When Andor came to Disney+ in September 2022, there was a clear divide between die-hard Jedi fans who felt cheated by the lack of light sabres and the folk who were captivated by the new level of grit that Andor brought to the Star Wars canon.

One thing that wasn’t contentious about the new series was the heart appeal of B2EMO

B2EMO – Bee to his friends – trundles on screen 10 minutes into episode one. Short and squat, scarred and cracked, hi-vis paint wearing off – this is a droid who’s put in years of hard labour. He rolls, steadily, through deserted early morning streets, on the dry, barren planet of Ferrix. The scene could be part of a classic Western, except that Bee is a small droid, not a gunslinger, and when a group of ferocious-looking Corellian hounds bound past him, he shrinks down into his shell.

But then––

One of the hounds pauses to cock a leg at Bee.

Without missing a beat, Bee zaps the nasty dog with a mini taser.

Huzzah!

The dog yelps and scurries away.

Now we know – B2EMO isn’t just one more anonymous, bit-part space opera droid. Like Artoo, C-3PO, BB-8, K-2SO and L3-37 before him, Bee is here to help move the plot along and serve up comic (and cute) relief.

Hound dispatched, Bee rolls on. Out of town, through mountains of scrap metal, and into the stripped hulk of a small spaceship, where he meets up with Cassian Andor, man-on-the-run from the Pre-Mor Enforcement.

Bee: But where were you?
Cassian: It’s not important
Bee: [plaintively] If it’s not important, w-w-w-why not tell me?

There’s some banter. Some flashbacks. We start to get the picture that Cassian and Bee have a long, intimate history. Not only that, but it seems likely that Bee, like Artoo, has escaped the frequent memory wipes that keep other droids in their place. The signs are all there. Bee’s frequent data lags, his tendency to question and challenge, not to mention all-the-feels he reveals when he speaks. Joy. Fear. Love. Sadness. When Bee is with Cassian, and with the rest of the close-knit Ferrix community, he is very much the old family dog that Andor’s creator, Tony Gilroy, intended him to be.

Asimov wrote, in an 1979 editorial, that ‘robot has come to refer to the artificial human being built … of metal. Any artificial being built more largely of substances more closely resembling human tissues retains the older name android. In the 2020s, the point at which a fictional android takes on human characteristics has more to do with agency and emotion, than with physical appearance.

In the case of Bee, his anthropomorphised doggy-ness, his humanness, is amplified by how much more real Andor seems compared to other films and series set in the Star Wars universe. There are no Jedi, no Sith and almost no intergalactic space action. Instead, the story focusses on humans wavering between base motives and noble impulses – ordinary people resisting oppression, and rebellion founders making difficult decisions. What L3-37 did for droid rights in Solo: a Star Wars Story, Andor does for Star Wars as a whole. It makes it all personal.

And within the world of Andor, Bee makes it extra personal. Cassian, Marva and the extended Ferrix community are his family. For Cassian, Bee will ‘make a lie’, no matter how much energy it takes. If two lies are required, well then, Bee will recharge so that he can do what’s needed. When Marva dies, he expresses everyone’s grief when he cries, I want M-m-m-marva.

When the rebellion finally kicks-off on planet Ferrix, it seems fitting that Bee is at the centre of it all. To paraphrase E.B. White, that’s some droid.

So what-da-ya reckon – is Bee something special, or is he just one more saccharine-sweet, tin-can robot?