at the Jedi Academy, was left in the Solos' care during Skywalker's journey, and he and C-3PO discovered that Durga had stolen the plans to the Death Star from the Imperial Palace. The droids accompanied Solo, Organa Solo, and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon on a followup mission to the Hutt world of Nal Hutta, where they learned that Durga was building his own superweapon, the Darksaber. Even graver news was that Admiral Daala had unified the surviving Imperial Warlords into a united fleet and was planning to attack the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV. During the defense of the world, C-3PO was left alone aboard the Falcon, where he fired on an Imperial AT-ST walker and stopped it from killing his friends. Skywalker's Jedi students repelled the attack, and Durga was also foiled when the incomplete Darksaber attempted to fire its superlaser and ended up destroying itself. Callista, however, vanished into the galaxy, believing that she needed to rediscover the Force on her own.^[140]

In 13 ABY, C-3PO and R2-D2 accompanied Chief of State Organa Solo to Nam Chorios, where she met with Representative Seti Ashgad aboard her flagship, the Borealis. When Ashgad and his ally Dzym kidnapped Organa Solo and unleashed the Death Seed plague upon the ship's crew, the droids escaped in a lifeboat along with Yeoman Marcopius, who quickly died of the plague's effects. After being picked up by the scout Bortrek, the captain of the Pure Sabacc who claimed C-3PO and R2-D2 as his own, the droids resorted to taking over the ship and coercing Bortrek into dropping them off on Nim Drovis, which, like Nam Chorios, was in the Meridian sector. They found themselves stranded on the planet, and their many attempts to secure passage offworld finally got them to nearby Cybloc XII, where they encountered Admiral Daala, now the leader of the pro-Imperial Independent Company of Settlers. Daala tortured C-3PO and R2-D2 into revealing that Ashgad had unleashed the Death Seed plague, and she pledged herself to a fight against Moff Tol Getelles of the new Imperial Remnant, Ashgad's corrupt ally. A New Republic fleet also participated in the Battle of Nam Chorios, which saw Getelles defeated, Organa Solo rescued, and the Death Seed plague contained.^[144]

A year later, when Solo received several mysterious messages in a nearly extinct language, C-3PO took responsibility for translating and replying to them. They spoke of mysterious events related to a lost Jedi on Crseih Station, a former Imperial prison that orbited a black hole and a crystallizing white dwarf star in the Crseih system. C-3PO, Solo, and Skywalker traveled incognito to the station; the protocol droid's coat was covered with a purple lacquer. When they arrived, C-3PO set out into the asteroid station to meet with their contact, leaving his Human masters alone. When he located her—the Human female Xaverri, an old flame of Solo's—he and his masters were brought by Xaverri to the Altar of Waru. Beings of various species knelt before Waru, a large blob-like being from another dimension, upon whom they called to heal them.^[145]

Xaverri presented C-3PO to Waru, who had never encountered a droid before. After waxing poetic to Xaverri about the state of the universe, the being healed a sick Zeffliffl by encasing it inside his golden syrupy ichor, which failed to impress a skeptical Solo. When Solo later witnessed Waru kill an Ithorian who sought healing, he decided that Xaverri was right about the danger that the being posed to the New Republic. As it turned out, Waru had been summoned to Crseih Station by Hethrir, leader of the Empire Reborn insurgency, who had also kidnapped the Solo children. When Hethrir arrived on the station with baby Anakin, whom he intended to sacrifice to Waru, C-3PO encountered them and demanded that he let the child go. Hethrir responded with the swing of a lightsaber, which cracked through C-3PO's purple varnish but inflicted minimal damage to the droid himself. C-3PO was found and resuscitated by R2-D2, who had arrived on-station with Organa Solo and Chewbacca in pursuit of the kidnapped children, and the ensuing confrontation saw Hethrir and Waru defeated and the children returned to their parents.^[145]

Ghost ships and droid armies[]

When Skywalker embarked on a personal journey in 16 ABY, he brought C-3PO to Yavin IV to manage the administrative needs of the Jedi Academy. Not long afterward, Lando Calrissian arrived on the jungle moon and recruited both C-3PO and R2-D2 on a mission that had been put together by the New Republic Intelligence Service. C-3PO refused until Calrissian lied and told him that Skywalker had reassigned both droids to the New Republic Defense Fleet. Calrissian himself had been enlisted by Admiral Hiram Drayson—the mission was to investigate the mysterious ghost ship known as the Teljkon Vagabond, which Intelligence had located in deep space near Gmar Askilon. The droids and Calrissian next went to Cloud City and picked up Lobot, Calrissian's former aide, before joining the Belarus-class medium cruiser Glorious and the rest of the Teljkon Vagabond task force. They trailed the ghost ship for twenty-two days, during which time it did nothing to acknowledge their presence. When a communication from the Vagabond was finally received, C-3PO and R2-D2 matched it to a signal it had broadcasted during a sighting four years earlier, but C-3PO was unable to translate the mysterious language. Worried that the task force's impatient Colonel Pakkpekatt would botch the mission with his next move, Calrissian, Lobot, and the droids brainstormed their options aboard the Lady Luck, and Lobot matched the language to the extinct Qella species.^[147]

When R2-D2 determined that the communication from the Vagabond was a partial representation of the Qellas' genetic code, Calrissian took the Lady Luck toward the ghost ship, which protected them from the Glorious's tractor beam after C-3PO sang the missing fragment of the genetic code over an open channel. After they secured the retroactive blessing of a furious Pakkpekatt, the Vagabond began communicating with them via a series of lights. C-3PO suggested following the lights to their source, which elicited the ship to open a portal on its surface. The four of them ventured inside to a zero-gravity environment, and R2-D2 helped Calrissian discover a handle within a membranous bulkhead of the airlock, which Calrissian touched with his bare skin after removing the glove of his enviro-suit. The portal then closed, and the Vagabond fled into hyperspace.^[147] Suddenly separated from the rest of the task force, the quartet took stock of their surroundings. C-3PO attempted to communicate with the ship on a secondary comm channel while R2-D2 searched for inflow vents leading into the airlock. When he found none, Calrissian and Lobot created their own way into the rest of the ship with a cutting blaster. The Vagabond accordingly dropped out of hyperspace and attempted to vent them into space, but the quartet hurried through the hole before it sealed itself, thus separating them from both the airlock and the void of space.^[148]

