Why Baby Yoda Matters

*Spoilers for The Mandalorian Chapters One to Five and Star Trek Discovery Season One*

So, this was unexpected. Amidst all the hype about an edgy new bounty hunter and the looming conclusion to the Skywalker Saga, the biggest story in Star Wars at the end of 2019 may well be about a pudgy, cooing, ogle-eyed, toddling-about junior member of Yoda’s mysterious species. “The Child,” or “The Asset,” or—even though we all know he isn’t actually Yoda—“Baby Yoda,” has really wrapped his adorable, force-wielding, three-fingered hand around an oft-divided fandom.

Even casual fans are getting in on it, such as the folks over in my other corner of the internet known as “Weird Anglican Twitter.” First were the humourous debates over whether he could be baptized, be it as an infant or as part of another sentient species. And now, among the legions of saints and theologians, he appears in a form of traditional garb of an Episcopal/Anglican priest:

God bless the Bishop who ordains this fella. (Sidenote: thanks to Rev. Chris Corbin at @theodramatist for this incredible design.)

Seriously though, his presence and popularity are more important for contemporary storytelling than we realize. I’ve been thinking a lot lately that we’re now approaching the twilight of edgy, cynical, deconstructionist television. I commented here in 2015 that this hard realism has been a strong feature of serialized storytelling, since “its serial, long-arc, format…gives time to explore alternative universes of the physical and moral variety.”  The era roughly begins with 2004’s Battlestar Galactica remake and makes a turn in the Star Trek universe with Enterprise. It culminates in genre fandom with the most popular seasons of Game of Thrones, and the hardline realism of House of Cards and Breaking Bad. The era does include Revenge of the Sith, but Star Wars being Star Wars, even that #GOAT of a film couldn’t help but conclude on a note of hope.

Back in 2015 I looked at two opposite reasons why this outlook was so popular and so necessary: 1) it gave us a fantastical escape from the real-world demands of moral virtue, and 2) it gave voice to our frustration that real-world political leaders continually fail to uphold those demands of virtue. This grittiness was a direct attack on the Bush Administration, and a cautious tepidity toward Obama, a refusal to accept the narratives of virtue, courage, kindness and innocence that swept them into the White House and gave Americans hope for the future. A hope, these shows argued, based on artfully crafted lies.

If I could pin-point the moment the era ended, it was with the arrival of Captain Pike’s USS Enterprise at the end of Discovery’s first season: the finale aired in February 2018. The show’s Mirror Universe storyline and intra-crew conflict had sought to continue the realist tone, a continuation of storytelling from the past decade-plus. But we were now well into the Trump era and a moment of prominence for the alt-right: a President swept to power precisely by flouting the demands of moral virtue, by rejecting narratives of vulnerability, kindness and innocence in favour of saying “what everyone was already thinking.” The realism of left-leaning Hollywood had backfired; it was clear that we needed new stories.

We needed new stories that would be realistic about evil but maintain the clarity of hope. We needed new stories that praised innocence, vulnerability, generosity and kindness even if acting with these virtues may lead to suffering and loss and guarantee the reality of struggle. Season Two of Discovery (which aired in January 2019: yes, they made us wait almost a year!) was a great start: it went in a very hopeful direction, such as the way Pike’s conduct, leadership and concern for others was nothing short of heroic. He hearkened back to that other Starfleet captain and hero of virtue, Jean-Luc Picard, who is also returning to the small screen this coming February.

But leave it to Star Wars to lead the way in a return to more hopeful stories. The Sequel Trilogy and Rebels were always going to bring this for us, as the Original and Prequel Trilogies did in their own time and in their own way. But no one could have expected that the most poignant, impacting and popular source of hope in Star Wars would be the secondary character of a small-screen serial show about an outer-rim bounty hunter.

This was such a pleasantly surprising turn, because a show on a streaming service set in the outer rim had all the makings of that gritty, cynical outlook that we have now moved past. I mentioned above that this trope was made available by serialised storytelling; the setting of The Mandalorian also sets this up well. This is the Galactic wild west after the fall of the Empire; The New Republic doesn’t have the means or the will to ensure fairness and peaceable order. Any order to be had comes from the stiff arms of Imperial holdouts, criminal gangs, and yes, the bounty hunters who hire them.

And yet our gaze is continually drawn to a child of a mysterious species who can barely walk and can’t really talk. Even though he’s the secondary character, he has stolen the show, even the plot. While The Mandalorian is admittedly more episodic than we were expecting, it is The Child who carries the serial through-line. His innocent vulnerability leads the Mando to defy the Bounty Hunter code, prompting the underlying peril that drives the overall story. A more cynical show might deride the Mando for being naïve, but this story rewards him for defending the innocent: rewards him not with the pleasures of power, but with the possibility of living another day, of finding meaning in the care of another, of purifying his memory by showing to another the care and protection that was first denied to him as a child, and then provided to him by the Mandalorian group that took him in. The story rewards him when his fellow Mandalorians continue their own caring sacrifice by giving up their protected enclosure to help him get away, when he finds temporary refuge among peaceful, quiet farmers (whom he also defends), and just this week when he gets the begrudging respect of an otherwise grumpy and money-pinching ship mechanic.

This past week’s episode may well have clinched our return to an era of sober but hopeful and morally courageous storytelling. We return to Mos Eisley on Tatooine: the very place that started it all for us over 42 years ago, where a wide-eyed, innocent—and yes, naïve—farmboy took his “first steps into a wider” and more dangerous galaxy. The grumpy and money-pinching mechanic is all set to fleece our Mando pal, but then she comes across The Child. And despite a moment of economic realism, her overriding response to him is thoroughly maternal, taking care of him and duly returning him to the Mando at the end. We don’t know what she would have done if the Mando wasn’t able to pay for the repairs, but there’s a hint that she may at the very least accepted an honourable IOU. She and the Mando contrast wildly with the titular “gunslinger”: the brash, young Han Solo wannabe who thinks he’s playing it smart by turning tables on the Mando. In the end he’s shown to be the fool for letting go of the simpler bounty, for not relying on the teamwork and experienced wisdom that Mando offered him, for going against Mando’s commitment to defend the adorable, innocent, vulnerable Child.

This isn’t a naïve narrative: there are plenty of dangerous cynics out to cause The Child harm. But it is a hopeful story, an aspirational story told within the very “wretched hive of scum and villany” that introduced the saga, and the dreaded underworld in the galaxy beyond. The adorable, innocent vulnerability of the Child is what has made him so wildly popular with fans, and is one of the major reasons why the show itself has taken the television crown for 2019. We haven’t closed off our hearts in cynicism, but have opened our hearts and minds to the possibility that enduring kindness and moral courage can reward us, not with power and pleasure, but with meaning and hope. Thanks to Baby Yoda, we can find a reason to want the Twin Suns to rise again.

This is the way.