Since The Mandalorian premiered last month, the world has gone crazy for Baby Yoda. The pint-size puppet has launched a thousand gifs, spawned endless memes and waddled his way into our collective hearts. The thing is, Disney appears to have been caught on the back foot here, as there’s next to no Baby Yoda merchandise available this Christmas.
However, having chanced upon a good thing, they’re not about to let it slide, as our sources are telling us that Baby Yoda will continue to appear in Star Wars beyond The Mandalorian. In fact, he’ll soon become Kid Yoda and show up in future films to help the heroes. It’s unclear as yet which movies he might appear in or who he’ll interact with, but given that this intel comes to us from the same sources who told us Ewan McGregor was returning as Obi-Wan back in May and who revealed the Rey/Palpatine twist in Rise which has since been confirmed, there’s no reason to doubt it.
Of course, it’s worth remembering at this point that Baby Yoda is merely what the world at large has dubbed him. He’s not actually a baby version of the character Yoda, just a younger member of the same species. Given that the first episode of The Mandalorian reveals that he’s spent 50 years as a baby, chronologically he cannot be a reincarnation of the Yoda we all know and love.
Despite that, he’s already displayed an instinctive talent for using the Force, some (baby-sized) heroism and a sense of good. The real question is how quickly Baby Yoda can age into a character that isn’t constantly in danger. Given that Yoda was approximately 900 when he died, we should logically expect Baby Yoda to become Kid Yoda roughly 30-50 years on from The Mandalorian. So, given that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker takes place 28 years after the Disney Plus series, it seems entirely plausible that any films set after this can feature Kid Yoda.
The only real danger for Disney and Lucasfilm is that over-exposure to Baby Yoda will drain audience’s affection for him. Sure, we all like him now, but will we like him when every available surface is plastered with his face and he becomes an annoying meme rather than a loveable novelty? I guess we’re going to find out very soon, because in 2020 you can expect to be positively drowning in Baby Yoda-related merchandise.