The Mandalorian Din Grogu [Baby Yoda] (Spoilers)

You’ll understand what I mean when you see it. It’s not that it doesn’t feature a realistic and dark world. It’s that the primary characters can be...really good people, despite their flaws. Instead of having this lawless world turn everyone cynical, Favreau has decided to show that this backdrop can also drive people to express real and tangible solidarity, and to commit extraordinarily generous acts. We find that the Mando, for example, is hunting bounties both to build his armor, but also to fund the rescue and upbringing of Mando orphans. Ugnolte is a generous and helpful guy. The Mando is clearly empathetic in his interactions with the Yodaling. Favreau essentially did the opposite of what I was expecting, and it’s perfectly realistic. In hard times, people can often show the best of themselves. Not everyone becomes nasty and selfish. It’s something I’ve seen in conflict zone around the world, and so it’s a legit and realistic thing to focus on. I just thought the cut-throat, GOT, Breaking Bad, cynical elements would be more prevalent, based on the trailers. And that’s unequivocally not the case. And I respect it. It’s better than my headcanon, and better than the trailers. And it’s really the right approach in the increasingly cynical environment we’re living in.

 

I think that forbidding attachment doesn't necessarily equal no procreation, but it may have been established somewhere in Disney canon that I haven't seen.

If the rumors are true, I'm guessing the baby ends up with Yoda's species. It might be interesting if Mando took a wrong turn before he got there tho. Since it's Favreau, I could see doing a scene of realization similar to Tony's internal debate/revelation at the end of the first Iron Man (my personal favorite scene). "I am the Mandalorian!"

(Not that I'm literally suggesting that dialogue lol!)

 

Yeah, it'd be a mistake to link the baby to Yoda in any way. Just say the species is very rare across the galaxy, they're basically force-Michael-Jordans across the board, and these hardcore Imperial crazy Mengele types have heard rumor of a baby one out there.

River-in-Firefly this thing, basically. A certain core of the ex-Imperials have come to believe in the force after the OT events, they don't quite know how to force/midichlorian screen people the way the Jedi could, so they figure their best bet is track down a Yoda-baby to experiment on/learn about/weaponize his genetic matter after finding something indicating they're all force-attuned. This guy's special by virtue of being both rare and young, he doesn't need a Yoda link beyond a shared species.

 

Been doing a little more thinking (and piecing together from the trailers) and I think the following may happen.

1. The Mando ultimately doesn’t hand over the Yodaling (he may at first, to get his sweet beskar armor, but then goes back to get the Yodaling). But the point is that he defies the client and protects the baby.

2. The Imperial Client (or clients, if Moff Gideon is one of them) flip out. They go looking for the Pedrolorian, and raid the Mando enclave. They kill some Mandos, and perhaps even the armorer (scene from the trailers of the stormies rushing into the forge)

3. This infuriates the Mando enclave, and they send Mandos after the Pedrolorian to seize the baby and/ or kill him (cue the Heavy Infantry Mando attack)

4. The Pedrolorian somehow escapes with the baby, but he’s now outcast from his own enclave.

5. He either returns the Yodaling to its family, or gives it to a woman who lost her child (the woman from the trailers who touches his helmet)

Something like all that feels plausible.

Or...Pedro brings the Yodaling to the Mando enclave, and a Mando or two tries to kill it. Either because they have a bounty task too, or because Mandos hate anything associated with force usage/ the Jedi, given the past conflict.

 

Deathwatch gave a different impression. I think the only reason Bo Katan worked with Kenobi was because it was the only way. Sabine also isn’t you average Mandalorian

 

I didn't read every word of every post for the last 5 pages, but did anyone mention the discrepancy of the Yoda species aging? Yoda died at around 900 years old: "When 900 years of age are you, look as good you will not". Yet Yoda said to Luke (& ghost Obi-Wan) "for 800 years I've trained Jedi". That means at around age 100 Yoda had to have been a Jedi Knight to take on a Padawan.

The math doesn't add up, the baby is basically at best a toddler after 50 years, but in just another 50 years he'd be capable of being a Jedi Knight? Now before you say "well training doesn't have to mean he had a Padawan", Yoda was pretty traditional and all up in the Jedi ways.

I guess they could explain it with a species specific growth spurt, but that's the cheesy way out of it. Am I supposed to believe that a humanoid lifeform that lives to be 900+ spends it's first 50 years as an infant/toddler and then in the next 50 years grows the equivalent of a 20+ year old? Again if at about age 20 Obi-Wan was training Jedi, that means half his age would be 10 years old. This means if Baby Yoda can take on a Padawan at age 100, half his age would be 50, but he should act and be more like an 11 year old (by human characteristics).