The quartet explored the mysterious vessel, hoping to gain control of it before the droids ran out of power and the Humans ran out of oxygen. The lack of gravity and seemingly random arrangement of the ship impeded their progress, but R2-D2 created a holographic map as they went. Seventy-one hours in, they located a control panel, which shocked and shut down C-3PO after he inadvertently touched it. The Vagabond re-entered realspace while he was powered off, and Calrissian rocketed toward the outer hull with his blaster and attached a tracking limpet. R2-D2 mostly repaired C-3PO, but the protocol droid did not fully regain his vocal faculties until all four of them took a nap to recharge. The quartet then started to explore various chambers when Calrissian and Lobot again used the touch of their bare hands to create doorways; each room contained a Qellan history lesson, one of which prompted C-3PO to engage Lobot and Calrissian in a philosophical discussion on the nature of sentience. The Vagabond, which was currently within space claimed by the Constitutional Protectorate of Prakith, was suddenly attacked by two frigates of the Protectorate's Grand Imperial Navy, and although one was destroyed by the ghost ship, the other followed the Vagabond into hyperspace.^[148]

Although the limpet had been destroyed, Calrissian revealed a beckon call with which he could summon the Lady Luck, that he only intended to use once they gained control of the Vagabond. However, when they dropped out of hyperspace and were attacked by the second Protectorate frigate, C-3PO activated the beckon call so that the Lady Luck might come and rescue them. The frigate was destroyed, however, and when Calrissian left them to inspect the damage caused by the attack, Lobot and the droids continued to explore the biological ship. Lobot later left them in search of what he called the Vagabond's "threshold of awareness." There, Lobot communicated with the ship and discovered that it was returning home to Maltha Obex, the Qella's ancestral homeworld, bearing the seeds of Qellan civilization. C-3PO and R2-D2 powered down while Lobot spoke with the ship, and when Calrissian turned them back on, they had arrived at Maltha Obex. Lobot convinced the ship to turn a section of the hull transparent, and through the ersatz viewport R2-D2 identified the Lady Luck and a Dobrutz DB-Four starliner—Pakkpekatt had followed the Lady Luck after the activation of the beckon call.^[149]

The Vagabond sat waiting for contact from its homeworld, but Maltha Obex was in fact undergoing an ice age. Both of the droids finally lost all of their power, and by the time they were recharged, Skywalker had arrived aboard the ship to aid Calrissian. Together with Lobot, the Jedi Master convinced the Vagabond to use its energy beams to thaw the ice on Maltha Obex, which would allow it to deposit the Qella's genetic material it carried and help revive the species. The group then evacuated the ship aboard Skywalker's Mud Sloth.^[149] After returning to Coruscant to resume his duties with the Solo children, C-3PO was befuddled in 17 ABY when Anakin tried to replace him with the TDL nanny droid TDL-3.5, but the infant's efforts were thwarted by Winter. R2-D2 recruited his counterpart to help him investigate Skywalker's X-wing, which the astromech believed was being sabotaged, and after being briefly imprisoned by a Kloperian mechanic for trespassing in the hangar, the droids found Skywalker's X-wing wrongfully disassembled. They then reported the anomaly to the Jedi Master, who took R2-D2 to investigate. Later on, while researching new languages to add to his memory, C-3PO was summoned to the hangar by an emergency transmission sent by R2-D2, and he arrived to find that the astromech had been shot and disabled by several Kloperian mechanics who had wrongfully suspected him of sabotage.^[146]

General Wedge Antilles and Chief of State Organa Solo were also present, and the latter reactivated R2-D2, who helped corroborate a story given by the young Human Tatooinian mechanic Cole Fardreamer: on Skywalker's orders, Fardreamer and R2-D2 had been fixing the Jedi Master's X-wing and had discovered a bomb inside. The bombs were in fact present inside many X-wings, and Organa Solo ordered a grounding of the entire fleet. C-3PO and R2-D2 proceeded to the Senate Hall to investigate the wreckage of a recent bombing which had taken place there, and the astromech found five detonators emblazoned with the same Imperial insignia they had espied on the X-wing bombs. They were unable to report the news to Organa Solo, who had resigned her presidency after a warlord named Kueller wiped out the populations of Auyemesh and Pydyr, two moons of Almania, and taken Skywalker hostage. When Mon Mothma, her temporary replacement, could not see them, R2-D2 rushed to a hangar to meet with Fardreamer. Despite C-3PO's protests, the three of them left Coruscant immediately in a stock light freighter, using Organa Solo's codes to get past space traffic control. R2-D2 claimed he knew the origin of the detonators and guided them to the moon Telti, where they landed at a droid construction facility.^[146]

R2-D2 snuck into the facility while Fardreamer spoke to its owner, Brakiss, and C-3PO was halted by the security droids of Kueller's Red Terror army, who resolved to give him a memory wipe. As they led C-3PO through the facility, they came across R2-D2, who had made friends with a heap of unwanted astromech droids. The astromechs charged the Red Terror and allowed the two counterparts to escape, and hundreds of them accompanied C-3PO and R2-D2 in a march through the facility. They were stopped by Brakiss, who threatened to use a droid scrambler on C-3PO if R2-D2 did not halt, but more astromechs crashed through a glass panel and sent Brakiss fleeing. R2-D2 then jacked into a computer terminal and shut down all of the droid detonators throughout the galaxy, a task which was only completed when C-3PO pressed a button on the console. They succeeded mere seconds before Kueller, who was dueling Skywalker on Almania, attempted to detonate all of his remaining droid weapons. Organa Solo subsequently shot Kueller in the face and ended his uprising for good; back on Telti, C-3PO and R2-D2 rescued Fardreamer from a droid torture chamber and contacted Lando Calrissian, who came to the moon to ferry them home.^[146]

End of the war[]

