A Mind-Blowing Star Wars Fan Theory About Grogu's Force Powers Has Officially Been Confirmed

'The young protect the old'

Grogu delighted fans of The Mandalorian from the moment he appeared onscreen. Even before we knew his name, and referred to the wrinkly green critter only as Baby Yoda, he was an instant favorite and a perfect comedic counterpoint to Pedro Pascal's terse bounty hunter, Din Djarin. Grogu's innate Force powers grew over the course of three seasons to include healing abilities and the strength to stop a raging mudhorn in its tracks (he also picked up a few combat tricks and some Beskar armor from Mando along the way). The character revealed a new ability in his big screen debut earlier this year, and it's one with connections to the original Star Wars trilogy.

In The Mandalorian and Grogu, Din is captured by the Hutts and poisoned by a Dragonsnake. He tells Grogu to flee the planet, but Grogu chooses to stay behind and hides the unconscious Din in a mud hut that the little critter constructs by hand. At the time, some fans wondered how Grogu knew how to build a hut so similar to the one Yoda lived in on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back. Was it coincidence? Instinct? The power of the Force?

Now, in an interview with Polygon ahead of the film’s Disney Plus release on Sept. 2, visual effects director John Knoll confirms that the structure was designed to resemble Yoda’s hut, and reveals the in-universe explanation for the similarity.

“The ability to build those huts is something that’s genetic memory, and it’s his instinct to do that,” Knoll says. “Part of the message of the story is: The old protect the young, and then the young protect the old. So in the same way that Mando has been protecting and caring for Grogu while he is more defenseless, when Mando succumbed to this poison, and he's disabled and vulnerable, Grogu is doing what he can to protect him from the elements and from predators.”

How Grogu's hut was really made

While Grogu may have been acting on the same instinct as Yoda, it took the VFX team a lot of work to make that little hut. Property master Josh Roth worked with Legacy Effects and the five puppeteers operating Grogu to make sure he had all the props he needed, whether that was a fish he could eat or the poultice he eventually used to treat Din’s poison. At one point, they considered making oversized hands for Grogu that would allow them to film him playing in the dirt.

“It was such a cool idea for him to build that hut, so we worked with our greens department to make sure the leaves and the dirt were great,” Roth says. “Andrew Jones, our production designer, ended up building a little hut, then we made the little lantern inside. The lantern was a callback to the collapsing lantern we used in The Mandalorian season 1. We’re trying to keep all that stuff continuity-wise the same.”

‘Nobody knew it was going to work’

Roth has taken the same approach to the franchise’s props since he began working on The Mandalorian in 2019.

“We didn’t know if anyone was going to like it, so no department had a lot of money and it was probably the closest to the original Star Wars because nobody knew it was going to work,” he says. “We were trying to do things exactly the same way, repurposing old props, making sure we kept the aesthetic of the original trilogy. It was so successful that by the time the movie rolled around, I had 30 people working for me: illustrators, machinists, welders, painters, mold makers, 3D printing. We had everything.”

But the goal was still to replicate the feel of the original Star Wars, further connecting Grogu and Yoda as they both found the best way to stay cozy in a swamp.