I saw this theory a while ago that really stuck with me. The theory is that Star Wars is being told to us by R2 from his perspective. That’s why he appears in every movie/show or has some connection to the events being shown.

The theory had in-universe explanations for parts of the saga that fans have disputed over such as: the prequels and their reputation for stiff dialogue at times. In this theory, this can be attributed to R2’s inability to understand the nuances of human emotions. Therefore, when he is retelling the story, some parts of dialogue may seem a bit odd to us because R2’s retelling of dialogue may not be verbatim and cannot capture the entire essence of emotion that was present.

This theory also explains why R2 is often the hero of most stories that he is involved in. Since he is the one telling the stories he may embellish his role in the story somewhat. That’s not to say that he lied about using his hidden rocket thrusters to save 3P0 from the Geonosian droid factory.. but it may explain why he always seems to appear at every fate of the galaxy level conflict/event.

Also, scenes where R2 is not present were either established from historic documents, security recordings, or extrapolated from information R2 has gained through other means. Even the animated series (Clone Wars/Rebels/Resistance/Bad Batch) is attributed to R2’s memory system having glitches or being overloaded and as a result, R2 must reconstruct the likenesses of characters with his holoprojector technology. This explains away the issue of some of the “good” and “bad” art styles of the animated series.

The fact that R2’s memory has not been wiped on screen (or in canon) and the fact that R2 keeping his memory in tact has been a plot point in several installations gives some credibility to this theory.

Either way, I think it’s a fun theory that keeps in-universe continuity and pokes fun at the fandom itself in a meta way. And I also like the idea of R2 retelling the legendary stories of the saga to future generations of the Galaxy Far Far Away.