Star Wars' traitor trooper has an official backstory

If you're one of the millions of people who have seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you'll know that at one point in the film John Boyega's Finn is confronted by a baton-wielding stormtrooper. What you may not know is that the brief appearance of the side character has gone down a, um, storm with the fandom, who have since christened him TR-8R and made him the subject of a rapidly increasing number of memes.

Courtesy of StarWars.com, new information about the popular buckethead has come to light. His name is FN-2199, but to his friends he is known as 'Nines'. The article goes on to say that "as detailed in Greg Rucka’s excellent book Before the Awakening, Nines trained and served on a squad with Finn (then FN-2187) in the First Order. That explains why he seems just a little extra angry upon seeing Finn during the attack on Maz’s Castle".

Amon Warmann

Amon is a contributing editor and columnist for Empire magazine, but is also a Film and TV writer for GamesRadar+, Total Film, and others. He has also written for NME, Composer Mag, and more, along with being a film critic for TalkSport. He is also the co-host of the Fade to Black Podcast, and a video mashup creator. Can also do a pretty good Bane impersonation.