 

As was stated by IG-11 species age differently so baby yoda could look like a one year old now but in another 50 years be a fully grown adult. So there isn’t really a descripency

 

Yes.

 

Just because it appears to be a toddler, doesn't necessarily mean its not developed - hell, it knew how to manipulate the Force well enough to control that beast, even if it did cause him to pass out. I'm thinking its more advanced than they're leading on - it may still have that childlike wonder, but when threatened, its instincts were sharp.

I doubt it has a direct connection to Yoda, I'm thinking its likely another lost "child of the Force", being hunted down so its DNA can be manipulated by Imperial remnants, or purged if necessary. My ultimate hope is that Ahsoka comes into contact with the child and smuggles it into hiding. I've always envisioned her doing that during the purge years and into the ST era.

 

yah the whole 50 years toddler and 100 years maybe a young teenager at most math is a bit wonky but we don't know much about the species, or if they're due for a growth spurt, or my favourite fannon theory is simply that Yoda was That Freakin' Good that he was a child prodigy teaching other Jedi at 100 years.

the thing about the age bit is that when you start to think about it you tapdance dangerously close to real world physics and biology in Star Wars which is a black hole you don't want to get anywhere near it's gravity well.

 

Honestly, I would rather go with Yoduski ~ 4 human years old at the age 50 and ~10 human years old at the age of 100, ergo a Jedi Master at a very young age, but still super wise in The Force, than some weird and wonky Biology that would cause a species to skip puberty and jump from the child stage to the adult stage. That just feels not believable at all to me.

 

That would work for me. Not to mention that it’s possible Yoda was just rounding up by half a century regarding the years he’s spent training Jedi.

Not dissimilar to how I communicate about the number of hours I sit in traffic. 1.5 usually becomes 2. Or 4.

 

Or he could have just forgotten the exact number... he probably had gotten Alzheimer's over 4-5 times at the age of 900

But yeah, orders of magnitude are important. I can never be pedantic with exact numbers to that degree of OCD. As long as an approximation of the age makes sense, I am good with it.

 

The bit where the Star Wars fan goes off on it not being "Baby Yoda" was great. I noticed on the Star Wars Show they called him "The child" instead of "Baby Yoda" that the entire internet is calling him was very specific branding.

 

That skit kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Obviously it's a joke, but you'd think one of Disney's subsidiaries would be more careful with how they portray the fans of one of Disney's more lucrative IPs. Not that i'm insulted or anything. Overall feeling is meh.



BABY YODA FOR PRESIDENT

 

I understand where the gag is coming form because there is a part of my brain that wants to agree that it's not Yoda at all but Baby Yoda is a better name that'll stick, even if The Child gets it's own designation, it'll forever be Baby Yoda, same way FO trooper TR-8R was named by the Internets.

 

I love lil baby yoda and see a great fureture for this character, the next grand master of the jedi. Can't wait for friday.

 

No Baby Yoda merch for X-Mas this year, they wanted to keep a lid on spoilers so it wasn’t sent to marketing. If they had somehow preserved the surprise and then had a gaggle of Baby Yoda plushies on the shelf for Christmas there would probably be another Tickle Me Elmo sized toy panic. Then Disney wouldn't complain about toy sales!

 

Although the Mando show is not shown in my country until March the second biggest newspaper of the country spoils baby Yoda on the title page today. I am sure they made some fans happy

 

There is no need to tapdance around real world anything. The real mistake we humans make (in the real world) is trying to characterize other creatures in terms of ourselves.

We do this with "dog years" which is absolutely meaningless and break down when analyzed. We can't just scale human development time by a fixed number (7 years for dogs, 50 for yodas) and then do math to figure out how grown up the thing would be in X years.

Develompent rate is not a fixed thing. Not in humans, not in dogs. We humans spend entirely too much of our lives as children - most animals are self sufficient adults at a much earlier age (proportional to lifespan) than humans. We'd be ready to leave home by 10 years old by those standards.

So, no discrepancy and no need to retcon or explain away anything. It works just fine.

 

Exactly. The moment one start talking about a 50 years old toddler, one should expect something completely different to our biology. Maybe in a year or two this baby will cocoon himself/herself for a decade and come out an adult; maybe at this point he/she is very self aware, but can't communicate with the Mandalorian for a variety of reasons... there are just too many maybes right now. It could even be the case that the abnormal conditions in which the baby has been growing could mean that its not a fully representative case of Yoda´s race biology. Its surely an intriguing topic, given how little information we had, even in legends, about this race...