Let’s be honest: only the biggest Star Wars fans know Grogu by his name. For most of the world, no matter how much they have continued watching The Mandalorian, he has remained Baby Yoda.
In one of the smartest moves in the history of the franchise, they decided to keep the character a secret until the series premiered and, when it finally came to light, it was an overwhelming success.
That said, why is he known as Baby Yoda and not by the name of his species, in a universe where everything seems compartmentalized? There is a reason for this, and it comes from George Lucas’s original trilogy.
May Baby Yoda be with you
When Yoda first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, back in 1980, the audience fell at the feet of the puppet and he immediately entered the pantheon of mythical Star Wars characters. The problem is that it was not clear where he came from.
Yes, Chewbacca was a Wookiee, Jabba was a Hutt… But what the hell was that green creature? Not knowing was never a decision made by Lucas himself, and the current authors of the franchise have had no choice but to deal with it.
In fact, Lucas wanted to keep it a secret to enhance its mystique. For the director, the character was a kind of “mini-Dalai Lama” but he wanted it to sound Eastern. And “Yoda” achieved that sound perfectly. In fact, finding a body that matched the name was almost impossible, and the art and visual effects director ended up making hundreds of versions and models from which Lucas chose the final one… Deciding not to listen to anyone who said he should give it a place of origin and a species.
The creator himself wanted Yoda to remain a mysterious and magical character: “He has no past. He comes and goes. He is the strange, mysterious, secretive, and subversive figure who enters the movie and leaves at the end.” And if Lucas wanted him to remain a secret, the young people coming in now are not going to reveal it: although Dave Filoni, the current director of the franchise, may have shown Yoda’s native home, he preferred to leave it that way: solving the mystery would ruin his origins and, with them, much of the charm of the character.
It is worth noting that Yoda and Grogu are not the only known members of this species. The most well-known is Yaddle, a Jedi Master during the High Republic era who was killed by Dooku as the last step before turning to the Dark Side.
Her first appearance was in The Phantom Menace and since then she has had various moments in comics, audiobooks, video games, and novels. Another character of Yoda’s species was Vandar Tokare, known only to those who played the legendary video game Knights of the Old Republic, and he is notable for being the only known member of his species to have a surname.
The other two known members are Minch and Oteg, but I don’t blame you if they don’t ring a bell: the former starred in a comic strip where he toyed with the Dark Side, and the latter appeared in the game The Old Republic. The Force has not been with them much beyond that.
