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Grogu, also known as The Child or better known by the unofficial pseudonym Baby Yoda, is the deuteragonist of the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian.
He is a Force-sensitive 50-year-old infant of the same species as Yoda who is sought after by the Bounty Hunters' Guild on behalf of the Imperial remnant. He is taken in by Din Djarin as a Mandalorian foundling and adoptive son. He is later briefly taken by Luke Skywalker to be trained in the ways of the Force, but he ends up rejecting the Jedi path and decides to return to his adoptive father.
Background[]
Grogu is a Force-sensitive being who was born around 41 years before the Battle of Yavin. He was raised in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and trained by several Jedi before surviving the end of the Clone Wars and Order 66. Ever since, Grogu was taken into hiding, and was forced to hide his Force abilities to survive.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
- The Force: As a member of the Yoda's species, Grogu has an amazingly strong connection to the Force.
- Telekinesis: Grogu can telekinetically move objects or other individuals without physically touching them, and he utilizes it for offensive or defensive purposes. He is able to lift a beast to prevent it from killing the Mandalorian, although the sheer amount of effort require to do this caused the Child to faint and not wake up for several days.
- Force Choke: Grogu can telekinetically choke his opponents to either weaken, kill or intimidate them. He used this power to choke Cara Dune because he believed she was harming Din Djarin, not realizing they were having a friendly arm wrestling match. After the Empire kidnaps him late in the second season, he uses this power to torture a pair of stormtroopers who attempt to apprehend him in his prison cell.
- Force Grip: Grogu can telekinetically lift his opponents off the ground and into the air, sometimes by the neck, to immobilize them. He lifts a beast in order to save the Mandalorian.
- Force Barrier: Grogu can create a barrier or wall of Force energy in front of or surrounding himself or his allies. He is able to create one to save his companions by creating one to hold back a stream of fire coming from an incinerator stormtrooper.
- Force Healing: Grogu can heal himself or other sentient beings from physical injuries. He used this power to heal Greef Karga.
- Telekinesis: Grogu can telekinetically move objects or other individuals without physically touching them, and he utilizes it for offensive or defensive purposes. He is able to lift a beast to prevent it from killing the Mandalorian, although the sheer amount of effort require to do this caused the Child to faint and not wake up for several days.
- Extended Longevity: Like many of Grogu's kind, he is expected to live to be 900 years old.
Abilities[]
- Meditation: Grogu can further amplify his connection to the Force with a clear mind by meditating.
Appearances[]
The Mandalorian[]
Season 1[]
Following the collapse of the Empire, its remnants continued to hunt for surviving Jedi. Grogu was sought after by an Imperial known only as "The Client" and had a large bounty on his head. The Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin attempted to collect on this bounty; the only detail he was given was that the target was 50 years old. He was told that the target was wanted either dead or alive, but his payment would be substantially lower if he brought it back dead. However, the target was being held in a high-security complex and the Mandalorian was only able to recover him with the help of an assassin droid IG-11. Opening the bassinet, the Mandalorian and IG-11 were surprised to find that the target was only a baby. Confused (as the target was supposedly 50 years old), the Mandalorian was told by IG-11 that different species age differently and that the Child would live for several centuries. IG-11 then said that the orders stated to kill the target. The Mandalorian responded by destroying the droid and taking the Child back to his ship.
When the Mandalorian is trying to get his ship parts that were stolen by Jawas by acquiring an egg of a Mudhorn, he ends up fighting the mother. Mando takes a number of heavy hits but the Child then uses the Force to stop the Mudhorn long enough for Mando to kill it. The Child then falls asleep for a few days, exhausted from using the Force.