C-3PO, R2-D2, and Skywalker accompanied Calrissian on a quest for a potential bride in 18 ABY. The bachelor became enamored of Karia Ver Seryan of the planet Leria Kerlsil, and nearly married her before the droids rushed in to reveal some disturbing news: they had discovered that she was a life-witch who had the power to give men good health for a few years, after which they would suddenly die. Calrissian fled and continued on his quest, which eventually brought him to Tendra Risant of Sacorria. He became quite smitten with the woman, but the governing Sacorrian Triad had deemed it illegal for a Sacorrian to marry an off-worlder, and Calrissian, Skywalker, and the droids were chased off the planet. They also discovered a mysterious interdiction field blocking hyperspace travel within the Corellian system,^[151] and upon their return to Coruscant, they were tasked with traveling to Bakura and procuring four Bakura-class destroyers from the world's defense fleet, each of which was equipped with an interdiction-countering hyperwave inertial momentum sustainer system. After arriving in the Corellian system with the gathered fleet, the Lady Luck and Skywalker's X-wing departed from the belly of the Bakuran Namana-class light cruiser Intruder and fought in a space battle with several Pocket Patrol Boats of the Corellian Defense Force that were loyal to the insurrectionist Human League.^[152]

Skywalker and R2-D2 followed the Lady Luck, which was crewed by Calrissian, C-3PO, Gaeriel Captison of Bakura, and New Republic Intelligence Agent Belindi Kalenda. Their destination was Centerpoint Station, a massive space station in the Corellian system that had as of late been destroying stars. Within, they were met by Administrator Jenica Sonsen, who brought them to Hollowtown, located in the center of the space station. When C-3PO revealed that Hollowtown's temperature was dangerously rising, the group fled, and they were soon afterward reunited with the Solos, who had been on Corellia to attend a trade summit. During the crisis's final battle, C-3PO was with the Solo children within Drall's planetary repulsor when Anakin, who had earlier imprinted himself upon the repulsor, used the Force to aim it at Centerpoint Station and stop the station from destroying the star Bovo Yagen. The Human League and their Sacorrian Triad overlords were defeated and the Corellian crisis was averted, and Calrissian and Risant soon afterward were married.^[153] A new crisis gripped the galaxy one year later when a partial copy of the Caamas Document was discovered in the Emperor's former storehouse on Wayland.^[154]

The document implicated members of the Bothan species in the Caamas Firestorm thirty-eight years earlier, and with anti-Bothan sentiment stirred up across the galaxy, the Solos embarked on a quest to find a complete copy of the document, which would implicate specific Bothan perpetrators and thus vindicate the species as a whole. On the planet Bothawui, C-3PO was torn apart by a rioting anti-Bothan crowd, and was later put back together. When the Solos returned to Coruscant, they met with Calrissian and the information broker Talon Karrde in their apartment in Orowood Tower. Karrde agreed to travel deep into the Kathol sector to locate his former boss, Jorj Car'das, whom he suspected might have a complete copy of the Caamas Document, and C-3PO was assigned to his mission as a translator droid.^[154] Aboard the information broker's Wild Karrde, the group first traveled to Pembric II, in the Kathol sector's Pembric system, where C-3PO translated the native Jarellian dialect used by Erwithat Space Control. The protocol droid remained with the ship while Karrde and his companion Shada D'ukal secured the protection of the crime lord Crev Bombaasa, who nevertheless warned them of another, dangerous pirate gang that operated in the sector.^[150]

The Wild Karrde repulsed a pirate attack at Dayark before landing on the moon, where C-3PO led Karrde and D'ukal to the Ithor Loman tapcafe, whose sign was written in Ithorese. There they met General Jutka, who warned them about the pirate Rei'Kas; and an aide named Entoo Needaan E-elz, whom C-3PO found curious and who helped them find the legendary lost world of Exocron, which was located near the Kathol Rift. On Exocron, E-elz took C-3PO, Karrde, and D'ukal to Jorj Car'das's fortress, where Car'das lay in bed as a senile and feeble old man. Karrde was disappointed, but when Rei'Kas tracked him to Exocron, Karrde pledged his ship to the Exocron Combined Air-Space Fleet and aided the defense of the world. C-3PO served at a spotting station aboard the Wild Karrde, but the battle ended swiftly when a fleet of ships belonging to the mysterious Aing-Tii monks arrived and easily wiped out Rei'Kas's fleet. Realizing that Car'das had used him to lure Rei'Kas to his doom, Karrde returned to Exocron with C-3PO and D'ukal and found that Car'das was in fact full of vigor. The old man was delighted with C-3PO's presence, as he had rarely had the opportunity to speak with anyone in Old Tarmidian or the Cincher dialectory.^[150]

Car'das did not have a copy of the Caamas Document, but he did have a datacard that would prove pivotal in ending the current galactic crisis: The Imperial Remnant had been reinvigorated under the leadership of a revived Grand Admiral Thrawn, but the datacard revealed that "Thrawn" was in fact a con artist named Flim. The Aing-Tii monks used their ability to fold space with the Force and instantaneously transported C-3PO and the rest of the Wild Karrde's crew across the galaxy, where Karrde met with the Remnant's Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, who himself had been left out of the coup involving Flim and in fact wanted peace with the New Republic. With Flim's deception exposed, Pellaeon's plans were realized, and the Grand Admiral signed peace accords with the New Republic's President Gavrisom. Those events, coupled with the discovery of a complete copy of the Caamas Document by R2-D2 while on Nirauan with Skywalker and Mara Jade, finally ended the Galactic Civil War.^[150]

Skywalker and Jade had fallen in love while on Nirauan,^[150] and C-3PO was with Organa Solo when she announced the new couple's wedding plans to the media on Coruscant. When reporters asked outrageous questions involving bizarre conspiracy theories regarding a new Force-based Empire, Organa Solo left C-3PO to deal with them, and the protocol droid took the podium to regale the gathered press with a long and winding tale about his many adventures with Skywalker.^[125] On the day of the wedding, Skywalker learned that the disgruntled former Imperial Moff Derran Takkar was planning a sabotage, which prompted the Jedi and Rogue Squadron ushers to rush off to thwart Takkar's plans while C-3PO and the young Jacen Solo took over their seating duties. Takkar slipped past the Rogues and confronted the couple during their ceremony, but Skywalker talked him into joining the New Republic, and the rest of the wedding went off without a hitch.^[155]

