Baby Yoda Has Conquered the World

The faith in their little green God was not strong enough.

That was the judgment of Werner Herzog, the imperious German filmmaker turned galactic space villain turned Baby Yoda fan club president, when he saw The Mandalorian creator and showrunner Jon Favreau and executive producer Dave Filoni removing the miniature creature from set during one of his scenes with the being.

They were preparing to shoot a blank slate of the sequence as a backup in case they decided during postproduction that the puppet wasn’t convincing enough and a digital version had to be substituted.

Herzog, known for films about pushing the limits of human ability and endurance, could not hide his contempt.

“You are cowards,” he declared. “Leave it.”

This story, recounted by Filoni during his introduction of The Mandalorian at its Hollywood premiere, got a massive laugh from the audience, in part because HOW COULD ANYONE DOUBT THE POWER OF BABY YODA?

This creature of unknown provenance, introduced at the end of The Mandalorian’s first episode, has become an instant and indelible pop-culture phenomenon. Its fandom is obsessive, transcending age and experience. In an era of bitter division on nearly all matters, there is seemingly unanimous adoration for this tiny alien creature.

The puppet, the realness of it, is a triumph of design. The inside of his sideways bunny ears is the color of a sunset on your happiest day. His supple green skin is the texture of pistachio pudding, and his bottomless black eyes are so massively dilated they can only see the goodness in us.

When Favreau tweeted a concept art image of the character by artist Christian Alzmann, it was liked 217,000 times and retweeted 34,000 times.

And yet, there were doubts. Uncertainty.

Now fans are beating down the door for Baby Yoda toys and merch, and irate to find there’s not very much. At least right now. Favreau said he wanted to hold off on the deluge of consumer products, lest the existence of the Child leak early.

Sources close to the merchandising unit of Walt Disney tell Vanity Fair that plans are underway to bring more Baby Yoda products to stores in the weeks ahead, but for now the main item available is this T-shirt featuring concept art of the lovable creature.

Toymaker Hasbro confirmed to Vanity Fair that, unfortunately, it would not have any Baby Yoda toys available until 2020, so it will not be in stores in time for the upcoming holidays.

In the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, fans are clamoring for plush dolls of actual Yoda because the adorable, minimalist design of the felt figures somewhat mimics the look of his infant doppelgänger.

Over on Etsy, handmade creators are already capitalizing on the craze. There you can find page after page of crocheted Baby Yodas, felt Baby Yoda dolls, Baby Yoda holiday ornaments, Baby Yoda sweatshirts, art prints, enamel pins, bumper stickers, coffee cups, shot glasses, and jewelry.

One T-shirt imagines Baby Yoda as the sunglasses-wearing infant Carlos from The Hangover.

Another Etsy decal declares: “If Baby Yoda Dies—We Riot.”

Anticipation was stratospheric for the first live-action Star Wars series and the launch of the Disney+ streaming service, but no one could have anticipated the overwhelming appeal of this single tiny character.

“That was such a powerful thing that was added to the story. That was our precious. Our precious is this being that we all end up taking care of in some way,” said Gina Carano, who turns up in this week’s episode four as the former Rebel shock trooper Cara Dune, who crosses paths with the hero and his little green baby as they seek sanctuary.

Carano told Vanity Fair that Baby Yoda brought warmth to a show that focused on a character who prides himself on his coolness, on his lack of feeling. “That just raises the emotional level and the stakes,” Carano said. “The Mandalorian and that being’s relationship is really cool to watch.”

There is an emotional transference happening here. The audience cares more about the unnamed, faceless Mandalorian because he cares so much about Baby Yoda.

Cuteness is not always a safe bet in the Star Wars universe, so this was a gamble. Everyone generally liked the domed, warbling R2-D2 when the 1977 movie debuted, but with 1983’s Return of the Jedi, older fans expressed scorn for the teddy bear-like Ewoks, who defeated the Imperial army with sticks and stones before gyrating to their “Yub Nub” victory dance.

With The Force Awakens, BB-8 was universally embraced for his roly-poly-ness, and the Porgs had their fans from The Last Jedi, although director Rian Johnson undercut their cuteness by underscoring their deliciousness and devising ways to put them in mortal peril.

Baby Yoda manages to be adorable without being annoying. In some ways, as a recent cartoon by the New Yorker expressed, he is even more appealing than an actual human baby.

There is no shrill squawking from Baby Yoda, no tantrum, no spit-up, no uncontrollable shrieking that burrows into a parent’s psyche like a dentist’s drill shredding a soft, pink nerve. Instead, this baby is kitten-like, unscrewing the silver knob of a lever in the Mandalorian’s starship and batting it around the cockpit. Even when Baby Yoda is gross, he’s cute, like when he snacks by swallowing a living frog headfirst (Awww…).

Moments like those employ digital animation, but the puppet itself and the softness of the light on its skin, the simple purity of its expressions, generate infatuation even in real life.

It all comes back to Herzog, a man for whom the childishness of puppet infatuation seems anathema. Yet he cannot help himself. Allow Deborah Chow, the director of episode three of the series, to explain what she witnessed:

“I had a day with one of the weirdest moments I’ve ever had directing,” she told Vanity Fair. “I was directing Werner with the puppet, and Werner had just fallen in love with the baby. Werner, I think, had forgotten it wasn’t actually a live creature, and started sort of…directing the baby.”

It’s as charming, but no less surreal. “Werner is talking to the baby as if it was a real thing. And I’m trying to direct Werner,” Chow said. “And I’m just like, How did I get here? How did my life end up like this?”

Then…she also found herself directing the puppet as if it were alive. “It was pretty magical,” Chow said. “I worked with the puppeteers and the visual effects [artists], and just worked with it like it was an actor. They’re the ones who gave it humanity, who gave it life.”

Herzog was not the only one to get Baby Yoda fever. “You could feel it on set,” Chow said. “You have everybody from Werner Herzog to grips and gaffers getting moved by it. Every time we brought it on set, people would be melting.”

The puppet was so expressive, she found it easy to get what she needed. “I would just say, Okay, here’s the scene: The door opens and there’s a scary thing, so he’s going to shrink back He feels scared right now. He’s going to look to Mando for comfort. So we would do it that way.”

“It would just be about emotion,” Chow added. “I’m not going to try to tell them technically how to do it. But we would talk through it.”

Talk. Through. It.

Imagine the meltdown if we ever hear Baby Yoda’s first word.

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