On the ride back to Nevarro, the Child pulls the knob off of the Razor Crest's shifter stick. Mando delivers the Child back to the Client as he was hired for, and is paid in beskar metal. However, he sees that the baby is distressed as he is taken away, leading him to have second thoughts. After Mando has the metal forged into a new set of armor, he plans to leave with his next assignment from Greef Karga. He has a change of heart after seeing the missing shifter knob, and decides to go back to take the Child back. He breaks into the Imperial base but finds the Client is gone. Mando kills several stormtroopers before cornering Dr. Pershing in the operating room. Pershing explains he managed to keep the Child alive contrary to the Client's orders, so Mando allows him to leave unharmed. After Mando too leaves with the Child, he is cornered by Greef and the rest of the Guild, telling him he has violated the Guild code by taking sides. They attempt to take back the Child but Mando's clan of Mandalorians arrives to reinforce him, and he is able to escape while the large fight ends in a stalemate.
Mando settles on the forest moon of Sorgan and intends to leave the Child in a village there to keep him safe. He is watched over by the other children in the village until another bounty hunter eventually finds him and tries to kill him. Mando's new ally Cara Dune instead kills the bounty hunter, and Mando realizes that he must stay on the run instead of settling anywhere.
The Child is left in the care of repair lady Peli Motto on Tatooine while Mando takes on a job there with rookie bounty hunter Toro Callican. After Callican is convinced by their bounty to instead betray Mando, the Child and Peli are kidnapped by Callican. Mando saves them both and kills Callican, after which he departs Tatooine with the Child.
In the following episode, the Child is left hidden on the Razor Crest when Mando and several old allies raid a Republic prisoner transport to break out one of their accomplices. Mando is betrayed by the other three, and their droid, Zero, spots the Child and attempts to kill him. The Child attempts to use the Force to stop him but Mando, who has returned after being betrayed by the others, shoots the droid, and the Child is surprised to see that he was not the one who destroyed it.
In the seventh episode, Greef Karga contacts Mando and asks him to help him retake the city he operates out of, which has been overrun by the Client's forces. Greef says he will clear Mando of all charges the guild has against him and let him keep the Child. Certain that the invite is a trap, Mando recruits Kuiil, Cara, and IG-11 (who Kuiil has salvaged, rebuilt, and reprogrammed) as backup. On the way to Nevarro, Mando and Cara engage in a friendly arm wrestling match. However, the Child believes that they are actually fighting and starts to Force choke Cara and almost kills her, but Mando defuses the situation.
The group meets with Greef and three other bounty hunters and set up a camp for the night. They are attacked by winged reptiles that kill one of the bounty hunters and badly wound Greef. He nearly dies but is saved when the Child miraculously heals the wound with the Force.
As the group approaches town the next morning, Greef kills his two remaining bounty hunters and admits that the mission was a trap―the plan was to kill Mando and give the Child back to the imperials. However, he explains that after the Child healed him, he couldn't bring himself to go through with it, and he is now genuinely willing to help. They formulate a new plan: Cara will pretend to have captured Mando, Greef will accompany them with the Child's empty pram, and Kuiil will take the Child back to the Razor Crest. They enter the Client's hideout in town, but the Client's superior, Moff Gideon, arrives and orders his Death Troopers to fire on the hideout. The shots go through the window, killing the Client and his stormtrooper entourage but missing Mando, Cara, and Greef. Mando contacts Kuiil via comlink, but some scout troopers intercept the transmission and begin chasing him. In the final shot of the episode, the scout troopers kill Kuiil and capture the Child.
At the beginning of the season finale, the scout troopers are waiting to be allowed to enter town with the Child (Gideon repeatedly kills several of his own troopers just to make a point about disobeying orders). The scout troopers begin arguing about the Child until he bites one of them on the finger. He angrily punches the Child and is approached by IG-11. The droid beats both of the scout troopers to death and takes one of their speeders along with the Child. He takes the speeder on a joyride through town, much to the Child's pleasure, before rejoining Mando, Cara, and Greef in the hideout.
