The world of Star Wars has never been short on colorful humans or even aliens that come from a wide spectrum of imagination on the creators’ part, but ironically enough, some of the most compelling characters in that galaxy far, far away usually turn out to be the droids that accompany the heroes on their journeys.
The obvious case in point here is C-3PO and his trusty sidekick R2-D2, who’ve been there throughout almost the entire saga. In fact, a lot of fans even deem Threepio the unsung narrator of the whole story. And the House of Mouse has definitely taken note of this element, as they’ve essentially introduced a new droid in almost every movie since acquiring the rights to Star Wars back in 2012.
BB-8, his adversary BB-9E, K-2SO in Rogue One, and of course, IG-11 in Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian are just some of these newly introduced characters, though perhaps the most underappreciated of all of them is L3-37 from Solo: A Star Wars Story. After all, Lando’s piloting assistant, who amusingly fought for droid rights in the galaxy far, far away, is one of the most important players in the Original Trilogy.
As you recall, L3-37 sacrificed herself to save her peers, but in doing so had to make a choice of becoming one with the Millennium Falcon’s computer. For a droid who values her freedom above all else, that may sound like a terrible fate. Though an excerpt from the upcoming Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back tells us what really happened to the sentient robot.
Apparently, L3-37 is one of the three droid identities inside the legendary ship, who together with ED-4 and V5-T call themselves the “Millennium Collective.” We don’t know their exact respective duties, but based on context clues, we now have an idea as to who Threepio talked to when he claimed that he was interacting with the Corellian freighter during The Empire Strikes Back.
In any case, as long as the Millennium Falcon is around, we can expect L3-37 to continue to operate onboard, and it’s certainly baffling to think about just how much of an influence she must have had in the Star Wars Original and Sequel trilogies in the many precarious situations that our heroes found themselves in.