Jacen and Jaina Solo began their Jedi Training on Yavin IV in 23 ABY, four years after the wedding,^[156] but they returned to Coruscant on a vacation in that year, and C-3PO and Anakin Solo helped them comb the Coruscant undercity for their missing friend, a young bounty hunter named Zekk.^[157] One year later,^[156] C-3PO attended the twins' graduation from the Academy inside Yavin IV's Great Temple.^[158]

Yuuzhan Vong War and the Dark Nest Crisis (25 ABY–36 ABY)[]

With the onset of the Yuuzhan Vong War and the stirring up of much anti-droid frenzy, C-3PO entered a phase of contemplation regarding his own mortality, and his place in a biological society. Evidence indicates that he may have emerged from the Vong war more assertive and less tolerant of abuse from his biological companions—from Captain Solo in particular. Despite his inner conflict, Threepio continued to participate in the war effort. He was the one who was able to translate the Yuuzhan Vong language, which benefited the New Republic greatly.

When Viqi Shesh, accompanied by a group of Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators, attempted to break into the Solo apartment, Threepio was waiting for them and led them to a trap; they were immediately surrounded by Noghri bodyguards and dealt with, though Shesh escaped. C-3PO would also have a huge role in the war, saving Luke's infant son, Ben Skywalker, from Viqi Shesh after he was captured. In 29 ABY, Threepio participated in the Recapture of Coruscant, where he and Artoo helped Han, Leia, and the Priest Harrar pilot the Millennium Falcon into an opening at the Well of the World Brain.

Second Galactic Civil War[]

In the years following the Yuuzhan Vong War, C-3PO still served the Solos and was often at odds with Han Solo. During a tour around the Solos' new home, C-3PO was outsmarted by a teenage Ben Skywalker and felt embarrassed.

During the Second Galactic Civil War C-3PO was left alone in the Solos' as Leia and Han were not allowed on Coruscant as they had betrayed the Galactic Alliance. Similarly, they were seen as enemies of the state on Corellia, and had a bounty placed on their heads by Thrackan Sal-Solo. Eventually Threepio was allowed to join the Solos on the Falcon. The three were summoned to the Kiris Asteroid Cluster, where they met with Wedge Antilles and Dur Gejjen. During their meeting, Threepio attempted to record their meeting but was asked to leave by Leia. He later learned of the Corellians' plan to draw out the Queen Mother using the Solos, though Threepio was strongly against Han's role in the plan, which was to be a decoy. He felt Captain Solo would embarrass not only himself but Leia as well if they executed the plan. Shortly thereafter, Threepio accompanied the Solos on their diplomatic mission to Hapes, where they expected to meet with her to discuss her role in the war. The Solos and Threepio were forced to make a hasty retreat once they were caught up in an attack on Tenel Ka's life.

Shortly afterwards, the Solos encountered the assassin, Nashtah (actually Aurra Sing), who tried to assassinate Tenel Ka in the Hapan Palace. Because the Solos were seen leaving with Nashtah, they were suspected of being involved in the plot to kill Tenel Ka and her daughter, Allana. Unbeknownst to Threepio, the real reason for their temporary allegiance with the assassin was to draw out the coup's leader. Chased after by Hapan security guards, the four went deep in Hapan space where the Solos met Lalu Morwan, who was the one who hired Sing for the job. On the Falcon Morwan explained to the group the reason for her wanting to kill Tenel Ka and her affiliation with the Heritage Council. Despite Lalu's dislike of the droid, the two worked together briefly to heal Captain Solo's badly damaged arm. As part of the plan to pass on valuable information to the Queen Mother, Threepio was tasked with watching Morwan to make sure she didn't discover the Solos' true intentions. However, things turned ugly when Han was forced to disable Lalu by punching her in the nose. The trio and Falcon then unexpectedly entered the Battle of Hapes where they were shot upon by the Anakin Solo, commanded by Jacen, though they were able to escape. While the Millennium Falcon was being repaired at a Tendrando Arms space station at Gyndine, Threepio was left to watch and catalog all the mechanics did to the Falcon. He later rejoined Han and Leia after the Falcon's repair was complete.

Following the bombardment of Kashyyyk by Darth Caedus, the New Jedi Order took C-3PO with them when they evacuated their facilities to Endor. Because of C-3PO's prior experiences on Endor, the Jedi were able to use him to communicate with the local Ewok tribe that inhabited the areas where the Jedi were hiding. Kyp Durron reported to Luke Skywalker that the local tribe was working quite well with C-3PO, and that it had also been a good idea to bring him along.

At the end of the war, C-3PO helped coordinate the final attack against Darth Caedus in the Transitory Mists, keeping Han Solo and the Jedi Masters updated on the current situation.^[160]

War's fallout[]

Adventures in the Falcon[]

Two years after the defeat of Caedus, C-3PO was still serving Solo and Organa Solo aboard the Millennium Falcon. A new addition to the family had been made, however, as Allana Solo, the daughter of Jacen and Tenel Ka, had been adopted by the Solos following the end of the war. C-3PO aided the three in a quest they undertook to uncover secrets about the Falcon's past that culminated with an encounter with the wealthy lawyer Lestra Oxic on Tandun III. Following the quest, the crew of the Falcon returned to Coruscant after discovering that Natasi Daala, the former Imperial Admiral who had recently become the Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance, had issued an arrest warrant for Luke Skywalker.^[161] Skywalker struck a deal with Daala that nevertheless resulted in his exile from the Jedi Order; Luke and Ben Skywalker set out on an Odyssey to learn more about Jacen's fall to the dark side. As a result, R2-D2 was assigned to the Solos, and joined his longtime friend in their service. Not long after the Skywalkers departed Coruscant, C-3PO received a live holocomm call to the Solos' apartment from Lando Calrissian on Kessel, woke up Han and Leia Solo, and got them some caf. Calrissian requested the aid of the Solos in helping him discover why his glitterstim mines on the planet were being rocked by groundquakes, and the Solos promptly departed for Kessel, bringing Allana and the droids along.^[162]

