When the game Star Wars Outlaws was officially announced, one of the characters immediately caught the attention of the internet: ND-5, a Separatist Commando Droid now sporting a trench coat and allied with Kay Vess.
The design is at the same time hilarious and awesome, and it’s really cool to see a Commando Droid show up here. The droids first appeared in The Clone Wars series as specialized units that were an elite force among the Separatist army. Re-purposed BX Commando Droids recently showed up in Jedi: Survivor as well, aligned with the Bedlam Raiders, and the droids have been seen in several other stories as well.
Aside from looking really cool and being a fun connection point, I also wonder if ND-5’s appearance could play into a larger could hint at a larger storyline developing as well, so allow me to speculate for a moment. At the time of this game, set in-between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the five major crime syndicates in the galaxy are Black Sun, Crimson Dawn, Crymorah, the Hutt Clan, and the Pykes. Those aren’t the only ones out there, but they are the major ones.
By the time of the First Order three decades later, all five have fallen out of power and replaced by another. Of particular significance, Crymorah was replaced by the Droid Gotra. The latter group was formed not long after the conclusion of the Clone Wars and was made up of battle droids, looking to advance the cause of droid rights. They worked closely with Crymorah and were largely allied with them, but they began expanding and, by the time of the First Order, had replaced Crymorah as one of the five major syndicates.
Which all leads me back to ND-5. As a former Separatist battle droid now turned mercenary, it would seem incredibly likely that the droid has some sort of allegiance – whether past, present, or future – with the Droid Gotra. And if that’s the case, then we could be seeing yet another criminal organization show up, and perhaps even see hints at their eventual supplanting of Crymorah. We really haven’t seen much of Crymorah whatsoever in Star Wars material, so perhaps this would be a start. Whatever the case, a Separatist droid showing up in a story about the criminal underworld, when there’s a droid rights group made up of Separatist battle droids operating in that same criminal underworld, seems to be a connection just waiting to happen.
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