The droids in Star Wars have pretty much always acted as the comedy relief in a galaxy far, far away. That certainly held true when Star Wars: The Force Awakens introduced fans to BB-8, the charming orange-and-white astromech droid with a jaunty sense of humor. Fans fell head-over-heels for the little ‘bot, and Lucasfilm hasn’t been shy about capitalizing on that, or in playing up BB-8’s newly revealed emo counterpart, BB-9E.
Force Friday II, the day Lucasfilm chose to release all its new toys, gadgets, and various merchandise for the upcoming Star Wars: The Last Jedi, was overflowing with BB content. Inverse traversed to the Disney Store in New York City’s Times Square to unlock a secret new character and to complete the day’s “Find the Force” challenge on the official Star Wars app.
Scanning various images of favorite Star Wars characters new and old around the store revealed augmented reality videos and tidbits of information about the unlocked characters. After wandering around the store for long enough and getting plenty of odd looks from employees, I collected all eight of the scannable items with their corresponding AR characters, unlocking two “digital rewards.”
And, friends, let me just say that these things are fucking adorable. Look at it this GIF of BB-9E! It’s cute!
The second digital reward is a brand new episode of Star Wars Blips, the animated miniseries that features BB-8 being cute and causing general havoc either by himself or with other droids. The new episode is, unfortunately, unavailable outside the app, which is all the more encouragement for you to unlock it yourself.
But, really, we can tell you all you need to know. In the new short, BB-8 comes across his begrudging counterpart BB-9E in a hallway. BB-8 tries his hardest to get BB-9E to interact with him, but eventually just ends up irritating the First Order droid. BB-9E chases BB-8 around in anger only to have his head knocked off when he can’t keep up. Feeling bad, BB-8 does what he does best (fixing BB-9E so the lil’ guy can continue being evil or whatever) before peacing out.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi premieres in theaters on December 15.