Gideon reveals that he knows various secrets about the trio, including the fact that Mando's real name is Din Djarin, and attempts to force them out of the building by sending an Incinerator Trooper to burn them out, but the Child uses the Force to deflect the fire, killing the trooper instead. Cara, Greef, and the Child escape into the sewers while IG-11 stays behind to heal an injured Mando. After he has healed, they enter Mando's clan's covert, and finds that aside from the Armorer (the leader of his clan), the rest of the Mandalorians have been forced out by the Imperials due to the fact that they revealed themselves when they fought against the Guild. Meeting the Child, the armorer crafts a signet for Mando's shoulder―a Mudhorn, the same creature the Child helped him kill to get the egg―and a jetpack. She dubs Mando and the Child "a clan of two", and says that she believes he may be associated with the Jedi and tasks Mando with reuniting the Child with the Jedi. The Armorer then holds off several stormtroopers as the group escapes into a cavern.
IG-11 self-destructs to eliminate the stormtroopers at the exit of the cavern, but Gideon arrives in his TIE fighter. Mando fights Gideon and makes him crash his TIE. Greef remains on Nevarro to restart the Guild and resume his role as the city's magistrate, while he hires Cara as his enforcer. A funeral is held for Kuiil, and Mando and the Child depart Nevarro to begin their search for surviving Jedi.
Season 2[]
Mando and the Child arrive at a fight club on a planet where they meet gangster Gor Koresh,, who says he can lead Mando to other Mandalorians. He attempts to kill Mando for his beskar, but Mando overpowers him and hangs him over a streetlight to be eaten by wild dogs, but not before Gor tells him there is another Mandalorian on Tatooine.
On Tatooine, the duo reunites with Peli, who directs them to the small settlement of Mos Pelgo, where a Mandalorian has apparently been spotted. Arriving there, Mando is confronted by a man wearing the armor of Boba Fett, who is long thought dead. The man, Cobb Vanth, casually removes the helmet, causing Mando to realize he is not actually a Mandalorian and demand him to hand the armor over. Vanth refuses until a krayt dragon attacks the town, and Vanth asks Mando to help him kill it in exchange for the armor. He assists Vanth, the townspeople, and a tribe of Tusken Raiders in killing the Krayt dragon, as it has been terrorizing the town and the Tuskens, and in exchange Vanth hands over the armor. On their way back to Mos Eisley, Mando and the Child are watched by a still-alive and heavily scarred Boba Fett, who begins following them.
The next day, the pair are ambushed by three bounty hunters who want the Child. After defeating two of them, the third takes the Child, and Mando manages to get him to give back the Child in exchange for his jetpack. This is, of course, a trick, and Mando remotely activates the jetpack to return to him when the bounty hunter runs off.
Mando and the Child visit Peli in the cantina, where she is playing sabacc with an alien who has a contact who can lead him to other Mandalorians. Later, Peli introduces the pair to the contact, a froglike alien known as "Frog Lady", and explains that she must get her eggs to her husband on the nearby ocean moon of Trask, so he can fertilize them, otherwise their species will go extinct. Mando is hesitant, as he is told he cannot travel at lightspeed or else the eggs will die. However, Peli vouches for Frog Lady, as the alien says her husband has seen Mandalorians on Trask.
The Child takes an interest in Frog Lady's eggs and eats them whenever he gets a chance. After crashing on an ice moon due to being chased by two Republic X-wings, the Child accidentally awakens a large group of krykna spiders, which chase them and damage the ship before they are saved by the same two pilots from earlier. Mando has an arrest warrant, but the two Republic pilots agree to let him go. The badly damaged Razor Crest departs for Trask.
On Trask, Frog Lady reunites with her husband, "Frog Man", who directs Mando to an inn. He buys a bowl of chowder for the Child, and the server directs him to a group of Quarren fishermen who say they can take him to the other Mandalorians. They betray him, however, and punt the Child into the water. The Child is then eaten by a mamacore, and only survives because he closes his hover pram just as he is swallowed. Mando jumps in after him, but the Quarren seal a gate on top of him, intending to drown him so they can take his beskar. However, he is saved by a trio of Mandalorians. After saving Mando, one of the other Mandalorians jumps in, kills the mamacore, and recovers the Child from the destroyed pram. The Mandalorians, one of which is the Mandalore's former regent Bo-Katan Kryze, explain that Mando belongs to a cult that follows ancient discarded traditions, including being forbidden to remove their helmets. Mando and the Child return to the port while Bo-Katan and the others go their separate ways.
