Babu Frik, an Anzellan individual, existed during the New Republic Era, a time marked by the First Order and Resistance war. He operated a workshop as a black market droidsmith among the Spice Runners located on Kijimi. Irrespective of security, he possessed the ability to reprogram or modify nearly every type of droid. His speech was a broken version of Basic, heavily accented and known as Anzellan.
Born in 50 BBY, Babu Frik was employed by the Spice Runners of Kijimi on the planet Kijimi for a period preceding the Cold War. When Zorii Bliss, Poe Dameron, and other members of the gang journeyed to Quintil to save Tomasso, Bliss inquired about Frik. Subsequently, after Bliss and Dameron were initiated as Spice Runners, Bliss brought Dameron and their damaged droid companion, EV-6B6, to Babu, who repaired the droid. When Dameron left the group to join the New Republic, Babu provided him with a holographic disguise matrix to facilitate his departure. After the Battle of Crait, Kijimi was occupied by the First Order, making life harder for Babu and the spice runners.
During the First Order and Resistance war, a Resistance group consisting of Rey, Finn, Chewbacca, BB-8, C-3PO, and Resistance Commander Poe Dameron found a Sith dagger. While C-3PO could translate the Sith inscriptions on the dagger, his programming prevented him from revealing the translation. After Chewbacca and the dagger were captured, the group traveled to Kijimi to locate Babu Frik and recover the information from C-3PO's memory banks, as Poe suggested.
Babu had the ability to bypass C-3PO's programming limitations, enabling him to speak the translation. C-3PO, aware that the procedure would erase his memory, decided to proceed, believing it was the only way to defeat Darth Sidious and the Sith Eternal. The protocol droid later recovered his memory from a backup held by R2-D2. Babu manipulated C-3PO's main processing unit to find the inscription's text and override the programming that prevented C-3PO from speaking the translation. During the procedure, C-3PO's photoreceptors turned red as he spoke the words. After completing the translation, C-3PO was rebooted without his memory, only retaining his basic factory programming.
Following the Resistance fighters' departure, Babu Frik contacted Jannah and the other members of Company 77 on Kef Bir, hoping they could assist the fighters in their quest to find the Emperor's wayfinder that would lead them to the Sith world of Exegol. While Frik was working on a battle droid, Sidious ordered one of his Xyston-class Star Destroyers to destroy Kijimi. Frik escaped with Bliss, leaving his battle droid behind, but the snow-covered planet was destroyed by the Sith Star Destroyer's axial superlaser.
Although Dameron feared his friends had perished, Babu Frik and Zorii Bliss joined Lando Calrissian and the Citizens' Fleet. The two piloted a BTA-NR2 Y-wing starfighter during the Battle of Exegol against the Sith Eternal forces, including the Final Order. Zorii and Babu destroyed one of the Xyston-class Star Destroyers during the battle and celebrated the defeat of the Emperor and the Sith Eternal on Ajan Kloss with the other freedom fighters. Later, Frik became a member of the Resistance.
Babu Frik was a character created for the 2019 movie Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker, the final installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. British actress Shirley Henderson provided his voice. He was initially revealed during the Force Friday merchandise reveal in 2019. Babu Frik originated in a January 2018 version of the story. He was originally named "Babu Zazi" and was intended to give the heroes an almost-complete device that could shut down all First Order technology if finished.
According to sound editors David Acord and Matthew Wood, Henderson learned puppetry for the role to "improv and actually move the character's mouth. She was puppeteering while she was doing the improv for the character. She came up with that language and performed it that way. We preserved all of her production sounds, and that was entirely shot on set, live, with her own movement."
During the production of Episode IX, Babu Frik's fate might have been different from what was seen in the final film. Concept artist Ivan Manzella mentioned to Empire Magazine in 2020 that a scene might have been filmed where the Anzellan died during Kijimi's destruction. Artists at Industrial Light & Magic later used deleted footage from "several other sequences" of Babu to include him in the Battle of Exegol, which surprised Henderson. Creature supervisor Neal Scanlan claimed that this happened after director J.J. Abrams showed a cut of the film without addressing the character's fate to Steven Spielberg, who inquired about what happened to Frik.