While speaking with us over the phone to promote our exclusive debut of the Chaos Walking trailer, Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley revealed that she’s an avid viewer of The Mandalorian — and had some thoughts on the furor over Baby Yoda’s — OK, The Child’s — bad behavior in a recent episode of the Disney+ series.
After a year of being beloved for his adorable ways, Baby Yoda found himself mired in a public scandal after he ate the Frog Lady’s eggs in the Season 2 episode “The Passenger.” Her eggs would be, once fertilized by her husband, the last of their line. Unfortunately, the impishly curious and perpetually hungry Child helped himself to a few of the eggs along the way — even after Mando told him to stop.
The Child’s actions prompted a social media backlash, with some users believing he was helping extinguish an endangered species or that he was eating actual living creatures (which, to be sure, he has done). Vanity Fair’s cheeky headline adeptly summed up the backlash: “Baby Yoda Canceled Amid Accusations of Genocide.”
And while the subsequent episode saw Baby Yoda get his karmic comeuppance after he’s attacked by not one but two creatures — and even makes nice with the Frog Lady’s newborn — the damage done to Baby Yoda’s once-pristine public image might prove irreversible for some.
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With that in mind, we asked Star Wars veteran Daisy Ridley what she thought of the backlash and, echoing Vanity Fair’s headline, the tongue-in-cheek call to cancel Baby Yoda. For her part, Mandalorian viewer Ridley remains on Team Baby Yoda.
“Oh, cancel culture,” Ridley began, with a chuckle. “Look, Mando’s gotta eat, Yoda’s got to get strong. That’s just that.”
“I think it’s funny, because in a way, The Mandalorian, I feel, is slightly closer to [her upcoming film] Chaos Walking, in a way, because of the western feel of it,” Ridley observed.
But Ridley didn’t find Baby Yoda’s egg-eating cause for objection. “No, I’m like, ‘Yoda, do your thing.’ The creature [Frog Lady] got to be where she needed to be with the eggs. It’s all good. It was beautiful.”
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Given the success of The Mandalorian and future plans for other Star Wars content on Disney Plus, would Ridley be open to exploring her character Rey’s life post-Rise of Skywalker, perhaps in a streaming series of her own? Not really.
“I think for me the beauty of Episode IX is it ends with such hope and such potential. I just feel like that was Rey’s perfect ending. The big battle was in Episodes VII, VIII, and IX,” Ridley said. “I think really she’s probably running around the forest somewhere having a great time [following the events of The Rise of Skywalker].”
She continued, “I feel totally, totally satisfied with how that story finished. I just don’t know what else she could do that I didn’t have to do. Also, there are so many amazing characters in Star Wars, that it’s sort of an amazing thing. I was watching the new episode of Mandalorian, and it’s just like the places it can go beyond even where it is now is so exciting.”
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For more Mandalorian coverage, discover why astronauts took a Baby Yoda doll with them into space, how old Bo-Katan and Boba Fett are in The Mandalorian, Katee Sackhoff’s thoughts on bringing Bo-Katan to live-action, and the best Bo-Katan animated episodes to watch. And for more on Star Wars, find out everything we know about George Lucas’ abandoned sequel trilogy and check out our Lego Star Wars Holiday Special review.
And for Daisy Ridley’s next movie, IGN will exclusively debut the trailer for Chaos Walking this Thursday, November 19, at 6:00 AM PT / 9:00 AM ET.
Source: IGN.com Daisy Ridley Weighs In on Baby Yoda's Egg-Eating Bad Behavior