Mando and the Child are ambushed by the brother of one of the fishermen, who wants to kill the Child as revenge for Mando causing the death of his brother. Bo-Katan and her group return, save Mando, and meet at a cantina. Bo explains that she and her team need his help to raid an Imperial transport, and Mando agrees after Bo says she will lead him to a Jedi in exchange.
Mando leaves the Child in the care of the Frog Lady and Frog Man, whose eggs begin to hatch. After the mission, Bo-Katan tells Mando where to find a Jedi: Ahsoka Tano. Mando retrieves the Child and tells him that he finally knows where they are going.
With the Razor Crest still poorly repaired, Mando returns to Nevarro to reunite with Cara and Greef and get the Crest repaired. Mando embarks on a mission to blow up an Imperial base, but not before leaving the Child at a school, where the Child steals another student's cookies. There, Mando discovers that Gideon is still alive and seeks the Child for his blood in order to create super soldiers. Soon, Mando leaves the planet with the Child in tow and a repaired Crest, and sets off to find Ahsoka. When he finally finds her, she takes an interest in the Child and finds out his real name is Grogu, a trainee at the old Jedi Temple. As she attempts to train Grogu, Ahsoka realizes that while Grogu is attached to Mando, there is fear in his heart. Intending to avoid a repeat of what happened to her master, she decides that while she cannot train Grogu, she redirects Mando to the planet of Tython to have Grogu seek out a Jedi who can train him.
On Tython, Mando places Grogu on a seeing stone at the center of the remains of a Jedi temple at the top of a mountain. Grogu enters a deep meditative state in an attempt to reach out to a surviving Jedi. However, Mando witnesses Boba Fett arrive and goes to investigate. Boba ambushes Mando and reveals that he has partnered with Fennec Shand, the assassin whose bounty Mando attempted to collect on Tatooine in the first season. Fennec has a sniper rifle aimed at Grogu and Boba promises that she will unload it onto Grogu if Mando does not give Fett's armor back. The three drop their weapons to negotiate, but a platoon of stormtroopers arrives to try and take Grogu. Mando, Boba, and Fennec all team up against the stormtroopers, and Boba takes the opportunity to take his armor back. He effortlessly mows through several stormtroopers, causing the surviving troopers to retreat. Grogu finishes his meditation and collapses in exhaustion. Moff Gideon then arrives and has his cruiser bombard the surface near the temple, destroying the Razor Crest, this time for real.
Gideon sends his Dark Troopers, elite combat droids, to kidnap Grogu. They succeed despite Mando and Fennec's efforts, so Boba follows them in the Slave I. He returns after seeing Gideon's cruiser, and Boba Fett and Fennec then agree to assist Mando in recovering Grogu as a show of gratitude for returning Fett's armor.
Aboard Gideon's cruiser, Grogu is placed in a prison cell. When Gideon enters the cell, he finds Grogu torturing two stormtroopers with the Force. After Grogu gets too tired to continue, the stormtroopers recover and Gideon taunts him with the Darksaber. Gideon then orders his troops to put Grogu in shackles.
- “I will give my life to protect the Child, but he will not be safe until he masters his abilities.”
- ―Luke Skywalker[src]
Eventually, with the help of Boba, Fennec, Cara, and Bo-Katan, Din makes his way onto Gideon's ship, defeats Gideon, and rescues Grogu. Gideon's Dark Troopers, whom Din had blasted into space earlier, return to Gideon's ship to finish them off. However, Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Grogu had contacted, arrives, defeats the Dark Troopers, and decides to train Grogu in the ways of the Force. Grogu shares one last goodbye with Djarin, who reveals his face to Grogu for the first and only time, before leaving with Luke.
