Ever since his reveal in the first episode of The Mandalorian, "Baby Yoda" has become a bona fide internet sensation. Everyone seems pretty much in agreement that they'd pledge their soul to save him, but we still don't actually know much about the Force-sensitive kid. The biggest question: is Baby Yoda a clone of Yoda? Episode 3 of The Mandalorian possibly gives us some clarity on that theory.
The episode begins with Mando delivering Baby Yoda to the Client and claiming his whole camtono of Beskar steel. Leaving the adorable tyke behind clearly eats at Mando, though, and it's only after Mando gets a whole new outfit from the blacksmith, picks up a new job, and nearly blasts off that he makes the split decision to go back and save Baby Yoda from the Empire-associated Client. As Mando storms the base, he overhears the Client and Dr. Pershing talking about the plans for the baby.
"Extract the necessary material and be done with it," the Client says.
"[unintelligible] explicitly ordered us to bring it back alive," Dr. Pershing pushes back, in a bid to actually save Baby Yoda's life, he claims to Mando later.
Mando busts in when Dr. Pershing is scanning Baby Yoda, and that's when eagle-eyed fans noted that Dr. Pershing wears a familiar insignia. In the prequel Star Wars film Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan visits Kamino, the planet where scientists cloned the bounty hunter Jango Fett into an entire army to serve the Republic. Each of the clones wore a uniform with the same symbol: what looks like a lowercase i, and then a lower case l. Pershing sports a very similar symbol on his own outfit, so it is possible this is a reference to Dr. Pershing being a cloning scientist. It's not clear though if that reference means Baby Yoda has already been cloned from Yoda (or some other Yoda-like being), or if the Empire plans on cloning the baby to make their own evil, Force-sensitive Muppet. The fact that the Client doesn't seem to care about keeping Baby Yoda alive seems to point to the latter.
The Kamino reference means Baby Yoda and the clones could all be connected, or it could all just be a red herring covering up a more major plot twist. We know The Mandalorian takes place five years after the events of Return of the Jedi and 25 years before The Force Awakens. This is about time when the First Order — the baddies that Rey, Finn, and Poe fight — likely begins to rise to power. It seems inevitable that the Client will be revealed to be the creator, or a member of, the First Order, but it's impossible to tell right now if and how Baby Yoda factors in.
Considering he's already a pretty strong Force user, you'd think he'd be important in the new trilogy, but he's never shown up once. So does that mean the Client is eventually successful in "extracting the necessary material," and we will all have to collectively mourn Baby Yoda's passing? Does Mando just remove his helmet and run away with Baby Yoda to the furthest reaches of the galaxy? Will the Rise of Skywalker movie feature a late Baby Yoda reveal? Or are we all just asking these questions so we don't have to seriously contemplate if a 900-year old Yoda did indeed bang someone and sire a son? Whatever it may be, Baby Yoda is clearly important to the future of Star Wars — we just don't know to what degree yet.
