The best part of Star Wars is the wide array of weirdo alien puppets and CG creatures dreamed up to accompany the series’ boring human characters as they travel the galaxy. While it’s hard to beat the sheer charisma of designs like the first movie’s “Bat Boy Ordering A Drink” or Salacious Crumb, the nasty little cackling rat-thing that lives in Jabba’s fat rolls, The Mandalorian is doing its level best to outdo everything that’s come before with the introduction of a baby version of one of Star Wars’ best-loved aliens.
While Frank Oz’s Adult Yoda, as he must now be known, is a good creature, it turns out that Baby Yoda, bounty hunter traveling companion and the show’s adorable central mystery, supersedes his fore-bearer in every way that matters. Looking like a cross between a fennec fox, Gizmo from Gremlins, and a tiny green monkey, Werner Herzog himself calls the pint-sized creature “heartbreakingly beautiful” (and said that its presence on set “made you cry when you saw it.”).
The internet agrees, eager to share in a mutual appreciation of the heart-melting little bastard.
Still, there are people who are unable to appreciate the pure joy of looking upon Baby Yoda, their senses clouded by needing others to know that, chronologically speaking, the frog-eating tyke can’t actually be a baby version of Yoda since The Mandalorian is set after that character’s death.
Fortunately, this sort of nit-picking hasn’t gained a lot of traction. Trivia, after all, is of the mind and Baby Yoda is of the heart.
Others want to needlessly do away with calling the little dude “Baby Yoda” by using its species’ as-yet-unrevealed name instead.
This, it should go without saying, is unnecessary, too.
No, less than a week after he first graced our screens, we’ve moved past the point of giving Baby Yoda another name. Regardless of whether an upcoming episode provides him or his species an official name, it’s too late.
The people have spoken and the words they’ve said, well, they sound a whole lot like “Baby Yoda” to us.
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