The web-famous and ever-popular Baby Yoda has found a just guardian in Din Djarin, the protagonist of the Disney Plus series The Mandalorian.
The show has breathed new life into a period in the Star Wars saga of which hitherto there was little known canon. In the years between the plots of Return of the Jedi (1983) and The Force Awakens (2015), Djarin finds work as a bounty hunter. On one of his assignments, his objective is “the Child,” a baby who seems to be of the same species as the famed Master Yoda. Practically nothing is known about the Child though apart from the fact that he displays Force abilities.
Eventually, prompted by a guilty conscience or perhaps a gut feeling, Mando rescues the Child from the people who wish to acquire him. He finds them doing tests on the youngling and it appears they were trying to extract something from Baby Yoda. Their true purpose for desiring the Child is just as mysterious as the framework of masterminds behind the abduction, though.
We know that the Client (Werner Herzog), as well as Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), have careers or ties with the fallen Empire, and we also know that the Sith, and accordingly the Empire, founded by Darth Sidious, have had an infamous history of terrorizing children, kidnapping them, polluting their minds with the Dark Side and training them in Sith ways. These horrors, as relayed in video games and some of the saga literature, included experiments on younglings. As such, there’s the possibility that Baby Yoda was likewise being experimented on.
Star Wars fans have been throwing out theories like crazy on what’s really going on here and some have considered that the Child was generated by Kaminoan cloners as per instructions from the Dark Lord Palpatine. Regardless of whether this will be confirmed though, a separate piece of speculation now suggests that Palpatine is the chief orchestrator in the abduction.
ScreenRant are the ones who’ve come up with this theory and the outlet lays it out as so:
The origin of the Child is currently a mystery. One common theory is that Baby Yoda was created by Palpatine himself, cloned by the Kaminoans from Yoda’s own DNA, and rescued from Palpatine’s clutches by unknown forces. Whether that is the case or not, it’s certain that the Empire acquired Baby Yoda at some point or another, simply because they’ve been able to key a tracking fob to the infant’s biosignals. Somehow, though, the Child slipped through the Empire’s grasp, and wound up secreted away on a remote Rim-world, protected by a mysterious militia.
It looks like Palps’ game, to be sure, but if it is, why would Sidious want the Child? Well, further theorizing suggests his malicious appetite for power could lead the Sith Lord to attempt an “essence transfer.” If successful, this would, in effect, put Palpatine in the body of Baby Yoda, who has a significantly high midichlorian count. As such, Palpatine would potentially be even more powerful.
As ScreenRant explains:
The most likely reason is that the Emperor could consider this a perfect body to inhabit, given the Child’s clear power in the Force. George Lucas always imagined that some races would have a greater degree of Force-sensitivity than others. “It is said that certain creatures are born with a higher awareness of the Force than humans,” Lucas explained in an in-universe analysis back in 1977. “Their brains are different; they have more midichlorians in their cells.” The Sith are known to possess a power called “Essence Transfer,” which allows their spirit to move from one body to another. No doubt the Emperor would be fascinated with the idea of inhabiting a body as strong in the Force as Master Yoda or one of his species.
An interesting theory, no doubt, but so far it’s all speculation. In the meantime, we can’t wait for the second season of The Mandalorian to drop and once we learn more on what’s coming in the next run of the show, we’ll be sure to let you know.