Image: Marvel Comics. Art by Mike Mayhew.

The droids of the Star Wars galaxy do not fuck around—they might look cute, but they will mess you up if the need arises. There are some truly, petrifyingly badass droids out there, but R2-D2 is really the most badass of them all, as this week’s Star Wars comic is here to remind you in no uncertain terms.




Star Wars #36, by Jason Aaron, Salvador Larroca, Edgar Delgado, and Clayton Cowles, picks up a storyline that’s been left hanging for a good few months at this point. R2-D2 leaves the Rebel Fleet in an X-Wing to go and find C-3PO, who’s been captured by a group of alarmingly efficient Stormtroopers known as SCAR Squadron, and brought before Darth Vader himself. What follows is essentially the droid version of Taken, and it’s absolutely amazing.


Threepio is being held captive on a Star Destroyer, and R2 gets aboard by tricking its crew into picking up his powered-down X-Wing (they believe it’s a damaged fighter evacuated by its cowardly Rebel pilot). The moment he’s inside, however, R2 stuns the Stormtrooper squad sent to investigate the ship and then promptly starts unleashing hell.

He starts sending trooper squads all over the ship on sudden emergency patrols, while he scurries about hacking into systems and evading the ever-panicking eyes of the Imperial officers on the bridge, desperate to keep the fact that a killer droid has started rampaging across the ship from Lord Vader. He tricks them into butchering each other in smoke-strewn cross fires. He blows them up. He sucks them into the vacuum of space. He dumps them in trash compactors. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the fact that the lovable R2 was doing all this, it’d be kind of petrifying.




Eventually R2 finds Threepio as he’s just about to be taken apart bit by bit by a particularly vindictive member of the crew, and frees his friend... before paying back the vindictiveness in kind by managing to convince an incredibly dumb squadron of Stormtroopers that the technician was actually the Rebel infiltrator all along. Naturally, they promptly blast him to death. Just another kill to notch up for R2, really.

By the time R2 and Threepio are back on their X-Wing, countless Stormtroopers are dead, half the Star Destroyer is on fire, and Vader has throttled the hapless Captain for trying to keep R2's reign of terror a secret. Vader detects the X-Wing leaving the hanger and gives chase, which makes R2 decide to kill Vader then and there.


Holy shit, R2-D2 is a bloodthirsty madman. Err, Maddroid!



Before R2 can add the Dark Lord of the Sith to his kill list of the day, the Alliance shows up in the form of Han, Luke, and some support fighters, having tracked the location of R2's pilfered starfighter, giving the droid an opening to escape Vader’s wrath.


But let’s not forget: R2 still managed to murder a ton of people during this whole thing. And it’s kind of crazy how everyone is seemingly okay with that.

