Disney CEO Bob Iger knows the actual name of The Mandalorian‘s Baby Yoda, but his lips are sealed. The closest the show has come to naming the little green guy is by naming one of the episodes “The Child,” and of course that’s no name at all.
Baby Yoda immediately skyrocketed to fame after debuting in The Mandalorian’s premiere. When we finally learn what it is, it may well prove a bigger deal than when Kramer’s first name was exposed back in the day on Seinfeld. (It was Cosmo.)
But we’re gonna have to wait. “I know its real name, and it’s one of the reasons I have extra security now, because I don’t want to be given some kind of truth serum by someone,” Iger said on StarWars.com’s The Star Wars Show.
Early on, Iger called the little green guy “Baby Yoda” (like we all do), but series showrunner Jon Favreau wasn’t thrilled with him using the name the internet gave him. “I got chastised,” Iger said. “In my early emails to Jon Favreau, I referenced in my emails, ‘Baby Yoda,’ it just seemed easy. And I got my wrist slapped a few times by Jon: ‘It’s not Baby Yoda!’ ‘OK, OK.’”
"I’ll make one announcement. The baby’s name is not George."
You’ll remember that Iger and Baby Yoda appeared in Time magazine when the publication named him (Iger) businessperson of the year. The magazine image is a painting because Disney’s PR department refused to provide a photograph. “I thought about our Christmas card this year including that painting and saying we had a sixth grandchild, ‘the asset,’” Iger joked.
Bob Iger y Baby Yoda @TIME #StarWars #DisneyPlus pic.twitter.com/hrPVy4E8Qf
— Jandor (@Jango1138) December 12, 2019
Iger says he knew Baby Yoda would make a big splash with Star Wars fans. “I remember times throughout my career in television, when I saw either a character, or an actor playing a character when you just knew. And I realized in this particular case, The Child, or ‘the asset,’ — which we don’t refer to as The Child, or ‘the asset’ the way the world is referring to The Child or ‘the asset,’ that’s Baby Yoda, that’s a no-no.”
A lot of people think Disney missed the boat by not anticipating a demand for Baby Yoda toys at Christmas, but Disney intentionally avoided initiating toy figure development to avoid leaking the identity of the character before it was revealed.
Pedro Pascal is the Mandalorian in THE MANDALORIAN, exclusively on Disney+
“I know a lot’s been said about the Christmas season, and everybody wants to buy The Child toys, etc., and they’re not really out there,” Iger says. “And that’s because, if we had given the design out, it would have gone out to hundreds and hundreds of people probably all over the world, and we didn’t want to do that. So people will have to wait, which I think actually is a good thing in this case.”
The Mandalorian is entirely a good thing, in all cases. Watch it with us here at WiC.
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