No, we are not talking about our Student Senate here on campus, nor are we talking about Donald Trump or Chancellor Palpatine, as uncanny as their resemblance may be…
What we are talking about, however, is the new icon in pop culture that is completely breaking the internet. In case you haven’t seen any of Disney+’s original “The Mandalorian,” Disney has introduced a ‘baby Yoda’ into the Star Wars universe, which has drawn a lot of attention from many Americans. It has garnered so much popularity, a recent poll of the Democrat presidential candidates’ social media popularity showed that the baby Yoda is trending by quite a sizeable margin:
(Note: as of December 3rd Kamala Harris announced the end of her candidacy) Baby Yoda 2020?
Baby Yoda enthusiast Daniel Fremen ’20 said in an interview with the Bagpipe, “It is the best thing to ever happen to the internet, the Star Wars universe, and 2019.” Fremen also later said, “I would absolutely vote Baby Yoda for president in 2020.”
Where did the idea come from? And how cute is it really?
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, director of the TV series John Favreau said, “I think what's great about what George [Lucas] 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 tweeted out this picture on November 19th following The Mandalorians release to show the original concept for Baby Yoda:
From the very beginning, it was both Favreau and Disney’s idea to make the character as cute as they possibly could. Deborah Chow, the director of the third episode of the show told Vanity Fair, “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."
Werner Herzog is a famous German film director who makes a cameo in the first episode when he orders the “target” (baby Yoda) to be dealt with; dead or alive. According to GQ, Herzog was brought to tears by the character. “I have seen it on the set. I’ve seen it on the set,” he began, before he broke down into tears. “And it’s heartbreaking! It’s heartbreakingly beautiful.”
But what we all want to know: who is baby Yoda really?
Rumor has it that it’s the child of Yoda and Yaddle, who appears in a very brief scene on the Jedi Council in “The Phantom Menace.” Very little backstory is given in any canonical Star Wars spin-offs, but what does seem clear is that Yaddle was a female of Yoda’s species.
Another popular rumor is that baby Yoda might be a fungus that grows from a single-cell into a multicellular complex organism, because as anyone who strictly follows Jedi Code would know, Jedi are not allowed to pair up (sorry, Anakin).
One controversial rumor is that this Baby Yoda was created by a sith. The story goes that Darth Pleigus, Chancellor Palpatine or Darth Sidious’ master, was so powerful that he had the ability to actually create life and prevent death. However, he taught his student (Sidious) all that he knew, and Sidious killed him in his sleep. Thus, Sidious was the most powerful Sith, who also has the ability to create life. If we remember season 4 of the Clone Wars television series, Sidious is attempting to build an army of force-sensitive babies. It very well may be that Sidious wants to create an army of dark lords, and even creates force sensitive children with the force; including baby Yoda. Considering baby Yoda’s age, it would have meant that he was born before the Clone Wars even began, so this theory could be a potentially accurate one.
While his origins are up for question and debate, what’s unquestionable is the popularity of the figure. The social media hits that Baby Yoda has received doubles that of any Democratic presidential candidate, and according to Google Trends data, the term “baby yoda” has garnered considerably more hits than “Donald Trump” since the show’s release.
At this point, it’s only a matter of time before the #BabyYoda2020 hashtag starts getting thrown around Twitter.