Don’t worry: The Mandalorian will explore Baby Yoda’s backstory

Before Baby Yoda — or “the Child,” as he’s officially known — there was Yoda, a 900-year-old green-skinned, backwards-talking Jedi Master who seemed to be the only one of his kind in the entire galaxy. Then came the Star Wars prequels, and with them, a female of the species named Yaddle. And that was it.

Enter Jon Favreau, the creator of The Mandalorian on Disney+. He’s gifted us all with the blessing that is Baby Yoda, an adorable character who’s taken the internet by storm. But we still know fairly little about his background. What was he doing for the 50 years before the Mandalorian found him and took him in?

“We’ll learn more about him over the course of the season,” Favreau told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think what’s great about what George created is that Yoda proper, the character that we grew up watching, was always shrouded in mystery, and that was what made him so archetypal and so mythic. We know who he is based on his behavior and what he stands for, but we don’t know a lot of details about where he comes from or his species. I think that’s why people are so curious about this little one of the same species.”

Favreau also talked about rendering the character onscreen. Baby Yoda is “mostly a puppet,” thanks in part to Werner Herzog (the Client), who called Favreau and fellow showrunner Dave Filoni cowards for trying to use too much CGI. “When it’s CG, we try to make him obey the same physical laws that he would if he were a puppet,” Favreau said. “I think a lot of times CG makes itself too obvious where you don’t create parameters creatively that allow the character to keep the same identity and charm.”

Part of the reason Baby Yoda has made such a smash is because Disney agreed to hold off on marketing and product sales for the character until after he was revealed in the final moments of that first episode. We just didn’t know he was coming. “I think that part of what people really value is to be surprised and delighted, and I think that’s becoming all too rare,” said Favreau. “It’s very difficult to keep secrets about projects you’re working on.”

"By holding back on that one product, we knew that we may have had the disadvantage of not having toys available day and date, but what we got in exchange was an excitement surrounding the character, because everybody felt like they discovered him together. That emulated more what my experience growing up was like."

So now that Baby Yoda is here and we love him, what happens next? Where is this show going? Favreau notes there’s a “25-year patch of road that nobody is exploring right now, and it’s the most interesting time for me as a storyteller to explore — the time after the fall of the empire and before the resurgence of the darker forces.”

"I’m putting a lot of effort working with Dave Filoni to figure out what the overarching story is and the storyline for all these characters and what the world is like. We want to make sure that we have a road map, because we’re also a puzzle piece that fits into a larger Star Wars universe that has a lot of other movies and a lot of other projects, and we want to make sure we’re consistent with them."

The Mandalorian airs every Friday, only on Disney+.

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