C-3PO is one of the most widely recognized characters in Star Wars history. First appearing in the original Star Wars in 1977 (which was later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), he's actually the first character to speak any dialogue in the entire saga. He's widely recognized as the polite, bumbling protocol droid who's fluent in over six million forms of communication. However, this piece of art asks the question: what if C-3PO had a dark side?
Posted to the Star Wars subreddit by user Elson1988, the piece depicts C-3PO with glowing red eyes, armed with a blaster for an arm. He appears to be going on a rampage accompanied by some other metal friends in a signature Star Wars hallway, where so many characters in the franchise love to wipe out their enemies. It's an original piece from a few years ago from illustrator and concept artist Anthony Devine, who has done many other pieces of art over the years for Star Wars and other fandom properties. Even though it's inconceivable that C-3PO would ever turn to such violence, Devine's artwork brings to mind another infamous Star Wars protocol droid who would be rather proud of this image.
In Kieron Gillen's acclaimed 2015 Darth Vader comics series, which is set between the events of A New Hope and the Empire Strikes Back, readers were introduced to a very unpleasant protocol droid by the name of 0-0-0, spelled out as Triple-Zero. In that storyline, evil Sith Lord Darth Vader hires rogue archeologist Doctor Aphra to help him track down the rebel pilot who destroyed the Death Star. It was during this time that Aphra and Vader reactivated Triple-Zero, who then introduced himself as a protocol droid specializing in etiquette and torture.
Tripe-Zero is portrayed as a sort of evil C-3PO, even painted all black with glowing red eyes. He even has an evil R2 D2 counterpart named BT-1. Instead of being subservient and gracious like 3PO, Triple-Zero is sadistic and violent and relishes in torturing 'organics'. He's even portrayed as a kind of 'droid supremacist', viewing organic flesh as weak and expendable. Triple-Zero appeared throughout Gillen's run and has gone on to appear in other Star Wars Marvel comics like Doctor Aphra's solo series, and the flagship Star Wars comic focusing on the original trilogy heroes.
Thankfully, C-3PO never got that bad, but the closest fans got to this fan art becoming canon was in JJ Abrams film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. In the final film of the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy, the next-gen heroes Rey, Finn, and Poe require C-3PO's vast knowledge of communication to translate an extinct Sith language written on an ancient dagger. However, 3PO's programming won't let him translate the evil language, so the crew gets Poe's little mechanic friend Babu Frick to dig around in 3PO's head. Frick then reboots the protocol droid so that they may override his restrictive programming. However, in doing this he overrides 3PO's system and erases his mind (don't worry, he gets it back), basically restoring him to the factory default setting.
When trailers first dropped for The Rise of Skywalker, fans speculated as to what was going on in this scene. Was 3PO going to turn to the dark side? Had he been reprogrammed for evil? No, some little critter just hacked his brain. In hindsight, they're lucky C-3PO didn't go on a rampage after the constant mistreatment he's endured.
You can watch Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope and the rest of the Star Wars saga streaming on Disney Plus.
Source: Anthony Devine