Star Wars Creator George Lucas Snuggles Up to Baby Yoda in Behind-the-Scenes Photo
George Lucas and Baby Yoda: a match made in a galaxy far, far, away!
The Mandalorian‘s showrunner and executive producer Jon Favreau gave fans a special look at The Child — fondly known as Baby Yoda — nestled in the arms of none other than the Star Wars creator himself.
Baby Yoda was introduced in the first episode of the Disney+ series, and has quickly become the star of nonstop internet memes and chatter — not to mention a flood of new products, from Funko! Pops to Build-a-Bear toys.
While the first season of the Star Wars spinoff has concluded (it’s available to stream on Disney+), Favreau has previously spoken about season two, which he said in December is set to drop this fall.
The Lion King director gave fans one hint about what to expect in the upcoming season in the season two announcement when he included a photo of yet another green alien character: a Gamorrean, a creature that first appeared in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi guarding Jabba’s palace.
The Mandalorian, which stars Pedro Pascal as the titular character, takes place between the adventures of Luke, Leia and Han Solo in 1983’s Return of the Jedi and those of Rey, Fin and Kylo Ren in 2015’s Force Awakens.
While Lucas’ Baby Yoda embrace seems to signify an embrace of the television show, Disney president Bob Iger has said previously that the producer felt “betrayed” by the latest screen trilogy.
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The Hollywood Reporter reported in September that when Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, the company also purchased Lucas’ outlines for three new Star Wars movies. However, those story ideas were not used for the latest trilogy that recently concluded withThe Rise of Skywalker.
“We made clear … that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plotlines he’d laid out,” Iger reportedly wrote in his new memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned From 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, according to THR.
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And after watching The Force Awakens, Lucas was “didn’t hide his disappointment,” Iger said, according to THR.
“‘There’s nothing new,’ he said,” Iger wrote. “In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, ‘There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward.’ He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars.”
RELATED: Disney CEO Bob Iger Reveals George Lucas Felt ‘Betrayed’ By New Star Wars Trilogy
“We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do,” Iger continued, according to THR.
The latest trilogy has been met with mixed reviews, especially concerning the disparity some fans find between the Rian Johnson-directed Last Jedi and the J.J. Abrams-directed Rise of Skywalker.
Nonetheless, Abrams said in an interview with IGN last April that Lucas was consulted for the trilogy’s latest installment.
“This movie had a very, very specific challenge, which was to take eight films and give an ending to three trilogies, and so we had to look at, what is the bigger story? We had conversations amongst ourselves, we met with George Lucas before writing the script,” Abrams told the outlet.
