PT C-3P0’s reaction to Anakin becoming Vader

"Oh my!"

 

That makes sense. He must've found Threepio, and together they brought Padme aboard. Poor Artoo had to wait on the landing platform to see who won the duel.

 

In the ROTS book 3PO asks R2 how Anakin is near the end and R-2 says "I don't know. He doesn't talk to me any more."

 

R2 has rocket boosters. He could have hopped down easily after the duel left the landing pad.

R2 doesn't know Anakin is Vader. Anakin is never referred to as Vader in front of R2.

 

I can't believe I forgot he had rocket boosters. -_-

That said, if he saw the whole thing he would've seen Anakin choking Padme, arguing with and then attacking Obi-Wan. Even if R2 didn't know the full details, he's smart enough to know that something has gone very, very wrong.

 

R2 knows, he's force sensitive

 

I agree R2 knows something is wrong, and we touched on that previously in this thread. R2 leaves with Obi-Wan without issue. So he knows something is wrong, but he doesn't have intimate knowledge of Anakin becoming Vader.

 

Ok I see the little white spot in the middle of the elevated platform now. I agree it could be R2.
However, if it is R2, I believe he must have traveled there himself. It doesn't quite look like the platform where Anakin landed.
In the scene where Padme arrives, there are 4 distinctive lights (3 side by side, 1 some distance away) that shine from the edge of the raised platform to the lower one, as indicated by the yellow circle in the image below. The lights don't seem present in the second image, when Anakin arrives (though admittedly the angle is different). I agree the overall landscape looks very similar, I'm guessing the same architect designed the infrastructure of that entire region.
In addition, Anakin's ship should be where the green circle is, but I don't see it. KyleKartan, which corner do you see it reparked at?


Another question...does 3PO even know that Anakin was on Mustafar? Padme saw Anakin from a distance when she was still in the ship, but I don't see any indication of whether 3PO noticed him or not. Any thoughts?

I think regardless of what R2 knows about Anakin, he would still have no problem leaving. Padme was clearly in need of medical help. R2 is Padme's droid. He served her for 10 years, and was only serving Anakin during the Clone Wars because of Anakin's relationship with Padme.

 

Anakin's ship should be in the corner you had circled. On the Padme arrives on Mustafar video posted by @KyleKartan at the 0:06 mark to the 0:09 mark, you'll see Anakin's ship and R2 on the platform as Padme's ship lands.

Watch in the lower left corner from 0:06-0:09




Yes, R2 was Padme's droid, but she gifted him to Anakin. It was more than her just letting Anakin use R2.

 

Can't resist answering these two...

Nope, Luke indeed learned R2's language offscreen in the decades between Return of The Jedi and The Force Awakens. Luke would have spent a lot of time with R2-D2 before going to Ach-To after all. There is a hint at this in the TFA and TLJ shots of Luke and R2 witnessing Luke's Temple burning.

If you watch ANH it is clear only Threepio understands R2. When Luke is in his X-wing he has a readout on his monitor translating his astro-mech to basic (GFFA English).
Like when Luke is heading for Dagobah in ESB and ROTJ -
*Artoo beeps* ... Luke: "We're not going to regroup with the others. We're going to the Dagobah system."
*Artoo beeps* ... Luke: "That's right Artoo, we're headed for the Dagobah system."

On Dagobah in ESB Luke is just guessing:
*Artoo beeps* ... "Luke: "If you're saying coming here was a bad idea, I'm beginning to agree with you."

(Rey however speaks both BB8's and Chewie's tongue. As does Poe with BB8.)

However Luke has learned to speak Artoo's language pretty fluently in the 30 years between trilogies going by TLJ. eg, "Sacred island, watch the language!"
I thought it was kind of touching particularly when Luke's father was also beginning to learn Artoo's language going by a deleted scene in ROTS.

I disagree. Artoo beeps worriedly when Anakin/Vader visits Padme after the Jedi Temple raid, and Threepio reassures him "Well, he is under a lot of stress, Artoo."
Artoo knows something is up. As someone else noted in the novelisation R2 says "Anakin doesn't talk to me anymore".

Then on Mustafar Vader coldly tells R2 to "Stay with the ship" - contrast that with the early Anakin/Artoo scene where Anakin warmly requests "Artoo, go back. I need you to stay with the ship." Same instruction, yet polar-opposite moods in the moments.

Finally, when Obi-Wan returns to Padme's ship after defeating Vader, Artoo instinctively follows Obi-Wan. He doesn't wait for Anakin/Vader. To me it pretty obviously indicates that to Artoo Anakin doesn't really exist anymore.

 

@lord_sidious_ : I would think he’d have some inkling. Why else would Padmé fly all the way to Mustafar? Of all planets? He may be skittish and talkative, but he’s not stupid. He would have to know that Anakin is on that planet/Padmé’s going after Anakin. He just wouldn’t know much else.

