The Twisted Star Wars Droid Who Loves Torturing Her Own Kind

This blood-thirsty droid lives to inflict pain and then coldly watches the results. Or perhaps oil-thirsty would be a better descriptor, as she mostly reserves her violent tendencies for other droids. That distinction might make EV-9D9 sound like less of a psychopath to some.

After all, who cries over a broken toaster?

But those familiar with Star Wars lore know that some droids, like R2-D2, are autonomous with their own personalities. When viewed through that lens, EV-9D9 is just as bad as the monsters that conduct such torment on flesh and blood victims. Possibly worse.

At least the monsters can’t upgrade themselves to feel more enjoyment from other’s pain. EV-9D9 can and has. She even gave herself a third eye specifically designed to “see” the droid equivalent of pain.

That’s right. This psychotic droid doesn’t have to judge how badly she’s hurt her victims based on their screams. She can literally watch as their pain levels rise.

The name EV-9D9 might not look familiar, but trust us. She isn’t some obscure, forgotten character from Legends. The droid, whose canon nickname is “Mistress of Mayhem,” first appeared in 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

Upon receiving R2-D2 and C-3PO as a “gift” from Luke Skywalker, Jabba the Hutt sends the droids to his favorite evil robot for inspection. In both canon and Legends, EV-9D9 serves as the head of Jabba’s droid pool. It’s the perfect position for a machine looking for a steady supply of other machines to torment.

Like most of the creature cameos in Jedi, EV-9D9 would get her backstory fleshed out in books and other supplementary material. Unlike most of the background aliens like Ephant Mon or Ree-Yees, however, the sadomasochistic droid’s evil personality is there right from the beginning. In her one short scene, EV-9D9 is seen overseeing the torture of two droids while threatening a third—R2-D2.

Not content to carry out her experiments in pain generation alone, EV-9D9 reprogrammed a smelter droid, 8D8, to assist her in her crimes against machine kind. 8D8 resides in the bowels of Jabba’s castle with his evil master and carries out all of her dirty work. You can see him in Return of the Jedi lowering molten-hot metal onto an upside-down Gonk droid’s feet.

Along with torture, EV-9D9 would regularly take droids apart and build grotesque monstrosities out of the limbs. Think Sid from Toy Story and you get the idea. In Legends these very hybrids would be the droid’s undoing.

For the most part, EV-9D9’s backstory is the same in canon and Legends. She was created with a defect that caused her to enjoy seeing others in pain, and that defect eventually led her to seek employment with the equally masochistic Jabba the Hutt. But the continuities deviate following Return of the Jedi.

In Legends, one of the survivors of a droid massacre EV-9D9 carried out in Cloud City, 12-4C-41, tracks her down shortly following Jabba’s death. The vengeful droid removes EV-9D9’s limbs and then lets a mob of her ghastly experiments tear her apart. But first, 12-4C-41 rips out the droid’s third eye and pain receptor, making sure that she can’t derive any sick pleasure from her own demise.

Meanwhile, EV-9D9’s fate in canon is much less bleak. In the wake of Jabba’s death, the droid was repurposed as a service droid and became a bartender at Chalmun’s Cantina. There, she performed her duties without a hitch…for a while, that is. After working at Chalmun’s for a while without hurting anyone—mechanical or organic—she was driven to break her streak after a patron kicked her coworker R5-D4.

EV-9D9 poisoned the patron and then went on the lam with R5. We can’t help but feel like the droid got off too easy in canon and prefer her Legends demise. After all, if it’s good enough for Toy Story, it’s good enough for Star Wars!