The Mandalorian & Grogu Won’t Include One Big Baby Yoda Reveal
They grow up so (relatively) fast.
When Disney+ launched in November 2019, nobody could stop talking about one thing: Baby Yoda, or as he was more properly called, The Child. Even though he didn’t do much but act as an adorable MacGuffin, Baby Yoda was everywhere, from merch to fan art to strange social media accounts of “families” of Grogu dolls.
Now, Baby Yoda, or as we know him now, Grogu, is about to make his theatrical debut in The Mandalorian & Grogu. But despite the bigger stage, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has warned that one much-anticipated development — that of Grogu finally speaking — won’t happen in this movie. But could it all be a ruse?
Grogu has grown so much even in the few years we’ve known him.
Grogu may be a baby, but he’s technically older than Din Djarin. In fact, he was born the same year as Anakin Skywalker. He’s just developmentally a baby because of the long lifespan of his species — remember, Yoda passed at 900 years old, so 50 is barely a drop in the bucket. However, we’ve already seen Grogu grow in just the few years we’ve known him. He’s gone from a little guy in a floating cradle to a somewhat trained Force user who can hop about all over the place.
The trailer for The Mandalorian & Grogu added a new element to this: Grogu is now apparently very chatty, babbling like a toddler all the time. Does this mean we could see Grogu say his first words in this movie? According to Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, no. Grogu is “another perfect example of a character that has to emote and you have to feel connected to, and he never speaks a word,” Kennedy said to Variety at the Golden Reel Awards. She also confirmed this won’t change in the upcoming movie.
Yaddle is our proof of how Grogu would speak, hypothetically.
In case you were wondering, if and when Grogu talks, it won’t be structured like Yoda’s iconic dialogue. Tales of the Jedi revealed that Yaddle spoke in completely regular Basic, meaning Yoda’s linguistic quirk was something he was raised with, not something specific to the species. Because Grogu has spent almost a decade with Din Djarin and presumedly spent decades previously in the Jedi temple as a youngling, he should have the speech patterns of everyone around him, like Din Djarin, Luke Skywalker, or his previous teacher Kelleran Beq.
Of course, this could just be a misdirect. Linguistically, piecing together words is the next step after the babbling we see, and what moment would make a move to theaters worth it more than Grogu saying his first words? Realistically, those words would probably be something simple like calling Din “Papa,” but how amazing would it be to watch a post-credits scene where Grogu looks up at his clanmate and says, “This is the way”? That’s the kind of reveal you would do anything to hide.
