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Today was a good day to be a Star Wars fan. Vanity Fair released a story on all of the upcoming Star Wars Disney+ shows that fans are so excited to see.
In that story, we were also treated to some insight into the development of The Mandalorian. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy revealed that the show almost very different in one major way. According to Kennedy, they were originally skeptical about the idea of Baby Yoda.
The ‘Star Wars’ universe is expanding—and, for the first time, Lucasfilm is lifting the secrecy surrounding its master plan. In V.F.’s June cover story, Anthony Breznican welcomes you back to a galaxy far, far away. https://t.co/jwdWVfGh8B
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) May 17, 2022
Kennedy revealed that when Jon Favreau first pitched the idea of a Star Wars series centering around a Mandalorian, she had him meet with Dave Filoni to discuss the idea. She said they immediately hit it off, but ferociously debated the idea of Grogu.
Filoni also explained his hesitance about Grogu.
“Honestly, it’s something I never would’ve done because Yoda is Yoda,” Filoni says. Yoda’s home world and backstory were never fully revealed, and Filoni wanted to protect the mystery that Lucas built around the original Jedi master. “I think people now look back and think it was like a slam dunk, but we were very cautious,” Filoni says of the Child. “The amount of measuring, especially in the first season, for how we were framing this kid took a lot of effort.”
Star Wars as a whole has always been a little bit reluctant to dive too deeply into Yoda’s species. Even in the “Legends” lore, we’ve only ever been introduced to 5 members of the species, including Yoda himself.
In the current Star Wars canon, we had only ever seen one other member of Yoda’s species. Yaddle appeared in Phantom Menace, but hasn’t been seen since.
Introducing a new member of the species was certainly risky, especially for the first live-action Star Wars series, but the decision to move ahead with Grogu seems to have paid off in a big way.