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In A New Hope, Princess Leia sends R2-D2 and C3PO to Obi-Wan who is supposed to take R2 to Alderaan where Leia's father is supposed to decode the Death Star blueprints out of R2's memory.

Then Alderaan gets blown up, and Obi-Wan and Luke do not know about this until they actually reach the remaining pieces of Alderaan floating around in space.

I do not quite understand what happened after this .

R2 was supposed to go to Alderaan but it blew up, but in the movie the characters keep talking about taking the Death Star plans to its final destination.

At what point in the movie did R2's destination change?

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  • Could you provide a quote from the script about when they talk about this? After skimming through the script, they are set on taking R2 to Alderaan and they do, but it's blown up and before they know it they're caught and taken to the Death Star.
    – Often Right
    Sep 12, 2015 at 6:00
  • I think I remember them mentioning taking the Death Star blueprints safely. I don't exactly remember the dialogue, but I am also not sure at what point R2's final destination changed, because from what I understood, the one who could decode R2's memory was in Alderaan, but as we know, Alderaan was blown up
    – user13267
    Sep 12, 2015 at 6:03

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The order of events is actually pretty simple.

  • Leia, while on a (supposed) diplomatic mission receives the Death Star plans.

  • After speaking to her father about the situation, they decide that she should go and collect their "big gun" (Obi-Wan) from hiding and take him to meet with her father on Alderaan.

  • Her ship is captured and she sends the plans (in R2-D2's memory) down to Tatooine, along with a message to take the plans to Alderaan.

  • When Obi-Wan and R2-D2 come out of hyperspace they find that Alderaan has been destroyed.

  • The Millennium Falcon gets captured by the Death Star (which Obi-Wan disables) and they all (including Leia) escape.

  • Leia then directs them to travel to meet the Rebel fleet (based on Yavin) to deliver R2-D2.

So in answer to your question, Leia told R2-D2 where to go. It was always her intention that the plans should go to Yavin.

There's no special indication of who they were meeting on Alderaan other than her father, nor that it was their final destination, nor that Leia was going to be the one to take the plans on to Yavin afterwards.

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    So by the point Alderaan blew up, the person who could decode R2's memory had already escaped to Yavin? How did they know this if they were supposed to meet him at Alderaan?
    – user13267
    Sep 12, 2015 at 6:05
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    @user13267 - There's no obvious indication that the plans in R2-D2's memory were in anything other than plain text. We can assume that the Empire could have easily decoded them. Also, don't forget that the memories weren't originally in R2-D2 at all, she put them there so they wouldn't fall into the Empire's hands after she got captured at the start of A New Hope.
    – Valorum
    Sep 12, 2015 at 6:07
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    @user13267 - the ultimate goal was to get the data to the Rebel forces on Yavin so that it could be analyzed. Going to Alderaan was just a means to that end.
    – Omegacron
    Sep 12, 2015 at 6:20
  • As we have seen in the clone wars series the plans are stored in the memory of the R2 droid and he can try to NOT give them away but in the end he can be "hacked" (he was even physically "hacked" during that episode)
    – Thomas
    Sep 13, 2015 at 16:38

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