The directors on The Mandalorian love Baby Yoda, too

Last week’s episode of The Mandalorian may have been the show’s best yet. “Chapter Four: Sanctuary” introduced Gina Carano’s character, Cara Dune, an ex-shock trooper-turned-mercenary who fought for the Rebellion, as well as Julia Jones as Omera, the widowed farmer who let the Mandalorian and the Child Baby Yoda stay in her house, and who knew how to fire a blaster better than most Stormtroopers.

The episode also introduced two new Baby Yoda memes, because the universe knew we needed more of that. First, the internet has been having a ton of ton remixing the bit from the top of the episode where Baby Yoda can’t stop playing with the buttons on the Mandalorian’s ship.

Sometimes the two even battle over the choice of tunes:

Then there’s the moment where Baby Yoda sips a bowl of soup as he calmly watches the Mandalorian and Cara Dune duke it out.

Naturally, this moment can be used for anything:

Bryce Dallas Howard — daughter of Ron — directed the episode. In fact, it was her directorial debut! She talked to Variety about what went into that sipping-soup moment. “When we were shooting that fight just before, so much rested on Gina because Pedro at that point was on rehearsal for another show,” Howard said. “It wasn’t like I was working with Pedro on a day-to-day basis, so Gina was the face of the episode. Working with Mando’s stunt double and body double it was exciting because Gina was able to do all that action and we could lean into it.”

"That day was all about that brutal fight: Gina and Mando’s stunt double were just destroying each other. And then it gets to Baby sipping his soup and everything else goes away, all these amazing feats of athleticism and martial arts, and all this stuff just becomes Baby with soup and all we wanted to do was a zillion takes of how Baby was going to drink his soup. Would he drink it with one hand? With two hands? Sipping it a lot? Sipping it a little bit?"

When Baby Yoda drinks soup, the world pays attention. Also, the fact that the Mandalorian never takes off his helmet must make filming fight scenes way easier. It could be a stunt double the whole time and no one would ever know.

Howard wanted to film some of the episode from Baby Yoda’s point of view, which meant they had to come up with some low-laying objects and creatures for it to interact with. That includes this guy:

“The cat was Dave Filoni’s invention, he created and drew it,” Howard said. “I really wanted to shoot from Baby’s perspective, see the world through its eyes, and entering into the common house room was the perfect way to do it. When we were talking through what that scene would look like, we thought what if there’s some creature that goes for Baby? And Baby being like, ‘Oh my God, it wants to eat me!’”

You stay away from baby, Loth Cat!

Howard’s first interaction with Baby Yoda came when she was trying to figure out everything it could do. “I had worked with the same puppeteering folks on ‘Terminator’ and ‘Jurassic,’ so we spent a lot of time playing with the puppet, we wanted to use it as much as possible rather than relying on CG,” she said. “I wonder if Baby can walk? Can Baby reach for things? Can Baby articulate with its hands? And because of the fact there were other kids in the episode, we could lean into his earnest cuteness and those scenes might have otherwise felt put on. But we know it was OK if Baby is cute right now.”

"[Baby Yoda] is the light of all of our lives; it’s so exhilarating to be able to share my love and obsession with him with others. Working with the raiders too was so much fun; my kids would call them the pug men — when you see the masks and the full characters it really starts to feel like Star Wars."

“Chapter Four” is the only episode Howard directed this season, but given all the great memes it spawned, it’s a pretty auspicious debut.

And people’s love of Baby Yoda doesn’t stop there. Below, YouTuber MaxeBaumannFilms2013 shows us what it might look like if he fought Emperor Palpatine:

Finally, this doesn’t involve Baby Yoda (wait, where are you going?), but here’s what it would look like if legendarily bad filmmaker Tommy Wiseau — the mad genius behind The Room — played a prominent role in the Star Wars saga, as he always should have:

You can see more of Baby Yoda winning over the entire galaxy one meme at a time every Friday, only on Disney+.

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