As the Solos dined with Calrissian, his wife Tendra, and the Sullustan Nien Nunb, C-3PO, R2-D2, and a nanny droid watched over Allana and Lando's son Chance. While the Solos later investigated the Kessel mines, Allana insisted on going outside to bounce around in the planet's low gravity, and was permitted to by R2-D2 despite C-3PO's protests. The droids watched her play from a safe distance, but caught up with her after she disappeared from their watchful photoreceptors around some rises on the surface. Allana was eager to return with them, having just received unpleasant contact^[162] from the dark side entity known as Abeloth, who lived in the Kessel Maw.^[163] When her grandparents became trapped behind a rockfall within the glitterstim mines, Allana insisted on searching for them, but both droids were firm in their refusals. The Solos eventually returned, revealing that the groundquakes were being caused by hidden chambers within the planet's mines that were collapsing when the mysterious ancient technology within them initiated a self-destruct pattern. The pattern was increasing in intensity and would soon destabilize the Great Kessel Fault, destroying the entire planet. Calrissian invited a motley crew of retired pilots to Kessel to help conduct a controlled demolition of the remaining self-destruct equipment, and both C-3PO and R2-D2 served aboard the Millennium Falcon during the mission. Although one of the mines' energy spiders latched onto the Falcon's hull, Solo shook it off, and the mission went off without a hitch.^[162]

During this time, many young adult members of the Jedi Order began succumbing to a mysterious illness that affected their perception of reality. C-3PO accompanied Han and Leia Solo to visit one of the afflicted Knights, the Falleen Natua Wan, in the basement of Coruscant's Jedi Temple, and when Wan began hissing in the ancient Hsoosh language, he translated her words, which were in fact death threats against the Solos. The Solos worked closely with the Jedi Council in attempting to counter both the illness and Chief of State Daala's attempts to encase the afflicted Jedi in carbonite, and C-3PO and R2-D2 often babysat Allana while her grandparents were away. During one of their rare moments of respite, C-3PO interrupted their peaceful hot chocolate-drinking session with Allana to inform them that Wynn Dorvan, chief aide to Daala, had contacted them. Although Dorvan was sympathetic to their cause, tensions continued to rise, and the Solos opted to smuggle four of the inflicted Knights from Coruscant to the Jedi Academy on Shedu Maad: Seff Hellin, Natua Wan, Yaqeel Saav'etu, and Bazel Warv. Also aboard the ship were three Barabel Jedi Knights acting as gunners: Wilyem, Dordi, and Zal. Although Allana acted as co-pilot to her grandfather while he bluffed his way past planetary security and the pursuit frigate Fast Death, R2-D2 in fact performed many of the co-pilot's tasks, and C-3PO translated his beeps and whistles to Solo and his granddaughter.^[163]

Sojourn to Dathomir[]

After dropping the Barabel and the afflicted Jedi off on Shedu Maad, the Solos received a hypercomm message from Ben Skywalker informing them of a group of Sith that he and his father had encountered while aboard a space station in the Maw. The Skywalker had pursued the sole survivor of the Sith to Dathomir, and Ben asked if the Solos could come to the planet to lend some support. The Falcon was brought to Dathomir and landed at its primary spaceport, and Solo and Organa Solo departed to locate Luke and Ben, leaving Allana in the care of C-3PO and R2-D2. Although neither C-3PO nor Allana knew it, they had also secured the aid of the Jedi Knight Zekk and his partner Taryn Zel, who landed a Batag Skiff next to the Falcon and watched over the freighter. C-3PO waited on Allana during her grandparents' absence, bringing her milk and attempting to dissuade her from wishing to ride a rancor.^[164]

When he learned that R2-D2 had spotted a SoroSuub yacht in the spaceport and wanted to investigate, C-3PO forbid his friend from doing so, but the astromech droid left the ship anyway after C-3PO had tucked Allana into bed. R2-D2 informed C-3PO not to contact Solo and Organa Solo unless he was absent for a certain amount of time. Chagrined, C-3PO hid behind the Falcon's hyperspace module until Allana discovered him the next morning, and assured the infant that R2-D2 was still aboard the ship. She saw through his lie and attempted to leave the Falcon and rescue the astromech, but C-3PO locked the boarding ramp, and was content to monitor R2-D2's preferred comm frequencies until his friend returned. Allana escaped through the turbolift leading to the ship's topside hatch, but returned after C-3PO commed her and asked where she had gone. He fed her and ensured that she completed her daily studies, before tucking her into bed. The curious infant then departed the Falcon once more, and, hoping to secure C-3PO's aid in rescuing R2-D2, commed the protocol droid and informed him of her absence.^[164]

C-3PO followed Allana to Monarg's Mechanic Works, a repair shop that she had tracked R2-D2 to. After entering the shop, C-3PO spotted a derelict R2-D2 situated behind a scuffle between Allana and the large mechanic Monarg, and issued a wake-up command to his friend, hoping that R2-D2 would be able to rescue Allana. Announcing his presence, C-3PO lied and told Monarg that he was downloading a comprehensive package of combat maneuvers. The mechanic proceeded to toss the protocol droid around his shop before being shocked in the buttocks by a now-awake R2-D2. The delaying tactic had paid off, and the droids took Allana and her pet Nexu Anji out of the shop and back onto the Falcon. Monarg gathered two friends and pursued them, prompting Allana to attempt to contact her parents. When no answer immediately came, Allana and R2-D2 powered up the Falcon and flew it away from the spaceport. Powerless to stop them, C-3PO contented himself with supplying Allana with pillows, and relaying a belligerent message from the girl to spaceport security. Allana landed the Falcon in nearby marshes, where she once again commed her mother. When Organa Solo answered, Allana and C-3PO relayed the events to her and her astonished husband.^[164]

