As beloved as he is among fans and casual viewers alike, Baby Yoda received much backlash for his apparent lack of empathy towards a character in the second season of The Mandalorian.
Yes, we’re once again talking about the Frog Lady and her precious eggs in “Chapter 10: The Passenger.” Over the course of the series, The Child has shown an insatiable appetite, much unlike the only other known member of his species, Grand Master Yoda, whom we’ve never really seen consume something in the canon timeline. This led to an interesting subplot in the ongoing second season, where Baby Yoda, or Grogu, didn’t hesitate to eat the Frog Lady’s unhatched eggs at every given opportunity. What ultimately made this even more awful than it sounds is the fact that those eggs were the last of their nearly extinct species.
Of course, the writers kind of redeemed him when he befriended one of those hatchlings in the following episode and besides, there’s a degree of moral impunity when it comes to a child whose cognitive abilities haven’t fully grown yet. Or so we thought.
In the latest outing of the show, Ahsoka accesses Baby Yoda’s memories and finds out that he was a youngling in the Jedi Temple before Order 66. What’s more, he trained under many different Masters for years. Add this to the fact that he’s 50 years old, and you’ll realize that his thought process and understanding is much more complex than we originally were led to believe.
In a sense, then, The Mandalorian confirms that Baby Yoda’s childish behavior doesn’t derive from the idea that he’s an infant. Instead, it’s a response to the trauma that he’s gone through during the Jedi Purge and the Dark Times. And apparently, all those years of training couldn’t instill a sense of moral integrity in Grogu. Even Ahsoka claims that she senses much anger and fear in him, the same feelings that led to the downfall of Anakin Skywalker. As such, this is definitely something that the producers will want to explore in the character further down the road.
