Baby Yoda was the breakout star of The Mandalorian. He instantly became the subject of a million memes, warmed the hearts of fans around the globe and will soon adorn countless pieces of cheap plastic as Disney finally gets their merchandising juggernaut in gear. But Baby Yoda, or The Child, was no less popular in a galaxy far, far away.
Throughout the show, we saw various sinister characters trying to get their hands on him, with several bounty hunters contracted by Werner Herzog’s The Client to try and seize him. But in the final two episodes, we finally met what seems to be the series’ big bad: Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon.
Gideon really wants Baby Yoda, sending a small army after the Mandalorian and his buddies in order to capture him. It seems that this pursuit will continue in the upcoming second season, too, with the finale of season 1 ending with Moff Gideon standing atop his crashed TIE fighter wielding the Darksaber. But why does he want Baby Yoda so badly?
Well, Esposito recently spoke to IGN, where he said the following:
“I know … Like any great leader or scientist — clue, clue, clue — with someone who is advanced in a certain way, yeah, you could want to be their best friend, or you could want to co-opt what is inside them to figure out how to make all of us a little better at humanity. So it’s that power and control of a Moff leader who is trying to put the universe back together. But, how does he know everything? How does he know everything that’s going on? He’s a very interesting character and I’m so honored to be a part of this production.”
It’s a cagey answer, but there a couple of nuggets of information in there. One is that Moff Gideon is a “great scientist” who’s trying to figure out a way to improve humanity and put the universe back together. Of course, I imagine that his vision for a complete universe is back under Imperial rule. But him being a scientist perhaps hints that he’s planning to harness Baby Yoda’s powers, perhaps more specifically his Force Healing. This may be a subtle hint that Moff Gideon is seeking to gain the good graces of the secretly resurrected Palpatine, who’s in a pretty rough state after being exploded.
Hopefully we’ll get some clarity later this year in season 2 of The Mandalorian, but whatever the case, Moff Gideon was a seriously imposing villain and the more of him on screen the better.
