All but absent from the current Star Wars trilogy, R2-D2 was integral to the ending George Lucas once envisioned for the saga. And he still could be.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Skywalker Saga ended within the binary mind of an astromech robot. We are talking, of course, about George Lucas' early ending concept for Star Wars, in which R2-D2 played the key role of memory keeper. This idea was mentioned by Lucas in Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays.

"Originally, I was trying to have the story be told by somebody else; there was somebody watching this whole story and recording it, somebody probably wiser than the mortal players in the actual events," Lucas wrote. "I eventually dropped this idea, and the concept behind the Whills turned into the Force. But the Whills became part of this massive amount of notes, quotes, background information that I used for the scripts; the stories were actually taken from the 'Journal of the Whills.'"

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Lucas later revealed the story of the Skywalker Saga would be told to a Keeper of the Whills, one hundred years after its end, by R2-D2 who, unlike C-3PO, never had his memory wiped at the end of Revenge of the Sith.

But what are the Whills? In Lucas’ original plan, they were microbiotic beings that fed off the Force, controlled the entire universe, and were able to direct the destinies of certain people (it was heavily implied they were behind the Chosen One prophecy). However, in current Star Wars canon, their role is a little different: They seem to occupy the space between historian and priest, keeping records of important galactic events and, while they’re at it, teaching selfless Force users (Qui Gon Jinn, Yoda ...) how to continue to exist after death.

There are three key canonical references to the Whills, as well as a sprinkling of clues, that could hint J.J. Abrams, director and co-writer of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, plans to end the saga with the same scene Lucas once envisioned. The first comes from the opening of The Force Awakens novelization, by Alan Dean Foster.

"First comes the day Then comes the night. After the darkness Shines through the light. The difference, they say, Is only made right By the resolving of gray Through refined Jedi sight." ― Journal of the Whills, 7:477

They are also mentioned in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in which Chirrut Îmwe is a Guardian of the Whills on the sacred moon of Jedha.

However, the biggest clue appears in the short story "Whills," from anthology From a Certain Point of View, in which there's a hilarious “editorial” discussion between two Whills. One wants to relate the events of Episode IV in the legendary epic style, but Two keeps pointing out its colleague’s historical inexactitudes: too vague, too little details, and why aren’t you mentioning the Republic or the Clone Wars?

One argues the case that the saga should start with R2-D2 because he’s awesome, and that C-3P0 deserves his place in the story, despite winning all the time, because he related the events (as he knew them) to the Ewoks on Endor (and if you know any historians, they won't stop talking about the importance of primary and secondary sources). R2-D2 was not only present for most of the major events of the Skywalker Saga, he also absorbed and stored information from the “other side of the story,” with his knack for hacking Death Stars.

R2-D2 was also witness to the ancestral volumes of the Jedi that Rey stole from Ach-To, and that, as of Marvel's Star Wars: Poe #26, she’s busy translating with C-3P0 and the astromech droid. These books were handwritten and hand-stamped with seemingly the same emblem as The Journal of the Whills, connecting both Force organizations.

That Rey is translating these volumes with the assistance of Artoo and Threepio is important, not only because she might find a tutorial on how to repair her third-hand lightsaber, but also because, in the Star Wars galaxy, almost nobody writes by hand anymore. One of the weirdest details in The Last Jedi and the Visual Dictionary was Ben Solo’s calligraphy set, which implied some of the Jedi teachings were painstakingly transmitted orally and recorded by hand. The introduction of technology and digital records to archive manuscripts as fragile and as ancient as these would thrill the historically minded Whills, and ensure the wisdom they hold is not entirely lost in case of a Yoda lightning event.

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Turning back to the Journal of the Whills poem, the easiest way to interpret it is to link the themes of dark and light, black and white, to the balance of the Force and the equilibrium that Kylo Ren and Rey must achieve in this final trilogy. If you look at it through a science-fiction lens instead of a mystical space-fantasy one, what appears is a stark description of how to use binary code to relate complex stories – very much like the beep boop beeps R2-D2 employs to communicate with those that almost always have the “refined” Jedi sight .

The Rise of Skywalker is supposed to bring all the movies together, and to shed a new light on past events. In the real world, there is no better way to do this than through historical reviews of hard data, and that is what R2-D2 is -- an incredibly lucky objective observer of more than 70 years of galactic history.

Finally, R2-D2 was woefully underused in both The Force Awakens, in which he slept until the very end, and The Last Jedi, in which he was only seen guilt-tripping Luke aboard the Millennium Falcon. Artoo has, so far, been absent from the marketing of The Rise of Skywalker (bar a photo in Vanity Fair), which is strange for a droid that regularly saved the day in every other film. It might be that Abrams has gently phased out Artoo out, or it may be a genius ploy like the one Lucasfilm pulled in hiding the nature of Rey before the premiere of The Force Awakens. Right up to the first screening, everyone thought John Boyega was going to be the Jedi of the trilogy, while Daisy Ridley barely had an action figure to her name until some months later.

If it’s the latter, and they are purposely hiding R2-D2, it might be because he cannot be in the poster – because he is the poster, the one projecting the images and telling the stories. Crew members told Kevin Smith that the last shot of The Rise of Skywalker would “melt his mind,” and having the final twist occurring within the memory banks of a droid would certainly qualify as mind-melting. It would be the perfect way to tie together not only the nine films of the Skywalker Saga, while also linking to Lucas' earliest ideas.

Directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Billie Lourd, Keri Russell, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher, with Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant. The film arrives Dec. 20.

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