Ever since his first appearance in Andor, B2EMO (voiced by Dave Chapman) has won our hearts. Our new favorite droid is fiercely loyal to his family, is honest when giving advice and is not afraid of voicing his feelings — proving that one can never actually be too emo (sorry, I just had to). In the show's latest episode, "Daughter of Ferrix", he nearly made us all cry with the way he is dealing with Maarva Andor's (Fiona Shaw) death, exactly like a young child would. Which raised the inevitable question: how do droids deal with the inevitable death of those around them?
B2EMO's story with the Andor family is not unlike the one many other droids have with their respective owners. They are not organic beings, so they don't usually experience existence the same way humans, for example, do. For one, the concept of dying is an alien one to them, even though they see it happening all the time. Generally speaking, droids don't usually get to die, so seeing a person grow old, their health decay and eventually pass is understandably difficult for a droid like B2EMO, especially given his attachment to Maarva and the Andors.
Droids Experience a Whole Different Reality
By now, we have seen countless droids in Star Wars. In fact, the very first characters we meet in the franchise are C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) in A New Hope, and they stay with us throughout the 67 years that make the Skywalker Saga, from The Phantom Menace all the way to The Rise of Skywalker. That means that these two fellas have seen a lot of stuff, been with a lot of people, lost a lot of people, too, and belonged to a lot of different people in the process.
Everything that B2EMO is experiencing now? They've been there. In fact, not only have Threepio and Artoo been there, they remember most of it, too — I mean, apart from when the protocol droid had his memory wiped in Revenge of the Sith, of course. When talking about droids, it's important to remember that, from their point of view, time is a whole different concept, as is life itself.
Droids are made (or produced), turned on and don't face the possibility of ceasing to operate unless thrust upon a dangerous situation (running out of battery is not often a problem, at least not up to this point in the franchise). They don't face the effects of the relentless passage of time in their own bodies, they just have the broken parts changed. They do experience physical pain, as most of them have sensors and receptors for that purpose, and they are capable of learning and evolving in time.
For droids with a personality matrix (meaning those who are self-aware and sentient), it's common to be attached to an owner for much, if not all, of that person's life. Many examples come to mind, like C-3PO and R2-D2 with the Skywalker family, L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), BB-8 and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and even Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) himself and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk).
So, since they are not technically alive, they don't technically die, either. And, when they do, it's usually an extremely sad situation precisely because of how unnatural it is for them. Fortunately, it doesn't look like B2EMO is facing any kind of threat like that, but we have examples of droids who were lost, such as L3-37 herself in Solo: A Star Wars Story, IG-11 (Taika Waititi) in The Mandalorian, K-2SO in Rogue One and, more recently, silent load lifter NED-B in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
B2EMO and the Andors
Despite being a droid, B2EMO was part of the Andor family as much as Maarva, Clem (Gary Beadle) and Cassian. We don't know yet how he came into their midst, but the flashbacks in the first arc of the series show that he was already part of the band when they took young Kassa from his homeworld of Kenari. Whatever they did before that, they eventually settled on Ferrix as a proper family, and B2EMO was treated as part of it even by their friends, like Brasso (Joplin Sibtain) and Bix Calleen (Adria Arjona).
When B2EMO first appears in "Daughter of Ferrix," we see only his photoreceptor, in a shot that almost emulates how Stanley Kubrick showed HAL-9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Weirdly enough, those two robots could not be further apart, as the latter was focused solely on its own survival, and the former was most likely hosting a torrent of anxiety inside its circuits. Droids are not used to losing people, and they may develop trauma as much as regular beings. Just look at Chopper in Star Wars Rebels, and how he still mourns his days as a Clone Wars veteran. The situation is especially dire as, apparently, the whole house in which B2EMO and Maarva lived has to be emptied, meaning that the droid is also about to lose his own home.
So losing Maarva means losing everything for B2EMO. It's a lifetime of attachment that seems to have vanished before his photoreceptors. For us, dying is a part of life, something as natural as being born. For droids, not necessarily, and for B2EMO that's clearly not the case.
Which doesn't necessarily mean an existence of sadness for B2EMO in his future, he just doesn't know it. He first appears in Andor trying to knock some sense into Cassian and telling him exactly what Maarva thinks of all the schemes Cassian pulls around the Morlana system trying to find his lost sister, and it isn't likely that the first season of the series will end without the duo reuniting. And even if they don't, the sympathy and understanding Brasso shows towards him is more than most people seem to demonstrate towards droids, too. As the show builds towards its final showdown in Ferrix in the first season finale, we sure hope for our sweet emo droid to make it unscathed — and with a new home.