The Mandalorian Broke My Heart

What did the mudhorn ever do to you?

Summer Anne Burton
Published in
7 min readDec 11, 2019

--

Photo: Disney / LucasFilm

I’m charmed by the child on The Mandalorian, a new show set in the Star Wars universe. I’m not alone. The internet has dubbed the kiddo Baby Yoda — before watching the show, I assumed this meant it was a prequel involving the youthful exploits of the character Yoda, but it turns out the whole thing is actually set a few years after the events of Return of the Jedi, and the character is just the same species as Yoda. Since the child does not yet have a name, and we don’t know the name of Yoda’s species, “Baby Yoda” comes naturally.

Why is the child so cute, anyway? Mostly, they look like a human baby, but green and with big ears. That’s pretty cute. They’re tiny and also powerful, which is really cute. They turned an otherwise brutally violent masked bounty hunter into a big softie, which is an extremely cute dynamic. They wear cute robes. It’s a puppet, so the actors seem to be engaging with something real. The puppet brought Warner Herzog to tears, apparently. Honestly — I get it.

--

--

Summer Anne Burton
Tenderly

Editor-in-Chief and Founder of Tenderly. Former BuzzFeed exec. Moomin. Texan. Vegan for the animals. 💕