The Book of Boba Fett[]
After Din parts ways with Grogu, he goes back to bounty hunting, now armed with the Darksaber. He meets back up with the Armorer and Paz Vizsla, who learn that he met two Jedi and won the blade. The Armorer melts Din’s beskar spear into a gift for Grogu. After Din is expelled from the tribe for removing his helmet, he returns to Tatooine, where Peli sells him the parts to a Naboo starfighter to replace the Razor Crest. They build the ship and Din replaces the droid socket with a domed cockpit for Grogu.
Fennec arrives and tells Din that Boba Fett needs muscle for his upcoming war with the Pyke syndicate. Din agrees to help but declines payment. He then says that he must first go and see Grogu.
Din visits Luke’s planet and is greeted by R2-D2. He asks R2 to take him to Luke, so the droid leads him to the beginnings of Luke’s Jedi temple. He falls asleep on a bench while he waits for Grogu to return.
Meanwhile, Luke trains Grogu and tells him about Yoda. He uses the Force to unlock Grogu’s memories of Order 66, in which he witnessed his fellow Jedi being killed by their own clone troopers. The master and apprentice continue to train, with Grogu riding in Luke’s backpack just as Yoda did while training Luke.
Djarin is awoken by Ahsoka, who explains that she is visiting as she is “an old friend of the family”. Ahsoka takes Din to a hill overlooking Grogu and Luke, where he can see Grogu but the child cannot see him. Din shows Ahsoka the gift he made for Grogu and insists that he should give it to Grogu, saying it is his right as a Mandalorian foundling. However, Ahsoka explains that seeing Din will increase Grogu’s attachment, which he must be free of. He eventually decides to give the gift to Ahsoka so she can give it to Grogu.
Grogu later watches Din leave the planet in his new ship. After Luke has a brief conversation with Ahsoka, he reveals that he is in possession of Yoda’s lightsaber. He then shows the gift, a set of chainmail armor. Luke tells Grogu that he must either choose the lightsaber to continue his training, or choose the armor, therefore giving into attachment and returning to Din.
Grogu ultimately chooses the armor and he is sent back to Tatooine in Luke’s X-wing piloted by R2. He is found by Peli, who takes him to Mos Espa right in the middle of Din and Boba’s battle with the Pykes. When Boba’s rancor goes on a rampage, Grogu uses the Force to put it to sleep and falls asleep next to it.
After the Pykes are dealt with, Din and Grogu depart Tatooine in their ship.
Disney Parks[]
Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge[]
A Grogu photo-op was created in Galaxy's Edge with Grogu appearing in-person within his floating cradle on Batuu.
Toydarian Toymaker[]
There is a plushy of Grogu within a cradle, decorating the upper levels of this shop in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.
Trader Sam's[]
The secret-menu drink, "The Child" or, "The Bounty" in Trader Sam's bar is named and made to resemble Grogu.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Grogu has been colloquially nicknamed "Baby Yoda" by fans, due to his name as well as the name of Yoda's species still remaining undisclosed in the franchise.
- Bob Iger was allegedly told off by Jon Favreau for accidentally calling him "Baby Yoda".
- Grogu's existence was kept secret until the series premiered at the request of Jon Favreau. He also requested for the initial merchandise line for the series (released alongside merchandise for The Rise of Skywalker and Jedi: Fallen Order) to not have any depictions of the character in case the merchandise got leaked early and spoiled the reveal at the end of the first episode.
- Grogu is the first non-human to be inducted as a Mandalorian introduced in the Star Wars canon. Chronologically, he is the second non-human in the canon to become a Mandalorian after Darth Maul, though Maul was viewed as an outsider by all Mandalorians except his loyalists.
- Grogu is the second known being to be both Mandalorian and Jedi, the first being Tarre Vizla the founder of House Vizla and the creator of the Darksaber.
External links[]
Grogu on Wookieepedia: The Star Wars Wiki
The Child on StarWars.com (backup link on Archive.org)
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