The First Episode Twist in 'The Mandalorian' Is a 'Star Wars' Game-Changer
Spoiler Alert: If you haven't watched the first episode of The Mandalorian, stop reading right this instant. Seriously! Stop reading now!
The Mandalorian's first episode starts what seems like an incredible Star Wars adventure.
In the twist ending, the bounty hunter's target turns out to be someone very familiar—if not in name, then certainly in appearance.
We'll learn more, certainly, as the series progresses.
In the lead-up to the release of Disney+ and The Mandalorian, there were a few pieces of information that we got. The series would have a big-time western feel, the main character would be a Boba Fett-esque bounty hunter, and the first episode would have a major universe spoiler. And after the first episode of Jon Favreau's series debuted, it's safe to say it delivered on all of those points—and the first episode concluded with an image of a character who could only be called 'Baby Yoda'.
The entire episode finds The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) on the hunt for a bounty target given to him by an in-person client, played by Werner Herzog (usually, he gets targets via very Star Wars-y card projections). He knows this target is 50 years old, but when we finally get to the end, it's a whole different kind of 50 years old; as Star Wars fans know, 50 years for a Luke or a Boba Fett is very different from 50 years for Yoda.
When they see who and what the target turns out to be, IG-11 (Taika Waititi) is about to shoot Baby Yoda in cold blood. But The Mandalorian had none of it, blasting IG-11 right in the head, taking on some risks (they're in a Bounty Hunter's Guild, after all!) in the process.
This is a major factor, because the timeline we know regarding Yoda is the following: when he dies in Return of the Jedi, he's hundreds of years old (which makes 'Baby Yoda' being 50 years old totally check out). Yoda pops up again in The Last Jedi to talk to Luke, but he's a force ghost—not among the living. Considering that The Mandalorian takes place in the time between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens (The Mandalorian himself even mentions that the Empire is no more when talking to Carl Weathers' Greef Carga). So who is this Baby Yoda?
According to Wookiepedia, Yoda's species isn't even known. An article on the species says that Lucas has kept it particularly close to the vest, only ever joking about it, saying "he's a frog." The article says in the documentary From Puppets to Pixels, Lucas jokes that Yoda is " "the illegitimate child of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy." The only other member of Yoda's species even seen in the Star Wars universe was Yaddle, who sat on the Jedi Council in the prequel films (among the likes of Samuel L. Jackson's Mace Windu and Yoda himself).
So it looks like part of The Mandalorian's major plotline will revolve around Yoda's species, and how our titular anti-hero either brings him back to Werner Herzog's sinister client, or brings him somewhere else. After that first episode? Well, safe to say we're already on board. The next episode of The Mandalorian airs on Friday.
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