A Tiny Yoda Has Become A Huge Meme
Long live Baby Yoda, imo.
The first few episodes of Star Wars saga The Mandalorian have gotten fairly mixed reviews. But one character has emerged head and shoulders above the rest.
Spoilers for the first episode of The Mandalorian follow.
See, the show’s pilot follows the titular bounty hunter as he tracks down a package about which he knows very little — only that it’s “50 years old” and extremely important.
As it turns out, the package is a tiny, aggressively cute green thing with long, bat-like ears.
So, a baby Yoda.
I would actually take a bullet for baby yoda… even tho he could stop it via force
— J (@JackJ) November 17, 2019
I've got a very little boy whom I love with everything I have inside me, but I'd kick that trash baby to the curb to protect #BabyYoda. pic.twitter.com/Heo3FSRb3o
— Neil before Zod (@neil_adavies) November 16, 2019
Of course, it’s not actually Yoda. The Mandalorian is set a few years after the end of Return of the Jedi, so Yoda is well dead by this stage. Instead, the baby’s a youngling from the same species as the ancient space wizard (unless the show’s setting up the idea that Yoda regenerates into a new body after death, which like, phew.)
But who cares about technicalities? All that matters is that Baby Yoda is extremely cute, and has been widely embraced by the internet at large, and Twitter in particular.
Lotta people pointing out Yoda is a character not a species. True. But the important thing is someone in that writer's room wrote "Yoda" on a whiteboard then wrote "baby" above it.
— Blank Check Podcast (@blankcheckpod) November 17, 2019
Love you I do. pic.twitter.com/2qLo2pcpY9
— Baby Yoda (@BabyYodaBaby) November 17, 2019
If your minister doesn’t baptize baby yoda this Sunday walk out
— David W. Peters (@dvdpeters) November 18, 2019
yoda is 50 years old in this. this how you age when you’re unproblematic fr? pic.twitter.com/kLJIsZKC9w
— brandon**^++^?? (@brandonights) November 16, 2019
“You keep smiling at your phone, what are you looking at?”
“…nothing…” pic.twitter.com/i2jR1w5AFP
— punkin ? (@reinecitrouille) November 16, 2019
In fact, Baby Yoda is so popular that they’ve been mashed into a number of different trends, ranging from the hugely popular Pikachu memes that floated around for a while this year…
my friend passing me fuit gummy pic.twitter.com/i7nsIXucPD
— atilla ♥ (@atillagulnar) November 16, 2019
…to, uh, the “suicide” of Jeffrey Epstein.
Baby Yoda no stop we need him to testify pic.twitter.com/sZWgAxcerh
— the pug from Dune (@ldrinkh20) November 17, 2019
And it’s not just random internet commentators getting excited about this tiny green guy. Werner Herzog, one of the most acclaimed and serious filmmakers of all time, who stars in the series as a nefarious villain, says he was overwhelmed with emotion when he first clapped eyes on the character.
“I saw two technicians operating it remote,” Herzog said in an interview. “One was for the eyes and the mouth, and the other one was for other facial expressions. It’s a phenomenal technical achievement and beyond the technological achievement, it’s heartbreaking.”
And he isn’t being poetic when he says ‘heartbreaking’. He means it very literally.
“On the set, it looked absolutely convincing,” Herzog said. “It made you cry when you saw it.”
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