Thanks to fan reimaginings, we’ve already seen Baby Yoda in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the company has now taken this interconnectivity with the Mouse House a step further and actually confirmed that The Child exists in their universe.
The Mandalorian received high acclaim and popularity for a number of reasons, but perhaps the majority of the buzz involved the main character’s adorable sidekick, whose existence was basically a very well-kept secret. At least until the first episode debuted on Disney Plus. Baby Yoda became an absolute sensation in a matter of days, to the point of dominating the internet in a sense that you couldn’t possibly hope to avoid his memes or gifs when signing into your social media platform of choice. And now, even if it’s for the sake of merchandising opportunities, Disney would be wise to keep Jon Favreau’s show alive as long as possible.
But who’d have thought that Baby Yoda would become so popular as to even be recognizable by the Marvel superheroes? In this week’s Empyre #0: Fantastic Four, The Child gets a hilarious namedrop and even serves a purpose in the plot. The story begins with the Fantastic Four family ending up on an alien planet after running out of gas. There, an Elder of the Universe called the Profiteer is running an arena where the Kree and Skrulls fight each other. While the adults handle the main mission, Franklin and Valeria Richards wander off and check out the casino. Using their powers, they manage to “break the bank” and come out with all of the casino’s resources.
The team makes a deal to return the money in exchange for gas and freeing two children from the arena. But how were they allowed to gamble despite their age? Well, as you can see above, they pulled the Baby Yoda excuse. When a bouncer stops them at the door, Richard claims that they’re from an alien race who look much younger than their real age. When Valeria asks how his brother came up with that, he says: “Baby Yoda. If he can be fifty…”
This is seemingly the first time that Baby Yoda has gotten a namedrop in a Disney property, even in spite of the fact that this is merely his nickname on the internet and not his real name, which proves that Star Wars is technically an in-universe fictional piece in Marvel’s fictional world. And how cool is that?
