(This article contains major spoilers for the Season 2 finale of the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian”)
Well. That’s another season of “The Mandalorian” down, and as with all things “Star Wars,” it couldn’t help but attempt to dazzle the audience with references to the original trilogy, including one particularly disturbing cameo.
But we’ll save the in-depth discussion about that horrendous CGI Luke Skywalker for another article. Right now, I just wanna talk about Baby Yoda (I’m not calling him Grogu).
So, in the “Mandalorian” finale, Mando (Pedro Pascal) and friends invade an imperial flagship to rescue Baby Yoda from Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). They manage to complete their objective, but discover they’re gonna have a tough time fighting through Gideon’s dark trooper droids.
Or so they think, until a mysterious stranger lands on the ship with an X-Wing, pulls out a green lightsaber and cuts all those droids down. It’s Luke Skywalker (Max Lloyd Jones wearing young Mark Hamill’s poorly rendered face) here to save the day, as always.
Luke tells the crew that he should take Baby Yoda with him and continue his training. After some discussion, they let him do it. So this CGI Luke flies away, Baby Yoda in tow, with Mando looking on emotionally.
This represents a major change to the dynamics of “The Mandalorian” because Mando and Baby Yoda have been traversing the galaxy together since the end of the series’ first episode. And I have to imagine Mando will follow Baby Yoda to wherever Luke is taking him, because I have a hard time believing fans would put up with seeing that egregiously terrible CGI de-aging on Luke with any regularity.
But I have just as hard a time believing they would just drop Baby Yoda completely. Even though this show is called “The Mandalorian,” Baby Yoda is the star. He’s a money-making machine for Disney, so they’ll want to milk that cow for all it’s worth.
As I see it, there are three possibilities for Baby Yoda’s future.
First: “The Mandalorian” could do a big time jump and pick back up around when Ben Solo becomes Kylo Ren and Luke’s Jedi academy burns down. Mando could swing by to pick up Baby Yoda and go on the run again 20 years later, maybe with First Order folks chasing them around.
But I don’t think that’s super likely, since Disney just announced a big crossover event between “The Mandalorian” and its upcoming sister series — “Rangers of the Republic,” “Ahsoka” and, presumably, this new “Book of Boba Fett” thing that was announced at the end of this episode — for next winter. Disney would need to keep all these shows on the same timeline, and it would be weird for all of them to pick up two decades later.
Second (and likeliest, in my opinion): Baby Yoda will move over to the “Ahsoka” show. Dearest Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) seems like the best candidate to run into Luke in the near future, and she seemed to quickly develop a rapport with Baby Yoda during her appearance in “The Mandalorian” this season. It’s easy to envision “Ahsoka” being the Jedi version of “The Mandalorian,” with Ahsoka taking on the same caretaker role as Mando.
Third: Baby Yoda could move over to one of the many other new “Star Wars” shows that are on the way.
Unfortunately, any guesses about what will happen with Baby Yoda going forward do seem likely to involve that hideous CGI Luke Skywalker again. One can only hope they’ll keep that to a minimum.
Whatever the answer, hopefully we’ll find out soon enough.