The Mandalorian's Jason Sudeikis forgot that he punched Baby Yoda. The live action Star Wars TV series from Disney+ arrived late last year and instantly became a hit - not just for its engaging storylines and Star Wars mythology, but also for the character now known globally as Baby Yoda.
Though the pint sized Yoda character is officially named The Child, fans everywhere immediately took to calling him Baby Yoda from the first time he appeared on screen. The Mandalorian season 1 offered a huge number of memorable moments that fans are still discussing while they await the release of season 2. One such moment came in The Mandalorian’s season finale when comedian Jason Sudeikis made a cameo appearance as a bike scout trooper. Entrusted with the kidnapped Baby Yoda, Sudeikis’ character’s impatience comes to a head when he punches the fussy and all too curious child. The brief scene set off an immediate storm of online discussion and made Sudeikis trend on social media.
Yet however monumental the incident was for Star Wars fans, it doesn’t appear to have registered that deeply with Sudeikis. During a recent interview with Uproxx, the Baby Yoda incident was brought up and Sudeikis revealed that although his son is a Star Wars fan, he’d actually forgotten just what he’d done until it began to trend on Twitter. Of course, the former SNL alum couldn’t have initially been expected to comprehend the magnitude of punching a fictional character, but it’s arguable that he’ll now remember the reaction from Star Wars fans for a long time. Recalling his reaction to what he’d done, Sudeikis said:
Nope. Forgot. Didn’t even… because it didn’t show who he was before and it was just this one-off neat thing where you get to dress up like a scout trooper, not a Stormtrooper just so you know. [Laughs] I think its a scout trooper, it’s not a Stormtrooper. Anyway so they premiered on a Friday or a Saturday, whatever it was, I know it was the weekend because Otis [Sudeikis’ son] and I were playing video games and Olivia [Wilde, Sudeikis’ partner] came into the room and goes, “Hey, you’re trending on Twitter” and I’m not active on social media so in this day and age it’s kind of like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And then immediately it’s like, “Wait, why?” I have no idea why. I already got a hard enough last name to spell. For it to be trending is bonkers, and then when she says, “apparently you punched Baby Yoda” and I was like, “Oh, that’s right!” I totally forgot that I literally hit… then I watched it and I was like, “I’ll be darned. How about that?” So that was the extent of it. It was very surreal and I started getting texts from friends going, “You bastard” and people saying like, “Did you really get to wear the suit or was that just your voice?” All those funny questions. And Liv is active on social media so I knew she was catching some guff on my behalf.
It’s quite hard to believe that Sudeikis could have forgotten about the entire incident before it became an online sensation, but the life of a celebrity is undoubtedly hectic. What’s more, Sudeikis’ cameo would have been filmed well in advance of the finale’s actual release, which means that he would have worked on other projects in the lead up to his episode of The Mandalorian. And while it’s probably true that a dedicated Star Wars fan would have immediately known that punching a character as beloved as Baby Yoda would have resulted in a definite reaction from fans, at the end of the day, Sudeikis’ bike scout trooper was just another job for the 44-year-old comedian.
Still, it’s not as if Sudeikis had any ill will toward Baby Yoda and Star Wars fans should go easy on the comedian for his past Baby Yoda offences. In the end, Sudeikis’ bike scout trooper got his comeuppance, and Baby Yoda is still alive and well, ready to take on what will undoubtedly be a whole host of new challenges in The Mandalorian season 2.
Source: Uproxx