After returning to their ship, the Solos took it back to Coruscant after learning of a Mandalorian raid on the Jedi Temple that had been sanctioned by Daala. After landing at the capital, the five crewmembers of the Falcon were greeted by Daala, Wynn Dorvan, and several members of Coruscant Security. The next day, the five of them joined Jaina Solo and Jagged Fel, now her fiancé, for a dinner at the Pangalactus restaurant; C-3PO and R2-D2 situated themselves against a wall while their masters dined. The meal was soon interrupted, however, when a terrorist named Kester Tolann and two YVH-Series battle droids blew a hole through the wall from the next room and attacked the party. The attackers were quickly neutralized, with a blaster bolt to R2-D2 being the only harm done. Fel's diplomatic speeder then dropped everyone save for himself and Jaina off at the Solos' safehouse.^[164]

Prison break[]

After leaving Dathomir, the Skywalkers made a reluctant alliance with the Lost Tribe of Sith that was designed to counter Abeloth, a mysterious being who lived on a planet in the Maw. When Vestara Khai, the Sith girl the Skywalkers had been pursuing on Dathomir, conversed with her father Gavar Khai in their Keshiri language aboard the Skywalkers' ship, the Jade Shadow, Luke suspected duplicity and contacted C-3PO, hoping that the droid could translate their language. C-3PO busied himself to the challenge, and restlessly paced the Solos' apartment for several days, alternating between being pleased with performing his intended functions and distressed at the amount of time the task was taking. After completing it, he contacted Luke and transmitted the translated conversation, but was overheard by Allana, who burst into the room in tears, believing that her great-uncle had defected to the Sith. Luke assured her that it was not the case as C-3PO fetched the Solos. After they comforted their granddaughter, C-3PO finished conversing with Luke and then received a prerecorded message from Jagged Fel that indicated Jaina had broken off their engagement.^[165]

The "death" of C-3PO[]

Many years later, C-3PO was found in a cave on a planet, which was home to the Vindar, by two youths by the names of Otalp and Remoh, who had been searching for him due to a vision from their Den-mother. He was missing both the lower half of his body, his arms, and even parts of his faceplate but was still semi-functional. At first, he simply muttered nonsense about "Master Luke" and "Artoo" in Basic but, when the two youths started to talk, he adjusted to their language. The trio had a brief conversation in which Threepio told the youths of his past adventures with Luke Skywalker. Threepio was shot by the Vindar a few moments later, but not before inspiring the two youths to start a revolution against the oppressive Vindar. His last gift to the galaxy was a green lightsaber found next to his destroyed body.^[166]

Skills and abilities[]

Languages known[]

C-3PO frequently suggested that he was fluent in over 6 million forms of communication.^[16] Some of those he has demonstrated are:

• Galactic Basic Standard^{[3][4][9][16][17][43]}
• Ancient Askajian^[126]
• B'rknaa language (Learned with the native speakers)^[167]
• Bimmini^[127]
• Bith^[144]
• Bocce^[16]
• Binary^{[3][4][9][16][17][43]}
• Ewokese^[9] (Via Yuzzum)^[168]
• Gacerian^[144]
• Gamorrese^[144]
• Horansi^[144]
• Huttese^[9]
• Ithorese^[169]
• Janguine^[170]
• Jawa Trade language^[16]
• Myneyrsh^[129]
• Old Tarmidian^[150]
• Psadan^[129]
• Shyriiwook^[16]
• Ssi-ruuvi (Learned by himself)^[104]
• Talzzi^[32]
• Ubese^[9]
• Tusken^[171]
• Yeb language^[144]
• Yuuzhan Vong^[170]
• Yuzzum^[168]

Other skills[]

C-3PO possessed other abilities besides his lingual ones. He was proficient in calculating odds, and could pilot speeders.^[32]

Personality and traits[]

C-3PO was programmed for over thirty secondary functions besides protocol.^[91] C-3PO had been shown as rather cowardly, such as when he fled in terror when attacked by Imperials on Hoth. However, in large part because of some leftover pieces of earlier programming, he has shown some instances of ingenuity and even deviance, as evidenced by his briefly stopping his fleeing from Imperial forces and removing a warning label over the Wampa pen as a means to create a trap for pursuing Imperial forces in the same event. C-3PO was rather polite and quirky towards his companions, especially R2-D2, although he could be sarcastic and indignant when mistreated by individuals like Jabba the Hutt. 3PO also had some knowledge on taunts, as evidenced by one of his earlier misadventures during the Imperial period, where he alongside R2-D2 taunted a group of individuals by putting his hands to each side of his face and wagged his fingers.^[51][173] Luke Skywalker felt that C-3PO always possessed a certain inherent dignity that one should respond to in kind, regardless of how silly he might look in any given situation.^[128]

Behind the scenes[]

Origins[]

Although C-3PO and R2-D2 did not appear in 1973's original fourteen-page story synopsis of "The Star Wars,"^[175] their characters were featured in the 132-page rough draft of "The Star Wars," completed in May 1974, as See Threepio and Artoo Detoo. Threepio is described as being tall, thin, old, battered, and of Human proportions, and the two droids are written as construction robots in an Imperial Space Fortress. As the Fortress is attacked by Aquilaean starships, Threepio is the robot who decides to abandon ship, while ARTWO is hesitant to desert their duty. The two then land in the dune sea of Utapau, where they meet Starkiller.^[174] By 1975, when George Lucas had written Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode I: The Star Wars, the story began with the two droids aboard a Rebel spacefighter and oriented itself around their evacuation, landing on Utapau, and being captured by Jawas.^[176] With relatively few changes, this storyline went on to appear in the original Star Wars film.^[16]

When creating the characters of C-3PO and R2-D2, Lucas looked to Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress, which he credits as one of his inspirations for Star Wars. The Hidden Fortress is told from the point of view of the peasants^[177] Tahei and Matashichi,^[178] who are the film's comic relief duo that travel Japan in the company of a General and a Princess, and, despite coming from the lowest possible social class, are privy to an adventure taking place on a grand level of international diplomacy. Lucas thus wrote C-3PO and R2-D2 into Star Wars as similar comic characters and narrators to The Hidden Fortress's peasants.^[177]