Plus, Anakin even said the planet’s name within earshot of C-3PO.

 

I agree that R2 senses something is wrong with Anakin. I have said so in prior posts, but sensing something wrong does not equate to knowing that Anakin has become Vader. Anakin is only referred to as Vader by Palpatine, and R2 is not present when it happens. So yes, R2 knows something is wrong with Anakin, but does not know that R2 has become Darth Vader. Also, R2 does not see the conclusion of the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin as he is helping 3PO get Padme on the ship. So again, there is nothing to indicate that R2 knows Anakin is the man who ends up in the black mechanical suit known as Vader.

 

Ok maybe I just have bad eyes. I'm having trouble differentiating between a ship and a platform light.

Regarding who the droids primarily associate themselves with, there was a discussion in this thread. We didn't really reach a definitive answer that everyone agreed on though. The novel seems to indicate that Anakin and Padme switched ownership of the droids, but my personal impression from the films itself is that they never officially switched.

Ok if 3PO heard Anakin say that then yes he'd know Anakin was there.

 

In the novel, 3PO, at least, is implied to be a free droid - with Padme looking after him rather than owning him:


There are so few things a Jedi ever owns; even his lightsaber is less a possession than an expression of his identity. To be a Jedi is to renounce possessions. And Anakin had tried so hard, tried for so long, to do just that.
Even on their wedding day, Anakin had had no devotion-gift for his new wife; he didn't actually own anything.
But love will find a way.
He had brought something like a gift to her apartments in Theed, still a little shy with her, still overwhelmed by finding the feelings in her he'd felt so long himself, not knowing quite how to give her a gift which wasn't really a gift. Nor was it his to give.
Without anything of his own to give except his love, all he could bring her was a friend.
"I didn't have many friends when I was a kid," he'd told her, "so I built one."
And C-3PO had shuffled in behind him, gleaming as though he'd been plated with solid gold.
Padme had lit up, her eyes gleaming, but she had at first tried to protest. "I can't accept him," she'd said. "I know how much he means to you."
Anakin had only laughed. What use is a protocol droid to a Jedi? Even one as upgraded as 3PO—Anakin had packed his creation with so many extra circuits and subprograms and heuristic algorithms that the droid was practically human.
"I'm not giving him to you," he'd told her. "He's not even really mine to give; when I built him, I was a slave, and everything I did belonged to Watto. Cliegg Lars bought him along with my mother; Owen gave him back to me, but I'm a Jedi. I have renounced possessions. I guess that means he's free now. What I'm really doing is asking you to look after him for me."
"Look after him?"
"Yes. Maybe even give him a job. He's a little fussy," he'd admitted, "and maybe I shouldn't have given him quite so much self- consciousness—he's a worrier—but he's very smart, and he might be a real help to a big-time diplomat... like, say, a Senator from Naboo?"
Padme then had extended her hand and graciously invited C-3PO to join her staff, because on Naboo, high-functioning droids were respected as thinking beings, and 3PO had been so flustered at being treated like a sentient creature that he'd been barely able to speak, beyond muttering something about hoping he might make himself useful, because after all he was "fluent in over six million forms of communication."


The culmination of the Ceremony of Jedi Knighthood is the severing of the new Jedi Knight's Padawan braid. And it was this that he laid into Padme's trembling hand.
One long, thin braid of his glossy hair: such a little thing, of no value at all.
Such a little thing, that meant the galaxy to him.
And she had kissed him then, and laid her soft cheek against his jaw, and she had whispered in his ear that she had something for him as well.
Out from her closet had whirred R2-D2.
Of course Anakin knew him; he had known him for years— the little droid was a decorated war hero himself, having saved Padme's life back when she had been Queen of Naboo, not to mention helping the nine-year-old Anakin destroy the Trade Federation's Droid Control Ship, breaking the blockade and saving the planet. The Royal Engineers of Naboo's aftermarket wizardry made their modified R-units the most sought after in the galaxy; he'd tried to protest, but she had silenced him with a soft finger against his lips and a gentle smile and a whisper of "After all, what does a politician need with an astromech?"
"But I'm a Jedi— "
"That's why I'm not giving him to you," she'd said with a smile. "I'm asking you to look after him. He's not really a gift. He's a friend."

 

And then at the Battle of Yavin, Vader shoots R2 in his TIE Advanced x1

 

I always wished we could get to see how R2 and 3PO reacted to unconscious Padme and the Obi-Wan/Anakin duel. Not in-movie, but for awkward comedy. You know they were like dead silent on Polis Massa until mind-wiping time, so there had to have been a lot of side-eyeing and commentary when no one else was around.