The Times collected data on all eight episodes of “Star Wars” available to stream online.

Ahead of the release of the final chapter of the “Star Wars” saga, The Times analyzed the dialogue in all eight movies to find out which characters spoke the most.

The data gathered during an ambitious weeklong rewatch of the original trilogy, the prequels and sequels have revealed not only a galaxy filled with scoundrels, bounty hunters and space royalty, but one of absolute chatterboxes.

To do this, we counted every word spoken in Galactic Basic (In “Star Wars,” that means English). Fictional languages were counted if they appeared on-screen as English subtitles. Each of Chewbacca’s groans, moans and growls and R2-D2’s beeps, boops and whistles were counted as one word.

Below is the list of the top 15 most talkative characters in the series, based on their average number of words spoken. At the bottom of this page, you’ll find the raw numbers per movie.

From a holographic plea for help to the endless sharp-tongued insults, Princess Leia delivered some of the most memorable dialogue in the original trilogy. Her limited role in the two sequels brings down her average words spoken per movie.

In his “Star Wars” debut in “The Empire Strikes Back,” the caped administrator of Cloud City loves to boast about his mining operation on Bespin and how he used to own the Millennium Falcon. He heaps flattery upon Leia, even with the knowledge that he just betrayed her love interest Han Solo. He eventually makes up for his bad behavior in “Return of the Jedi.”

The moody antagonist of the sequel trilogy is a man of few words compared with some of the series’ other villains. But when he’s not smashing up the inside of a turbolift, he’s chatting via Force-time with his frenemy Rey.

C-3PO and his domed counterpart R2-D2 appear in all nine episodes of the Star Wars saga and play an outsized role in the fate of the galaxy … for droids, at least. When he’s not serving as an interpreter (he’s fluent in 6 million forms of communication) for his masters, he might be heard complaining or insulting Artoo. He talks so much that he’s told to “shut up” or be quiet by other characters. At least the Ewoks pay him more respect.

Although only appearing in one film so far, Rose Tico falls in deep with Resistance heroes Finn, Poe and BB-8 in “The Last Jedi.” Not only does she trash a Canto Bight casino and free a group of space racehorses called fathiers, but she also delivers a memorable speech after saving Finn in the Battle of Crait. “That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.”

In the prequel series, we see Sheev Palpatine use the power of words (and possibly the Force) to destroy democracy, eradicate the Jedi Order and talk his way into his position as emperor of the Galactic Empire. In the process, he also created the most feared Sith lord the galaxy has ever seen in Darth Vader. “Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the wise?”

Hello there! The Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi has been a mentor to generations of young Jedi. Audiences first met the sage as he explained the ways of the Force to the young Luke Skywalker and to us. In the prequels, he trained Anakin Skywalker, who [spoiler alert] eventually turns to the Dark Side and becomes Darth Vader. In “The Force Awakens,” his voice can be heard speaking to the next Jedi, “Rey, these are your first steps.” What does it mean?

Padmé was an outspoken advocate for democracy and goodness in the galaxy. It’s too bad her influence on her husband Anakin Skywalker was overpowered by Palpatine and the Dark Side. She died of a broken heart, which just seems wrong after watching the young queen free her planet from the oppression of the Trade Federation and rise in the Galactic Senate.

Thought dead for half of “The Force Awakens,” Poe Dameron returned just in time to help destroy the third Death Star -- er, Starkiller Base -- and stage a mutiny against Vice Admiral Holdo in “The Last Jedi.”

Abandoned as a child on the desert planet of Jakku, Rey grew up scavenging and fending for herself. While she is silent for much of her screen time, she still has spoken the most words of any female character in the “Star Wars” saga.

The patriarch of the Skywalker family was more talkative before the whole Dark Side and helmet thing, speaking 987 words per movie as Anakin compared with 489 as Darth Vader. As the iconic villain, he spoke perhaps the most memorable and often misquoted words in franchise history: “No, I am your father.”

Finn is the first person of color to speak the most words in a “Star Wars” movie. With a large enough part in “The Rise of Skywalker,” he could overtake two of the most popular characters in the “Star Wars” universe.

