Star Wars Explained: This Is Why C-3PO Has A Red Arm - Metro

Star Wars fans were baffled during The Force Awakens when C-3PO appeared flashing a distinctly NOT gold arm.

But now the reason behind everyone’s favourite, highly-polished android having a red arm has been revealed.

In a backstory creatively titled Star Wars Special: C-3PO (on sale now here), the deadpanning droid’s history has been fleshed out.

Connecting the decades between Return Of The Jedi and Episode VII, the elaborate story is full of violence, drama, disaster and sacrifice.

In a nutshell, C-3PO ends up crash landed on a hostile planet along with a ship full of other androids.

Most of the androids get destroyed by wild animals they encounter – and C-3PO loses his arm when a sea creature whips it off with a tentacle.

The golden one befriends another android called OMRI in the chaos, and the two end up as the sole survivors of the crash – until OMRI sacrafices himself in acid rain to activate a distress signal on a crashed TIE fighter (but not before sharing some valuable info with C-3PO about the holding place of resistance fighter Admiral Ackbar – the guy who looks a bit like a fish in the Star Wars movies).

Finally rescued by Poe Dameron (who is played by Oscar Isaac in the film), C-3PO replaces his lost arm with the red ‘skeleton’ arm of OMRI, opting to keep it ‘to remember’.

Pretty touching, right?

POLL Poll

Are you satisfied with the C-3PO backstory?

• Yes - it's pretty touchingCheck
• No - he gets too much airtime alreadyCheck
• Oops - I didn't even notice his arm was red in The Force AwakensCheck

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