Good old R2 D2....

I was thinking.... good ol' R2 has been in all the movies. So how old is he??
And because Anakin never wiped his memory, he would have all those memories. I wonder if he ever thinks about Anakin....

 

Hmm, I don;t recall reading or seeing anything about R2 before the Battle Of Naboo, so I'd go for, at the time of 'Return Of The Jedi'... 37 years old?

I reckon he was created/activated by the Royal Guard on Naboo, as he was working on the starship there.

But a very useful droid indeed!

 

I saw someone else point out on a board (may have been this one) that by the time of the end of RoTJ, R2D2 is probably the only in-universe character who knows the true and exact history of events more or less to the same degree that we, the audience know them.

He was there when Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and the Queen escaped the blockade of Naboo.

He went into Mos Espa with Qui-Gon and Padme, and was there when Anakin and C3PO were found.

He fought with Anakin at the Battle of Naboo when he took down that Lucrehulk more or less by accident.

He subsequently pretty much became Anakin's. He fought with him throughout the CW and met just about anyone Anakin did. The Jedi Council, just about any other Jedi Anakin interacted with, Anakin's own apprentice Ahsoka Tano, as well as Palpatine and his cronies. Padme's circle of friends, people like Bail Organa, et al...

As part of Anakin's service as a general of the GAR, R2D2 had extensive interactions with the key naval personnel we run into during that era as well. Yularen, Pelleaon, etc.

He was instrumental in rescuing Wilhuff Tarkin from imprisonment, taking command of those reprogrammed B1's, flying them in there, creating diversions to allow them to escape etc...

He was with Anakin during his transition to Darth Vader. Not at the actual moment in Palpatine's office, but right before and right after. He accompanied Vader to Mustafar. Vader subsequently choked Padme in front of him, and he made a holorecording of the act. Then the duel with Obi-Wan started in front of him. R2 and C3PO then brought Padme back onto the ship and stabilized her as best they could.

He then passed into the possession of captain Antilles.

19 years later he's in the possession of Antilles still, and the events of the OT play out. He goes hunting for Obi-Wan on Tattoine, makes off with him, Luke, Han and Chewie on the Falcon.. finds Alderaan trashed... (if astromech droids are capable of feeling regret, I bet he was a bit bummed about his earlier hand in rescuing Tarkin from Lola Sayu), gets taken on board the DS, busts our heroes out of dodge, escapes the DS, flies with Luke against the DS, gets shot up by Vader but repaired... then onto Hoth, Dagobah, he's there through Luke's Jedi training under Yoda... then off to Bespin with luke, escapes on the Falcon again, fixes the hyperdrive enabling it to escape from Vader's grasp... etc.

Then he participates in the rescue of Han from Jabba, reprising his Zygerria lightsaber stunt, but with a more successful outcome this time. Jabba dies, Boba Fett gets-eaten-but-doesn't-die. Moving on. He goes back to Dagobah again in time to witness Yoda die. Then it's off to sabotage the death star shield and get that thing blown up. The end.

And in all of this, his memory was canonically never wiped. So he knows everything.

It also makes him something of an enigma, some of the things he didn't tell people. He knew Darth Vader was Luke's father for example, so why didn't he just tell him? He must have had his own reasons, but who knows what they were...

 

I think the old saying 'how long is a piece of string' is the best way to answer how old R2 is...until we find out in the new movies that Han made him out of spare parts when he was a boy.

Sorry for the spoiler lol

 

But did he know that Anakin = Vader? I mean, how much would he really know. I mean, I know Threepio was wiped but I can only assumed that if I were to try to work off of my mac hardware for the next 35 years that my harddrive would eventually corrupt. I can't help but imagine that R2 has either lost some of this, or was just incapable of processing some things (something like personal relationships...I mean yeah, implicitly everyone should know Anakin = DV but explicitly was it ever said to or around R2-D2...).

But yeah, I would say that if any character aside from Threepio (who is instantly discounted b/c of the end of RoTS) it's R2 who would have the firmest grasp on "actual" galactic events.

 

Yeah, he was there for every thing...