While doing press for last night’s world premiere of The Mandalorian, which showcased the first three episodes of the Disney+ series, showrunner/creator Jon Favreau addressed the pilot episode’s shocking ending. Read his comments below, but beware of spoilers if you haven’t seen the first episode yet.

Collider transcribed the following quote from Favreau’s red carpet interview with Variety for last night’s premiere. (Oddly, Variety has since removed the video altogether.) Here, Favreau talks about the episode’s final reveal: the fact that The Mandalorian’s fifty-year-old target is actually a baby of the same species as Yoda.

“I wanted to surprise people, and I wanted to—well, there are bigger arcs that go through the whole season and the whole throw of the show. So as fun as it is to reveal new characters and surprise them, it also fits into a larger narrative about what’s going on in the galaxy after the revolution, and this is an important character.”

We wrote a big article yesterday speculating about what this Baby Yoda’s involvement might mean for the Star Wars galaxy: is it a Yoda clone? Is it Yoda and Yaddle’s son? Could it show up in The Rise of Skywalker? But that was just speculation on our part – now we have confirmation directly from Favreau that this youngling will be “an important character” who may even have larger implications for the galaxy at large in the wake of the fall of the Empire. What does this world look like? What are the power dynamics at play? Who has tried to slide in and fill the power vacuum now that the Emperor is gone? Or could the Emperor himself actually appear in this series, since he evidently survived the events of Return of the Jedi and plays a role in The Rise of Skywalker some thirty years later?

Favreau also seemed surprised that he was able to preserve this surprise reveal for audiences, considering how tough it is to keep a lid on spoilers for all things Star Wars.

“What I’m most proud of is that we surprised people. You know how hard that is to do that nowadays? And what type of commitment it took from everybody who was on set and from the studio to hide all the clues that people, especially Star Wars fans, normally tap into? Looking into toy catalogues, looking into marketing materials, looking into style guides, photography, and the fact that that secret was kept is incredible.”

The second episode of The Mandalorian hits Disney+ tomorrow.

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