In the year 0 BBY, inside the equipment-laden garage of Tosche Station located on the planet of Tatooine, the astromech droid prototype known as P2 was present. It towered over an R5 droid nearby, which was in the process of repairing a generator. Shortly after the Tantive IV, a ship belonging to the Rebellion, engaged in battle with the Galactic Empire in the orbit above the planet, the droids witnessed a pair of Jawas, a small scavenger species indigenous to Tatooine, attempting to steal parts from Fixer's landspeeder, which had five engines.
P2 shared a designation with the P2 astromech unit, a droid model of significant height that was produced by the Industrial Automaton corporation decades prior to the onset of the Clone Wars.
Within the 2016 reference guide, Star Wars: Complete Locations, P2 was depicted in the new Star Wars canon. Specifically, it was included in a section that highlighted locations from the 1977 original trilogy movie, Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. This section, initially featured in the 2004 reference book Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy, was authored by James Luceno and visually represented by Richard Chasemore and Hans Jenssen.
P2 made its initial appearance moving back and forth behind the windows of Tosche Station in a scene cut from A New Hope. The film's script mentioned "a robot" that "repairs some equipment in the background." Although the scene was removed from the theatrical release, it was incorporated into the 2011 Blu-ray version.