It’s hard to imagine anyone could consider The Child (Baby Yoda) from The Mandalorian being any sense of a mistake. At this point, it’s the biggest pop culture bonanza Disney and Star Wars has seen in a while.
From the corporate perspective, the dollar signs are already adding up when next holiday season arrives.
For some fans, they aren’t so much against Baby Yoda than more concerned at how the show handled the character in being misnamed and keeping the little alien a mystery.
Because of the confusion, many viewers are calling him/her/it “Baby Yoda” all the time when that’s not the official name. Plus, more casual audiences are still perplexed about whether The Child is really a Yoda offspring or something else.
Maybe Jon Favreau should have made more facts known about The Child
Let’s not blame Favreau for anything, because he’s an absolute gem in the realm of storytelling and almost singlehandedly made Star Wars interesting again. However, he probably thought audiences were smarter than they really are.
Since the show was made exclusively for nostalgic Star Wars fans, he didn’t realize even casual viewers would tune in because of the extreme buzz.
Those individuals ended up glossing over the fact The Child is the real name since he’s never called “Baby Yoda” in the show. Yet, the latter designation has caught on in pop culture to a point where everyone is calling the little one that. There’s even some tendency to misspell The Mandalorian’s real name as Dyn Jarren when it’s really Din Djarin.
Nobody should blame the show for this because they’ve kept a lot of things subtle so they could keep secrets. Not revealing too much about The Child has clearly benefited the show and letting audiences use their imaginations to turn him into something he maybe isn’t.
Being so ambiguous on who The Child really is will help merchandise sales next December. Yet, what happens if Season Two offers some spoils that changes audience perceptions?
The danger lies in letting viewer imaginations run too rampant
Any real mistake on the part of The Mandalorian is letting speculation about The Child run wild on social media. With so many memes created and references to The Child, it’s created a persona everyone wants to uphold.
In a way, this happened with the original Star Wars characters before The Empire Strikes Back came out. After the first film, most of the late ’70s had little kids playing with their action figures (from Kenner) and inventing their own early versions of fan fiction.
As a result of this, it led those kids to create their own impressions of Darth Vader and the other characters. No wonder the shock of Vader being Luke’s father resonated so strong by 1980.
At least there wasn’t any social media back then to make memes spread in minutes, but the process was still the same. In a lot of ways, this is happening all over again thanks to The Child mystery.
‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2 will probably provide new shocks
Does Disney have any concerns if Favreau decides to do a major pivot on revealing who The Child really is? Assumptions are it’s maybe the son of Yoda, outside of many fans noting it’s probably not possible.
A few other rumors have contended The Child is maybe a clone of Yoda’s species, or even something created by the Dark Side as a ruse. Whatever the truth is, prepare for some major surprises since The Mandalorian has already been a giant toy box of twists and turns.
One year from now, audiences will probably be looking at The Child much differently and maybe making its real name a part of pop culture. With even Taika Waititi pleading with fans to call The Child by his real name over “Baby Yoda,” it may give a clue he knows what’s coming next season.
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