Star Wars fans are nothing if not forgiving. They have gone from screaming about how George Lucas has ruined their childhood to embracing the prequels as really good, actually. They’ve gone from feeling embarrassment whenever The Holiday Special is mentioned to cheering when Life Day gets name-dropped in official releases. And they even admit that The Rise of Skywalker can’t be all bad, because it gave us Babu Frik.
Never one to let goodwill go untapped, Disney has moved Babu Frik, or at least some of his fellow Anzellans out of J. J. Abrams‘s mess of a saga capper and into The Mandalorian & Grogu. And they immediately start causing trouble. In the final trailer for the upcoming film, a quartet of Anzellans shout at Grogu, even evoking his better name when they sneer, “A horrible baby!” and “That’s a bad baby!”
On one hand, the Anzellans are wrong. Grogu is a very good baby, so good that he even made Werner Herzog wonder if, in fact, love and kindness existed in the universe. More importantly, Grogu made the movie The Mandalorian & Grogu possible, as he made the show a pop culture phenomenon when it first hit Disney+ back in 2019.
What initially began as a space Western set in post-Return of the Jedi universe, complete with Ludwig Göransson doing his best Ennio Morricone score, quickly became the story about an adorable green goober and his armored protector. And then it became a sequel to The Clone Wars, as Bo-Katan, Ahsoka Tano, and others from the animated series became the focus.
