The bigger they are, the harder they fall. That also turns out to be true of the tiny.
Baby Yoda, who one year ago today cozied into the hearts of Star Wars fans with his bottomless eyes, fuzzy head, and adorable cooing, has invoked genuine social media wrath for last week’s episode of The Mandalorian, in which the mystical infant remorselessly snacked on the eggs of an endangered galactic species.
Whether this is serious or silly depends, as Obi-Wan Kenobi would put it, on “a certain point of view.”
In Chapter 10 of the Disney+ show, titled “The Passenger,” Pedro Pascal‘s bounty hunter agrees to ferry an amphibious alien woman known only as “Frog Lady” to a swampy distant world so she can fertilize her canister of eggs, which floated in the brine like peeled apricots. (Usually this show conjures memories of Boba Fett, but these called to mind boba tea.)
Amy Sedaris‘ starship mechanic explains that if Frog Lady doesn’t succeed in reuniting with her spouse before the equinox, the eggs will no longer be viable and “her line will end.” That adds some dramatic significance to the cargo, although there remains debate about whether only her family line would cease or if the loss of the eggs would annihilate the species entirely.
Then the unspeakable occurs! Throughout the episode, Baby Yoda is caught reaching his little green claw into her unsupervised container in order to gorge himself on the inappropriate morsels.
The Mandalorian plays this for gross-out laughs—but a contingent of fans on Twitter has taken the actions seriously, expressing anger and sadness that the series would make light of something that is both a personal invasion and a potential extinction-level event. That has been countered by many others, who feel this comical sci-fi storyline is being taken too seriously.
“I just wanna know who thought this was a good idea. Like… ‘we have this woman whose species is facing extinction and she’s very protective of these her eggs.’ ‘We should have Baby Yoda eat them.’ ‘Hey yay dude, bro high five’ Like what????” one Twitter user posted on Nov. 9. (Vanity Fair is excluding links to protect people from potential harassment.)
“Gosh, Baby Yoda is losing the charm,” another posted on Nov. 6. “I hated him because he ate the eggs of a lady frog and her species. IT’S AN EXTINCTION!!!!”
Another wrote: “Baby Yoda not knowing any better…genocide for sake of ‘cute humor’ is never very funny. I mean, I laughed but I felt really guilty about it.”
Another Star Wars-centric Twitter user quoted the Frog Lady herself: “’We fought too hard and suffered too much to resign ourselves to the extinction of our family line,’ Frog Lady said after engineering a translator and standing up to a legendary Mandalorian. ‘But please use these eggs as the butt of your misogynistic joke.’”