"You probably dont recognize me because of the red arm!" In one of
Star Wars: The Force Awakens' odder choices, director J.J. Abrams decided to give C-3PO a new red arm, seemingly without any explanation aside from the aforementioned line. Well, as promised, we are finally getting an explanation for the change, detailed in Marvel Comics' C-3PO Special, titled
The Phantom Limb!
It turns out that C-3PO was part of a team of Resistance droids that crash-landed on an unidentified planet. In this disaster, the entire human crew of the ship was killed, which left the droids stranded alongside their droid captive OMRI. OMRI is a First Order RA-7 protocol droid who posseses valuable intelligence - specifically, where they're holding Admiral Ackbar, who is about to be executed.
C-3PO manages to locate a distress beacon from a crashed TIE fighter, which unfortunately happens to be on the other side of the planet, and they have to race there before it’s too late. In true
Star Wars fashion, everything doesn’t go too well, and OMRI leads the Resistance droids into a trap. All of the droids except for C-3PO die in rather brutal and horrible ways, with only C-3PO managing to escape this trauma only minus an arm. In the end, OMRI decides that friendship is more important than choosing a side. In order to activate the beacon, OMRI walks through the planet's deadly acid rain, sacrificing himself to help C-3PO. The rain peels away his paint, revealing a red primer underneath. As a tribute to the fallen droid, Threepio uses OMRI's arm as his own. The story, despite its simplicity, ends up providing some valuable and heartfelt insight into the inner workings of droids.
C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels was not the biggest fan of the change to begin with.
“The one thing that J.J. and I argued about was the fact that I didn’t like the red arm. C-3PO doesn’t like the red arm! Being the director he said ‘You’re gonna have a red arm.’ But have you noticed, because he listened to me, that the last frame of C-3PO waving at the Millennium Falcon was with a gold arm! And J.J. did that – love it.” So after all that explanation, C-3PO casts off OMRI's sacrifice anyway. Kind of heartless, even for a droid, wouldn't you say?
What did you think of C-3PO #1? Do you like this explanation, or is C-3PO's well-being unimportant to you?