Lucas felt that the two droids had to be very different from one another in both personality and appearance, and envisioned an elegant and sophisticated anthropomorphic design for C-3PO, whom he saw as coming from an elegant and sophisticated environment. C-3PO's original appearance, visible in concept art by Ralph McQuarrie, was based on The Maschinenmensch, the robot from the 1927 silent film Metropolis. Lucas wanted C-3PO's face to be a completely neutral one that the viewer could read emotion into based on the droid's environment, and conceived of the character's personality as being akin to a used-car salesman who would say whatever was necessary to please others.^[177]

In an early draft for The Phantom Menace, C-3PO's original name was CPO. The 3 was then added when Padmé told Anakin Skywalker that her favorite number was 3.^[179]

Portrayal[]

British actor Anthony Daniels was cast in the role of C-3PO, having both the slender build necessary to fit into the costume, and training as a mime artist.^[181] Daniels was hesitant to audition for the part of a robot, but after being convinced by his agent to meet George Lucas and read Star Wars's script, he began to feel that C-3PO was a very likable character with a large personality.^[180] McQuarrie's painting of C-3PO and R2-D2 also played a role in convincing Daniels to take the part, as he saw a vulnerability in the character's face that invoked pity. Rather than play C-3PO as a used-car salesman, Daniels channeled the voice of a fussy British butler, feeling that it fit the character's personality. Lucas briefly considered casting another actor to provide the droid's voice, but was convinced by sound designer Ben Burtt, among others, that Daniels's vocal performance was an excellent one that he had synchronized well with his body motions.^[181] Daniels thus re-recorded every line of C-3PO's dialogue.^[182] Burtt credits Daniels's complete performance as having created a total character.^[181]

Following the success of Star Wars in 1977,^[183] Daniels reprised his role as C-3PO in the film's two sequels, 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and 1983's Return of the Jedi. He reprised the role again in all three Star Wars prequels, respectively released in 1999, 2002, and 2005. Daniels is the only actor to appear in all six primary Star Wars films.^[182]

He has also appeared in all three radio dramas of the original Star Wars trilogy^{[184][172][185]} (for which he made notations in the scripts and revised C-3PO's dialogue),^[186] Daniels has voiced C-3PO in the video games Star Wars: Pit Droids.^[187]

Outside the Star Wars continuity, Daniels has guest-starred as C-3PO in a number of appearances, including guest roles on The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Jeopardy!, The Donny and Marie Show, and at the Academy Awards.^[182] He has also played the droid in non-canon Star Wars material such as 1977's The Making of Star Wars television special, 1980's Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album.^[188] Daniels's C-3PO résumé further includes public service announcements concerned with whooping cough immunizations^[189] and anti-smoking campaigns, as well as commercials for C-3PO-themed breakfast cereal and children's underwear.^[190]

Jim Ward provided vocal talents for all three Star Wars: Dark Empire audio dramas.^{[191][192][193]}

During filming of The Phantom Menace, Industrial Light & Magic Chief Model maker Michael Lynch built a puppet that was used to portray C-3PO's unfinished appearance, with Daniels providing the character's voice. C-3PO's motions were realized by Lynch acting as a puppeteer dressed in a full-color suit, at times on-set with the other actors and at others filmed against a green screen. Daniels remained off-camera and delivered the lines, guiding Lynch's movements as he brought the puppet to life.^[194]

Costume[]

The C-3PO costume was constructed such that Daniels could not sit down while wearing it; he thus had to lean against a board to rest between shots. Scenes where C-3PO sits down required the costume to be partially disassembled.^[196][197] The costume was in part created by Liz Moore, who had previously designed the star child in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that Daniels had walked out of, but later appreciated.^[198]

Filming for Star Wars began in Tunisia, and on the first day of shooting, the costume was yet to be completed. The combined efforts of six people were able to dress Daniels completely in a total of two hours.^[199] Twenty-five years later, Daniels wore the same costume while working on the prequel trilogy.^[195] In 2009 and 2010, the C-3PO costume toured with Star Wars: In Concert, being displayed in the exhibition area of each arena.^[200]

In Star Wars media[]

In addition to appearing in all six principal episodes of Star Wars, C-3PO holds the honor of speaking the first and last lines of the entire saga. In the opening scene of the original Star Wars, the protocol droid kicks off the film's dialogue by asking R2-D2, "Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor. We'll be destroyed for sure! This is madness." Nearly thirty years later, the spoken portions of Revenge of the Sith concluded with C-3PO reacting to the news that he would receive a memory wipe by uttering "Oh no!" The respective scenes both take place aboard the starship Tantive IV, and were filmed on the same set.^[195]

Outside of Episodes I through VI, C-3PO has appeared in myriad works within the Expanded Universe. Along with his counterpart, R2-D2, he starred in an animated series on ABC, as well as comic books based on the series published by Marvel and Dark Horse Comics.^[201][202] C-3PO and R2-D2 played prominent roles in many of the novels published by Bantam Spectra throughout the 1990s taking place in the years following Return of the Jedi, sometimes accompanying Luke, Han, and Leia,^[127][151] and sometimes being caught up in adventures of their own.^[144][146] When Del Rey took over Star Wars novel publishing in 1999, the droid duo faded into the background somewhat as a new generation of heroes developed,^[203] although C-3PO did undergo a character arc that involved him contemplating the prospect of deactivation and questioning his own mortality.^[204] In-universe, C-3PO is still faithfully serving the Skywalker and Solo families forty-three years after the events of the original Star Wars.^[164]

His origins were laid down by George Lucas via a tape recorder in 1977, who established that he had been constructed on the world of Affa and later reassembled by a young boy working for a junk dealer.^[196] Lucas reused the latter half of this concept in The Phantom Menace, and the former half was canonized by the StarWars.com Databank.^[1]

Continuity peculiarities[]

C-3PO's name is often erroneously spelled C-3P0, even in official sources.^[114] In the novel Legacy of the Force: Tempest, he is described as dropping his chin, despite not having one.^[205]

In the novelization of A New Hope, C-3PO once refers to himself as "CV-3PO" when introducing himself to Owen Lars. In this passage, C-3PO claims that "V" stands for his "middle name," "Versatility."^[91] Leland Chee has indicated that this is not to be taken literally as part of the droid's official name.^[206]

