L3-37 is certainly unlike any droid we’ve seen in the cinematic Star Wars galaxy before. Harkening back to Lando Calrissian’s droid Vuffi Raa from the 1983 L. Neil Smith trilogy, L3-37 – as played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge – is self-determining, individual and very unique.
Over at EW, Anthony Breznican talks to the minds behind the droid, and why her relationship with Lando is so special.
“She’s a self-modified droid,” says Jon Kasdan (The First Time), who co-wrote the script with his father, Lawrence (veteran scribe of The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Force Awakens.) “The idea is that she’s sort of a mutt, if you will, of various parts of different kinds of droids who has improved upon herself.”
That’s why the head floating above her shoulders like a mechanical jellyfish looks a little like the dome on a primitive BB unit, while her chest and shoulders have an R2/Astromech influence. (Her name, too, is a reference to “LEET” or “l337,” which is the practice of substituting numerals for letters in words.)
“She’s a complete individual in the galaxy,” Jon Kasdan says. “We wanted to have it be a completely different kind of droid than you’ve ever seen in the movies. And we definitely wanted it to be a female. We thought it was more than time for that.”