Star Wars: The Force Awakens: TR-8R Has A Real Name
By Elaine Tveit
The badass stormtrooper from The Force Awakens, fondly nicknamed TR-8R, has a real name.
StarWars.com has revealed the real name of the stormtrooper made famous by his cry of “Traitor!” in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. No, it’s not TR-8R, as the internet fondly dubbed him, but FN-2199.
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Though the First Order diehard, nicknamed Nines (dually functioning as an homage to Fives from The Clone Wars, perhaps?) met an untimely death by Han Solo’s blaster, he will forever live on in infamy because of his one-word declaration and hardcore electric-saw-swingy-thingy skills.
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Incidentally, the electric-saw-swingy-thingy is called a Z6 baton. Nines’s use of it marks him as part of riot control, which according to StarWars.com is “an elite squad that enforces order or squashes uprisings.” He’s the kind of fellow the common folk would see as Public Enemy #1, a bully.
As it turns out, the reason why Nines is so angry at FN-2187 is not just because Finn is a traitor to the First Order, but because he’s a traitor to his squad, which Nines was a member of. StarWars.com shared the photo below from the junior novel, Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka, with illustrations by the fantastic Phil Noto. Nines is the de-helmeted trooper with the red hair sitting in the background.
Nines’s appearance in The Force Awakens was brought about in a way similar to Darth Vader’s in the original trilogy and Revenge of the Sith, in that it was the work of one man in the suit and another man providing the voice. The man in the suit is Liang Yang, whom StarWars.com says is a veteran stunt performer, while the voice was that of David Acord, a Skywalker Sound Editor who has worked on Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and The Force Awakens, as well as The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.
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Turns out there’s a lot more to FN-2199 than meets the eye! It’s really a shame he won’t be returning in Episode VIII, but I guess I’d rather Finn have survived than Nines.