Actor and author comments[]

In a 2009 interview, he stated that the character has never left him, and expressed his fondness for the droid. Although he has at times considered moving on to other things, the notion has never remained with him for very long. He feels that he knows the character better than anyone, and sees C-3PO as being like his best friend,^[207] one that he feels a responsibility to continue playing, else C-3PO would be very upset.^[208] He also admits to feeling protective of the character.^[186] Daniels maintains that he himself is very different from C-3PO, and has called the character a "strange creation that came out of somewhere," but nevertheless a creation that he is proud of.^[200]

From his first read-throughs of the script of Star Wars, Daniels thought that C-3PO had a likable personality;^[180] he sees the character as not heroic, but very thoughtful, loyal,^[207] and loving,^[208] traits that make up for his uptightness and complete lack of a sense of humor or irony. He has described the droid as being loyal to his final nut and bolt, and therefore someone who would remain at a friend's side until the end of the droid's existence.^[207]

Daniels cites portraying C-3PO as having been a considerable challenge. As Kenny Baker, playing R2-D2, could not talk to him during shooting, perfecting their comic timing proved difficult.^[199] Speaking in C-3PO's voice is also challenging, as it creates tension and uptightness in his back muscles, leaving them knotted and sore after a recording session. As C-3PO is not a relaxed character, Daniels cannot perform the voice in a relaxed manner.^[208] He also cites difficulties involved with wearing the suit as obstacles that he had to overcome while shooting the original trilogy.^[199] Daniels's voice work has been praised by Dave Filoni, the supervising director of the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, who credits Daniels as having fantastic insight into every word and phrase spoken by C-3PO, and as able to adapt nearly every line to the character's cadence.^[207]

While seeking writers for Dark Horse Comics' Droids series, editors Ryder Windham and Dan Thorsland were dismayed that many of their potential hirees regarded C-3PO and R2-D2 as little more than comic relief. The two eventually settled on Thorsland himself to write the series, who felt that the droid duo were intelligent machines that often found themselves in an unfortunate plight, being treated worse than slaves. Daniels later praised Thorsland's writing of C-3PO and wrote an introduction for one of the series' trade paperbacks.^[186] When writing 2003's The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force, the finale of the nineteen-book series The New Jedi Order, author James Luceno found himself drawn to C-3PO, among other characters, as the droid had been forced to rethink many truths he had long accepted throughout the series.^[209]

Impact on popular culture[]

As a principal character in a wildly popular film saga,^[181] C-3PO has become a cultural icon of sorts, having been referred to as one of the most iconic characters in all of popular science fiction.^[210] A wide variety of C-3PO merchandise has been produced over the years, including scores of action figures,^{[211][212][213][214][215]} busts,^[216] a life-sized figure,^[217] pez dispensers,^[218] and even a breakfast cereal.^[190]

C-3PO has been parodied in a wide variety of media, including appearances on the American cartoon Family Guy.^[219] Mel Brooks's 1987 Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs, features a feminine robot satirizing C-3PO named Dot Matrix, voiced by comedian Joan Rivers.^[220]

C-3PO got into a tag-team robot wrestling match with the Cylons in The Simpsons episode "Mayored to the Mob," where 3PO ended up easily clobbered by the Cylons. He begged for R2-D2's (his partner in the match) help. However, R2-D2 refused to give aid and left, causing C-3PO to angrily insult him by referring to him as a "stupid little trap," calling him boring, and then declaring that he hated R2 before being pummeled more. Bill and Marty (portraying aliens), when covering the event for their advertisement for Springfield's Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con (Bi-Monthly Science Fiction Convention), referred to the pair as the "gay robots from Star Wars." C-3PO in this appearance was voiced by Dan Castellaneta, who voiced him in a manner similar to Anthony Daniels.

In 2004, C-3PO was inducted into the robot hall of fame.^[221] Daniels accepted the honor on the character's behalf, as C-3PO was unable to attend himself.^[199]

Non-canon content[]

In the alternate comic series Star Wars Infinities: A New Hope, C-3PO is taken into the custody of the Empire and is reprogrammed with a more aggressive personality while Princess Leia is trained in the ways of the Sith.^[223] Its sequel, Star Wars Infinities: The Empire Strikes Back, sees Darth Vader recognize the droid as the same one he created years earlier, and dismantle C-3PO, tearing the location of Dagobah from his memory.^[224] In the trilogy's final installment, Star Wars Infinities: Return of the Jedi, C-3PO is decapitated by an angry blow from Jabba the Hutt, and is later destroyed when the gangster's throne room is destroyed by Leia's thermal detonator.^[225]

C-3PO and R2-D2 similarly star in another alternate take on the original Star Wars trilogy: Vader vs. Artoo & Threepio, published in Tokyopop's Star Wars Manga: Silver. Merging the endings of the trilogy's latter two installments, the comic tells their story with the droids in place of Luke and Leia.^[222]

C-3PO is unlockable as a playable model in the video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The player is allowed an opportunity to use the droid as a lightsaber-swinging character.^[226]

C-3PO makes an appearance as a main character on LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace, where he is the primary guardian of the Jedi younglings while they are on their misadventures.

Though not an appearance, a villain named Dark Aegis from the 1994 Iron Man: The Animated Series calls Iron Man "C-3PO" in the episode "Distant Boundaries."

In Angry Birds Star Wars, White Bird plays C-3PO.

C-3PO, along with Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and Chewbacca, cameo in The LEGO Movie. While trying to build a spaceship, the heroes realize that they need a hyperdrive. Batman wonders aloud where they could find a hyperdrive, and is swiftly interrupted by the timely arrival of the Millennium Falcon. Anthony Daniels reprised his role.

Translations[]

• In Italian, during the original-trilogy era, C-3PO was called "D-3BO" ("Di-Trebio" or "Trebio").

Appearances[]

Non-canon appearances[]

Sources[]

Notes and references[]

External links[]

• C-3PO on Wikipedia
• C-3PO on the Brickipedia
• C-3PO on the Brickipedia
• C-3PO on the Indiana Jones Wiki