In “A New Hope,” Luke Skywalker speaks a series record of more than 2,100 words. It’s through his eyes that we learn about some of the key themes in Star Wars: Leaving home, learning to wield a lightsaber, rescuing princesses and blowing up moon-sized space stations. Just like bull’s-eyeing womp rats like back home. In later appearances, Luke is far less talkative, even though he’s just as busy fighting evil and becoming a reluctant teacher to Rey.

Han Solo speaks a whopping 5,500 words across his four “Star Wars” appearances. After he shot Greedo (first) and reciprocated Leia’s confession of love with a cool “I know,” he didn’t seem like he was one for conversation.

His talkative role in just one “Star Wars” movie propelled him to the top of this list. He spoke more than 1,800 words, but only one truly mattered: midi-chlorians.

Since we did all this math, here’s what else we learned

About 65,000 words are spoken in eight “Star Wars” episodes, including dialogue from Chewbacca and R2-D2. Fictional languages not subtitled in English were counted as one word to establish a minimum.

Top speakers by movie

Below are the top 10 speakers by total word count for each movie.

A New Hope

The Empire Strikes Back

Return of the Jedi

The Phantom Menace

Attack of the Clones

Revenge of the Sith

The Force Awakens

The Last Jedi

Total

More in this project

There are more women than ever in ‘Star Wars.’ Men still do most of the talking

Dig into our data: See who’s spoken to who in “Star Wars”

We spent over 100 hours studying Star Wars’ female characters. Here’s why we did it

Methodology

The Times analyzed the movie scripts of the eight entries(so far) in the “Star Wars” saga. The analysis included all English dialogue (Galactic Basic in the films’ universe) that appears in subtitles of the films streaming on Disney+ and Netflix, as well as any fictional languages translated into English.

To count Chewbacca’s words, The Times performed a rough translation of the Wookiee language of Shyriiwook, counting individual growls, moans and roars as one word each. Similarly, R2-D2 and BB-8's individual whistles, beeps, boops and blurts were counted as a single word each, with help from a computer program. Other speakers of alien and droid languages, including Teedospeak, Jawaese and Ewokese, could not be reliably translated without a protocol droid. Lines delivered in such languages were logged instead as one word to establish a minimum presence for the character.

The analysis of dialogue by gender was limited to the first 15 characters listed in the credits of each movie. Humanoid characters that appeared in the credits but spoke no lines in the movie were included in the gender comparison. These characters include Gov. Tarkin and Queen of Naboo in “Revenge of the Sith” and Lando’s Assistant in “The Empire Strikes Back.” Characters that did not speak English or have English subtitles were not included. These characters include Chewbacca, R2-D2, Chief Jawa, Chief Ugnaught and Snow Creature. Characters represented by more than one actor in the film credits were combined for the purpose of this analysis.

Words heard in characters’ dreams or flashbacks did not count, although dialogue delivered via recorded message or conveyed by Force ghost did.

Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader’s dialogue was counted separately for the sake of documenting the conflicted character’s relationship with others. According to the series’ timeline and for the purposes of the Times analysis, Anakin became Darth Vader when Emperor Palpatine says, “Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth Vader.” The character became Anakin Skywalker again after he threw his master down a shaft on the second Death Star.

Characters in disguise or impersonating another character were counted as the actual speaker. By this rule, Darth Sidious and Palpatine were considered the same character in the prequels, as were Princess Leia Organa and Boushh, the bounty hunter she disguised herself as, in “The Return of the Jedi.” In several scenes of the “The Phantom Menace,” a handmaiden called Sabé acts as a decoy for Queen Padmé Amidala. Using visual cues on-screen— and from other sources, lines delivered by Sabé were counted separately from those said by Padmé.

To appear in the database of character relationships, characters had to exchange more than 400 words combined with those of another character or group of characters. A few fan favorite characters were included despite not meeting this threshold.

Sean Greene wrote and produced this story. Swetha Kannan created the illustrations. Kannan, Andrea Roberson and Tracy Brown contributed to the story and provided additional production.

We counted all the words spoken in ‘Star Wars.’ Here are the galaxy’s most talkative characters

15
Leia Organa

14
Lando Calrissian

13
Kylo Ren

12
C-3PO

11
Rose Tico

10
Palpatine

9
Obi-Wan Kenobi

8
Padmé Amidala

7
Poe Dameron

6
Rey

5
Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker

4
Finn

3
Luke Skywalker

2
Han Solo

1
Qui-Gon Jinn