With the Star Wars spinoff show The Mandalorian hitting Disney Plus each week, viewers get a chance to follow the lone bounty hunter in his travels after the fall of the Empire. Not only that, each episode gives viewers a new look at Baby Yoda as well as sparks a wave of memes — a pattern that The A.V. Club reports will likely continue until the end of the eight-episode season.
In the fourth episode of the series, titled “Sanctuary,” Baby Yoda is at one point seen tinkering with the controls of the Mandalorian spaceship, and it’s this moment that appears to be the most “meme-able” from the episode.
During an interview with Rolling Stone , director Deborah Chow — who was behind the series’ third episode “The Sin” — was asked how it felt working with Baby Yoda on both an emotional and technical level.
“It’s very special. On set, you could feel it with the crew: Everyone was in love with Baby Yoda. We were hoping it would translate, and it did, happily. When you’ve got even tough grips who are falling in love with a little creature, you know that you have something.”
Even Baby Yoda has Yankees baseball on the brain pic.twitter.com/j6aPpFaMNo
— YES Network (@YESNetwork) December 2, 2019
Chow said that Baby Yoda is the combination of an “amazing mix of visual effect and puppetry” that she believes ended up making the creature feel like a “real living, breathing character.”
“It’s definitely one of my favorite characters I’ve got to direct,” she said.
Chow also touched on the puppeteers, who she called “amazing.”
“We would talk it through with them just like I was directing an actor,” she said.
Per Vanity Fair , the team behind The Mandalorian wasn’t always confident they could pull Baby Yoda off. During one scene, the show’s creator and showrunner Jon Favreau and executive producer Dave Filoni reportedly prepared to shoot one of the first Baby Yoda scenes on a blank slate just in case they wanted to go with a digital version of the creature instead.
Director Werner Herzog, who co-stars in The Mandalorian , reportedly pushed them to keep it.
“You are cowards. Leave it.”
Original concept art. #TheMandalorian pic.twitter.com/4VWm6WUzFl
— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) November 19, 2019
The gamble appears to have paid off. In addition to the weekly memes, Favreau’s first tweet of Baby Yoda concept art received an overwhelming response. In addition, fans have since been calling for Baby Yoda toys and merchandise, of which there currently isn’t much. Fans are creating such a demand that handmade creators on Etsy have filled in the market with their own Baby Yoda creations, including dolls, sweatshirts, holiday ornaments, and more.
