BB-8 is getting an evil twin in ‘The Last Jedi’
So round, so active, so absolutely evil. BB-9E is the literal dark side version of the lovable BB-8 droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
It's not cute. It's not happy. This astromech makes angry sounds and has a utterly mysterious story line and purpose, which makes it 10 times more evil.
News of the brand new drone dropped on the eve of Force Friday II, the Star Wars merchandizing-palooza that's hitting September 1 to celebrate the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi in December.
Visually and technically, BB-9E works just like BB-8. There's a large ball body and a small dome-ish head that moves independently of the body. We got our first glimpse of the new evil droid thanks to Sphero, which introduced a new BB-9E App-enabled Droid on Thursday,
We know it's evil because:
1) The robot is all black and gray, not a cute, inviting, white and orange.
2) The head is not a curved done, but has menacing edges.
3) It has an evil, glowing red eye...a RED EYE!
4) When you control Sphero's BB-9E droid with the app, all the art turns black and red and the audio switches to the more malevolent March of the Resistance from the Force Awakens.
5) Every sound BB-9E makes (at least our toy robot) sounds scary or at least annoyed.
Sphero knew nothing about what BB-9E is doing in The Last Jedi, but for all we know, it's Kylo Ren's sidekick. And wouldn't that be perfect? Rey gets the adorable, sweet BB-8 and Kylo gets the murderous BB-9E.
We can't wait to see these two balls face off in The Last Jedi.
Topics Star Wars
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
